And yet she was entirely sympathetic. Not an easy thing to pull off.
Spoilers TOS: Lost to Eternity by Greg Cox Review Thread
- Thread starter Kilana2
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Finally the middle epoch is explaining what is going on.
Mr. Cox, if Kirk and McCoy had met Flint, would the writing be changed in any significant way?
Mr. Cox, if Kirk and McCoy had met Flint, would the writing be changed in any significant way?
I saw her as basically a modern-day Lois Lane. An intrepid reporter, with an attitude, who is going to get her big scoop no matter what.
(Think also Glenda Farrell in MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, way back in the thirties.)
Why would they be mentioned in Star Trek IV? I have no issue with that movie.
So were those “immortal” aliens in the movie era section something from previous books or original here?
Just reiterating that my book didn't foreshadow World War III for the same reason the movie didn't foreshadow the Eugenics Wars. Because that's not what the story was about.
Ditto with regards to portraying an alternate present-day with more advanced techology.
And the Osori are definitely original to this book. I made them up while sitting in a Starbucks downtown, right before the pandemic shut down everything for awhile.
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As a kid who was born in ‘83 and whose first movie was IV or V (his father is worthless for this kind of information) but at the very least had IV as one of the only VHS at his house, IV works because it was totally the world outside his house.
It just occurred to me, late last night, that there's another major difference between the 20th/21st century reality we are living in, and that of ST-IV and the present opus (and VOY: "Future's End, for that matter):
In our reality, there's a television, movie, online, and print franchise called Star Trek.
In our reality, there's a television, movie, online, and print franchise called Star Trek.
In the PU, is there a replacement for Star Trek media?
Star Wars has never been mentioned as well.
Star Wars might never have happened without Star Trek, since part of how Lucas pitched his movie to potential investors was by pointing out Star Trek's success in syndicated reruns as evidence that a space opera property could be popular and lucrative. It's no coincidence that the names are so similar; Lucas was trying to ride on Roddenberry's coattails.
And without Star Wars, the entire media landscape of the last several decades is massively different.
I actually really love how Strange New Worlds answered the "accurate canonical state of affairs" for the early 21st century. It made for both a brilliant episode, and a great way to explain how we can still have present day adventures in "our" 21st century such as in "Lost to Eternity".
People give PICARD season 2 a lot of shit, but one thing it did manage to not fuck up on was being mostly consistent with the alt history established for the Star Trek version of the early 21st century. It doesn't completely affirm the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, but it doesn't contradict it either. "Past Tense" is even quasi-referenced, just without some retro-cyberpunk fashion choices (well, San Francisco does have its tech subculture bubbles...). Clearly genetic engineering is banned for... international accord reasons. And it does manage to tie in with the Soong / Augments story line from ENT season 4, which clearly mentions 20th century genetic engineering.
I wouldn't say "still," since the point of "Tomorrow and..." was to bring Trek's 21st-century history into line with our current reality, rather than the TOS reality where by this point we'd lived through the Eugenics Wars, sent a crewed mission to Saturn, launched Nomad into interstellar space, abandoned interplanetary sleeper ships for faster drives, etc. So a story depicting "our" 2020s is set in the revised Trek timeline, not the original one.
They presented the space program as being more robust than it is in the real world, but otherwise, Picard's 2024 is basically the same as our 2024.
???
SNW's decision to move the date of the Eugenics Wars and when Khan lived was based on Adam Soong's last scene in the Picard S2 finale.
I found that ambiguous. It makes no sense for a document to be called "Project Khan" before the Eugenics Wars, because Khan was not the only eugenic superhuman, just the most successful of the dozens that seized power around the world. So if that was the intent, it was a mistake continuity-wise, confusing what's important and familiar to the audience with what would be important in-universe. It's far more plausible for a "Project Khan" to be something created after the Eugenics Wars as an attempt to recreate Khan's success.
Still, given that Akiva Goldsman was the writer of the PIC S2 finale and the co-showrunner of SNW, it does seem likely that both were meant to establish the same revised timeline, as nonsensical as it is in the case of the PIC scene.
IIRC, at the time the Picard S2 finale aired, Goldsman did say that scene was set up for something which would be picked up on "soon." Given the SNW episode aired a year later, it's my belief that's what he was referring to.
Most likely. It still doesn't make sense, though. I wish they'd labeled the folder something like "Eugenics Project" rather than "Project Khan."
On the other hand... Hm. "Tomorrow and..." established that Temporal Cold Warriors have been competing to alter history one way or the other. It seems as if one group tried to erase Khan and the eugenics program from history, and another worked to restore it in some form, even if it happened later in the timeline. Since the time travelers knew in retrospect that Khan was the most important eugenics superhuman, they would've prioritized his recreation, hence the "Noonien-Singh Institute" being created to get the name right (aside from that extraneous hyphen). So they could've been the ones behind the "Project Khan" folder.
I really enjoyed the novel, and now I hope it sells well and Melissa Silver becomes to Star Trek novels what Holly Gibney became to Stephen King novels. (At least I got the feeling that something's being set up here.)
I'm happy that I convinced my co-host Simon to feature Lost to Eternity in the most recent episode of our podcast - mainly because we always liked Greg's books and we're really happy that he wrote about an - albeit fictional - colleague of ours.
That seemed apt, so we did an in-depth, spoiler-free analysis. We really enjoyed the clever premise, the brisk pace, how much it reminded us of Giant Trek Novels of Old™ and how flavor- and faithful the three time periods are. As such, we highly recommend it as a summer read for Trek fans.
So - for anybody here who understands German, here's the link to our episode.
And because we hadn't done so yet, we spent the first hour or so unfolding the publishing history of original Star Trek novels from 1968 to today, with lots of personal memories.
Trek am Dienstag is Germany's most popular Trek podcast, so hopefully this will sell some books and/or convince CrossCult to do a translation. (I see they're doing Pliable Truths next February, but nothing seems planned beyond that.)
-Sebastian
I'm happy that I convinced my co-host Simon to feature Lost to Eternity in the most recent episode of our podcast - mainly because we always liked Greg's books and we're really happy that he wrote about an - albeit fictional - colleague of ours.
That seemed apt, so we did an in-depth, spoiler-free analysis. We really enjoyed the clever premise, the brisk pace, how much it reminded us of Giant Trek Novels of Old™ and how flavor- and faithful the three time periods are. As such, we highly recommend it as a summer read for Trek fans.
So - for anybody here who understands German, here's the link to our episode.
And because we hadn't done so yet, we spent the first hour or so unfolding the publishing history of original Star Trek novels from 1968 to today, with lots of personal memories.
Trek am Dienstag is Germany's most popular Trek podcast, so hopefully this will sell some books and/or convince CrossCult to do a translation. (I see they're doing Pliable Truths next February, but nothing seems planned beyond that.)
-Sebastian
Interesting. I remember Enterprise getting some flak for the whole Temporal Cold War plot at the time it came out. I remember some fans complaining about it for various reasons. But in a way that's what gives an in universe explanation for why things haven't unfolded in our 'real world' as they did in the original timeline laid out for Star Trek (granted that original history wasn't always consistent within itself either). Or put another way it gives the writers a way to make Star Trek history consistent with the real world using an in universe plot device.
Is it absolutely necessary? Of course not. It's still all just fiction of course. But it's convenient and happens to fill in some of the missing dots.
As an aside it's a shame our progress in space exploration has made such little progress since the moon landings. Where so many sci-fi writers from the 1960s (including Star Trek) thought we'd be by now is obviously pretty far off. According to Star Trek history alone we should already have interstellar planetary ships by now and sleeper ships, and IIRC Mars exploration was already started by now.