Er, no, you shouldn't. You shouldn't watch it ever.
Reading order - any pitfalls to avoid
- Thread starter BaloksPuppet
- Start date
Do they actually call it English? Since they're supposedly in an alien galaxy, I presume they're supposedly speaking an alien language that's just being translated into English for our convenience. Has it ever been established in SW lore what that language is called?
But, just to be clear, the Crucible trilogy is absolutely consistent with the original Star Trek television series and all the TOS feature films (not to mention the rest of Trek, including the animated series).
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The in-universe name for it is Galactic Baisic.
The base language is called, appropriately enough, Basic, and is assumed to be a galactic lingua franca although it seems primarily associated with humans (but then, humans are the most populous species). It even has its own alphabet, the Aurebesh, which you can see at Wookiepedia's page on Basic: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Basic.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Also, the Ewok movies ostensibly take place before Episode VI, a continuity decision which never made much sense to me. You have to assume that all the human characters in the films don't speak Basic, and one wonders why the Ewoks are so quick to roast them some humans in VI given all the nice things the Towanis did for them.
I've kept up with almost all the TOS books (I still haven't read the Errand of Fury books because I'm waiting for the last one to come out) and I was never too worried about continuity spoilers with them since they're supposed to be set in a much earlier time period. The exception being the Shatner books, which I guess can't strictly be considered TOS, the Vulcan's Soul books, plus a few others. And I'm happy to take this opportunity to thank you for the excellent Crucible series. I also just read The 34th Rule a couple of weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised by it. Not at all what I expected from a Ferengi book.
But anyway, my continuity/spoiler concerns are with the newer books set in the 24th century. Despite the devolution of this thread into a discussion about Ewoks (and frankly anything regarding Ewoks must be considered a devolution), most of the comments here seem to be consistent. There may be some rewards for reading them in publication order but probably no major spoilers for working through one series at a time. Since I do intend to read all of them, I might as well stick to publication order for the most part. I may still break down and plow through New Frontier first if the next one hooks me enough.
Again, thanks to everybody who has helped me come up with a plan for this.
Thank you for the kind words. I am of course delighted that you enjoyed both the Crucible trilogy and The 34th Rule. It may interest you to know that one of the motivations Armin and I had in writing the latter was to produce a "Ferengi book" that did not hie to the comic, but which employed the avarice of Ferengi society and the one-species/one-point-of-view storytelling technique of the later Star Trek series to explore something important and dramatic, in this case, racism. Glad it worked for you.
Hi, I've been lurking here for a few weeks. One of my New Year's resolutions was to try to catch up on unread Star Trek novels. I was about ten years behind on everything but TOS. I've been doing pretty well (I've gone through around 50 books so far) but I'm now about up to the relaunches and I'm wondering how important reading order is going to prove. I want to avoid spoilers and so far I've been trying to stick pretty close to publication date, but I'm tempted to read all the DS9 novels straight through, for example, so that the details will stick in my mind better. But if I do that will I be spoiling parts of the TNG or Voyager relaunches? Or if I read all the Voyager novels or New Frontier novels, will I spoil the other series?
I guess what I'm asking is if there are any significant plot elements that crossover among the newer novels (and by newer I mean anything written in the 21st century)? I know that there's more continuity among the newer novels than the old completely stand-alone philosophy, but does that continuity cross series boundaries? Since I want to avoid spoilers, should I just try to stick strictly to publication date for all the books or is it safe to read each series straight through?
I hope those questions make sense. I guess a related question is how many/which of the newer novels are completely standalone?
Just for reference, my next DS9 novel would be Avatar, for Voyager I'm up to Dark Matters (so I'm still a few away from the relaunch), and for TNG I'm up to Maximum Warp. I just finished Excalibur: Restoration in the New Frontier series. I'm really tempted to read NF straight on through since continuity has been so important so far and there are only a few books remaining, though I guess I need to work through all the Gateways series anyway which would force me to break it up a little. I haven't read any of the Titan, Gorkon, SCE, Stargazer, or Vanguard series yet. And I'm not sure I'm going to read any Enterprise. In addition to those, by my count I've got 22 TNG, 15 DS9, 11 Voyager, 5 New Frontier, and 26 other titles that are clearly crossover series. Yeah, I'll be busy for a while. :-)
Anyway, if somebody could give me a little guidance or help with a strategy I'd be very appreciative. Thanks!
I think the significant issue brought up by this question is that at least one reader, and a former Star Trek reader, at that, has the impression that there are story arcs between the novels and therefore hesitates to pick up a Star Trek book at random and enjoy it. Many readers believe that it is no longer enough to be familiar with the franchise as seen on TV and the movies, and, because of that, the number of potential readers has gradually diminished--they think to understand the novel, they have to pick up the one or two, or five or six, that preceded it. No wonder we no longer see ST books in grocery stores or drug stores! Sales of the books won't increase as long as readers have this impression, IMHO.
^ I would have an easier time buying this logic but for the fact that Star Wars novels are A LOT more interdependent than Trek novels ever have been, and they still sell like proverbial hotcakes.
(And what is the big deal about hotcakes, anyhow? I've always wondered that....)
(And what is the big deal about hotcakes, anyhow? I've always wondered that....)
They're yummy! Especially with blueberry syrup... mmm, blueberry syrup...
