Spoilers Post-Coda novelverse

[Thrawn]

For what it's worth, JoeZhang reports his interpretation of that plotline as fact, and it emphatically is not. I am as pro-choice as anyone (and I suspect Kirsten Beyer is too, actually; the Protectors / Acts of Contrition / Atonement trilogy clearly enough says what she thinks about current conservative trends in America) and I saw that story as something totally different. I saw it as fundamentally changing the current situation - what if embryos could be viable outside a woman much earlier? - and then telling a very human story of people trying to come to terms with the right choice to make. It's never even remotely hinted that they shouldn't have that choice themselves.

If it's making any political point at all, it's that individual stories of people making that horribly difficult decision get lost in the bigger cultural argument. I personally found it quite emotional and thought-provoking; perhaps to my discredit, I hadn't even read a story that got so powerfully into all the feelings someone in that situation would go through.

And I don't think anyone was portrayed as a monster. I found Conlon sympathetic all the way through the whole story - it took her a long time to figure out what she wanted, in a way it's easy to imagine anyone in that situation taking a long time to figure out what they wanted.

It would appear that my political beliefs are pretty closely aligned with JoeZhang, but I didn't react to that story anything at all like he did. If that's a reason you're considering not reading these books, I encourage you to make up your own mind; what he's saying is hardly universal truth.

 

[JoeZhang]

Ok if it makes people happy - in my opinion - it's a disgusting anti-abortion piece of trash.

 

[Thrawn]

It didn't make me happy; it made me uncomfortable and thoughtful, like moral dilemmas are supposed to. I'm sorry you had such a negative reaction to it.

 

[JoeZhang]

If it makes people happy is a reference to me making it clear that my views are my opinion.


To be fair - I suspect this an area where cultural difference comes into play - I am not an American. The right to free and (relatively) ease abortion is a settled question in most of the UK. There are attempts by fringe groups to import the american cultural wars around this but so far with little success.

So it's not a moral dilemma for me culturally or emotionally at any level.

 

[Tuskin38]

I think the moral part comes from the fact that in this universe, you can removed the Embryo much earlier in development and it can still grow. You don't need to end it.

Put it up for adoption. Though that's really not an opportunity out in the Delta Quadrant.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't read it as an anti-abortion polemic either, and I don't think it's likely that Kirsten would have intended it that way. As Thrawn said, the ability to sustain an embryo outside a woman's body renders the whole abortion debate moot, because the whole thing that's at issue there is whether women have control over their own bodies or can be forcibly deprived of it by the state. If there's no longer a binary choice between those two, if you can keep the embryo alive without forcing the mother to carry it, then that pretty much solves the whole problem and there's nothing more to debate.

Indeed, now that I think about it more, I remember the books saying that the embryo qualified as an individual because it was no longer dependent on its mother's body for survival. Which implies that it would not have been legally defined as a person if it were still inside its mother. So no, it doesn't align with anti-abortion rhetoric at all.

 

[Thrawn]

I think this is running the risk of derailing the thread, I was planning to leave it there, but I think my comments have been misconstrued and I just want to be clear.

Whether or not to allow women to have abortions is not a moral dilemma for me. It is a settled question for me. I think it ought to be for the rest of Americans too, and I'm embarrassed about our country's nonsense around this. I'm glad England is in a better place. This is not where we disagree.

The moral dilemma I was referring to was a personal one for the characters (or, really, a series of personal ones for the characters; that storyline morphed through a number of situations where every choice was troubling or bad). I found the thoughts of "what should specifically Harry Kim do in specifically this moment" to make me uncomfortable and thoughtful. Nothing in the story made me - or even seemed intended to make me - question my commitment to a pro-choice view in general. Instead it brought me into a complex situation with complex characters trying to find their way through difficult decisions where different characters clearly had a say, but those characters also had fundamentally irreconcilable beliefs. How do you find compromises in that moment? How do you stay true to yourself and what you believe and what you need, when someone you care about wants or needs something totally different?

I found the human story of it quite compelling, and didn't find anything like the "propaganda" you describe.

 

[JoeZhang]

We will simply disagree on the matter I think rather than take the thread down this rabbit hole.

 

[Ronald Held]

Should we expect new ENT novels, perhaps from Christopher?

 

[rfmcdpei]

New novels in the Enterprise era would be wonderful.

 

[Reanok]

I've been hoping we'd get new Enterprise era novels too.

 

[F. King Daniel]

New novels in the Enterprise era would be wonderful.

"What ever happened to Columbia NX-02?"

"It vanished mysteriously during the Romulan War, but whatever happened it definitely didn't time travel or play any part in the creation of the Borg."

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I know Enterprise is getting a reevaluation in some corners that are leading to people being more favorable to it than they were at the time, so I would hope to see that Enterprise gets some new stories as well, whether they're Rise of the Federation or back in the series proper. Because there was a lot cut short about the series in general, but also, it'd be nice to see some "rehab" work, in the form of character development in the way that the show kinda failed for certain characters.

Like, that's been one of the things that I love about Rise of the Federation, that in particular, Hoshi and Travis have gotten a lot of development that the show failed to offer, and I'd like to see some more novels that give them their due. It's the same reason that I'd like to see a new novel set in TNG season one, to better utilize Tasha Yar, seeing these characters get a better shot that the show proper failed to offer them in their time.

 

[The Wormhole]

The two final voyager books make it clear that in the future not only is a embryo legally a baby at six weeks but has its own rights.

Not my interpretation at all. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought they made a point that since this particular embryo was now existing outside the mother, it was legally considered to have been born and thus entitled to the rights of a person?

 

[Christopher]

Not my interpretation at all. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought they made a point that since this particular embryo was now existing outside the mother, it was legally considered to have been born and thus entitled to the rights of a person?

As I said above, that's how I remember it too.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I dismissed it entirely as I am not a child - it was an obvious, impossible to miss, Anti-abortion text.

I cannot find any Beyer commentary on that issue, but she did weigh in on the Tuvix debate and how that particular episode informed her ongoing writing of Janeway.
https://www.polygon.com/22586158/tuvix-star-trek-memes-voyager-janeway-debate

 

[Corran Horn]

When the 'litrverse is wrapping-up' started happening I was sad for what I assumed was the end of the 'expansion lines' of Trek (like Vanguard, Stargazer, Lost Era, Seekers, BotF) but then I remember those have pretty much been non-existent 5 years already anyway.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

By the way, is the first Disco novel from @David Mack now retroactively part of the now ending iteration of the Novelverse, because of the discrepancies between it and Season 2 (e.g. the interaction beween Michael and Spock)?

 

[Christopher]

By the way, is the first Disco novel from @David Mack now retroactively part of the now ending iteration of the Novelverse, because of the discrepancies between it and Season 2 (e.g. the interaction beween Michael and Spock)?

It's not like "Novelverse" and canon are the only two options. There have always been plenty of books (and comics, games, etc.) that don't fit either.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

It's not like "Novelverse" and canon are the only two options. There have always been plenty of books (and comics, games, etc.) that don't fit either.

Yeah, of course. Just think it would be nice and interesting to consider the novel this way. So we have at least one novelverse appearance of the Shenzhou and its crew