But from the first Google hit on the subject:
http://minnesotajobs.com/info/b981212.html
(I assume they mean "set up a hotcake stand.")
^^Not necessarily. Leave them out long enough, and you can use them as frisbees!
Definitely worked for me. I found it to be a very intelligent and thoughtful treatment of bias specifically and racism generally. Scenes in which Sisko questioned his own attitudes rang quite true and carried an appropriate level of irony. And the story was very entertaining, though I admit I figured out who was ultimately behind everything pretty early on, but not the details of what he was plotting. My only quibble with the book is that the scenes in the prison camp were a bit too dark for my tastes. The violence and harsh realism of those scenes were unpleasant, especially considering that I had been expecting a fairly light, escapist Ferengi romp. That was the only surprise from this book that I didn't entirely welcome, but regardless I still consider it one of the better books I've read in my desperate attempt to catch up over the past couple of months.
I still remain under that impression. Just for a little background on me, I started reading Trek books around 1979 and I pretty much stayed caught up on all of them through about late 1997. A couple of things happened around that time which led to my present backlog. First, real life caught up to me and I found myself working very long hours, so a lot less of my free time was available for reading. Second, I had grown a little disenchanted with Voyager as a TV series and found myself kind of unwilling to spend my reading time on Voyager books. When cross-series miniseries began, like Invasion, I kind of felt a little resentful at being "forced" to read a Voyager book in order to fully appreciate the TOS book. And lastly, the sheer volume of Trek books being put out would have left me with no time to read anything else so I decided to just limit myself to TOS. I did pick up the occasional book from another series, like A Stitch in Time and a few others, but pretty much I only kept reading TOS regularly and abandoned the other series.
Okay, flash-forward ten years. I have a lot more free time than before (for the moment) and my feelings towards Voyager have softened. I rewatched the entire series a couple of years ago and enjoyed it more than I expected to. My feelings towards Enterprise remain very cool, but we'll see if that changes in time. I was reading the latest Shatner trilogy over Christmas and it inspired me to try to catch up on all the other series. Since I was aware that the number of books being released was being scaled back, it seemed like a good time to try it. When I tallied up the unread books it came out to around 200, which is a pretty intimidating figure. And yes, I had developed the impression that the 24th century books did have a lot of cross-series arcs or at least references and that reading order was now very important. A strong familiarity with the books in the series, and not just what has appeared on screen, seems like a prerequisite. Jumping back and forth and picking one up at random appears to be an unacceptable way to tackle that small mountain of books. The posts here tend to confirm that impression. What I've gathered is that they can be read out of order but they can't be fully appreciated that way. I'll miss out on some of the richness of the books unless I stick to publication date as much as possible - and perhaps develop some encyclopedic recall of many details. The main reason I asked this question is that I thought it might be easier to remember important details if I read each series straight through rather than hopping between TNG, DS9, Voyager, etc. But if there are references across series, as there appear to be, then that advantage gets negated.
I've been buying them all along, I just haven't been reading them, so I guess that in the back of my mind I figured this day would come and I'd eventually get around to them. But for someone who hasn't been buying them all along, if they're under the same impression that I still have, then I imagine that there probably is some resistance to picking up the latest shiny new Trek book.
Except for the facts that some of us do still see Star Trek books in grocery stores from time to time, and we still seem to get a few people coming on here who have just started reading Trek books.
Except that every time the question comes up here, folks always point out that -- with a few exceptions -- you in fact aren't missing "important details" by missing a book here and there. The exceptions usually are restricted to books that are part of a mini-series ("Book 1 of __") and even then reading all of the books really isn't required. Passing references to events in other books/series occur from time to time, but if there's some all-crucial plot point from another book that bears on the story you're reading, the writers almost always cover those bases.
And as an aside for JD and AuntKate: For what it's worth, I've seen Trek books both in a grocery store (Q&A at a local Hen House) and a Wal-Mart (A Burning House) just this week...both venues which previously had not stocked Trek books, at least in my experience.
Frikkin' KRAD....
Somehow now I have a vision of KRAD touring the USA in his never ending quest to stock every grocery store with at least one of his books.
My grocery store gets about every other Trek book. And about half the time they get it before it shows up at Barnes and Noble!
And for the record I read the DS9 Relaunch completely out of order and had no problems. The books are written so that everything you need to read that book is in that book.
And considering that half the books you pick up these days are "Part 6 of the Spaceguy Saga" I don't think serialization is keeping too many people from picking up Trek books.
And for the record I read the DS9 Relaunch completely out of order and had no problems. The books are written so that everything you need to read that book is in that book.
And considering that half the books you pick up these days are "Part 6 of the Spaceguy Saga" I don't think serialization is keeping too many people from picking up Trek books.
There are certain marketing rules of thumb about the "judging a book by its cover". If you can entrance a casual browser enough to actually pick up a book to study its cover, and then cause them to flip it over to read the blurb, you have gone a long way to guaranteeing a sale. It's unlikely that casual readers know enough about Star Trek publishing that they'll form the idea from the blurbs that all the books have closely interlinked story arcs.
Also, grocery stores choosing to stock Star Trek books has more to do with the offers being made to them by book distributors, rather than a conscious choice by grocery stores to support the Star Trek line.
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