"Young adult" Trek novels

[Nerys Ghemor]

Let me head off this thread with one of my favorite quotes ever...

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of being childish, and the desire to be very grown up." --C.S. Lewis
​

The truth is they weren't "young adult" books at all...they were kids' stories. But there are certain of the Starfleet Academy books and DS9 kids' books that to this day I still haven't forgotten. Of these I would say that Capture the Flag (a Starfleet Academy book) and Prisoners of Peace (a DS9 book) stick out the most to me. It's hard to say what it was about them that really grabbed me, but both books really made me with that the plots could've been expanded further.

(Though there would've been a problem doing that with PoP considering Betrayal...after all, the question would arise as to why Jake didn't learn that hiding Cardassian stowaways, no matter how nice they are, is a quick way to get your dad's space station fired upon by an angry gul... )

Did anybody else here read these books, and are there any fond memories? Obviously we've all grown up quite a bit, but like the quote at the top of the thread says...I have absolutely zero shame about mixing kids' books and movies in my reading diet every once in awhile, or of being "caught" in the kids' section of the bookstore. A good book is a good book and I am willing to see it for what it is no matter what the main target demographic.

And to think they're the birthplace of the New Frontier series!

(Remember where Soleta, McHenry, and Zak Kebron came from? I think my hatred of New Frontier may well stem from the fact that beyond Peter David's Pythonesque sense of humor, what he did with those characters later was tantamount to stepping on my childhood. Even finding out what happened to poor Tak from Prisoners of Peace wasn't that sad!)

 

[The Nth Doctor]

And to think they're the birthplace of the New Frontier series!

(Remember where Soleta, McHenry, and Zak Kebron came from? )

Tania Tobias, who also appeared in those books, has since appeared in No Limits (specifically "Revelations"), After the Fall, Missing in Action, and Turnaround.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Ahh, interesting to know--though again I think I will stay away for fear of disrupting my childhood memories further than they already have been corrupted by what I DO know of the NF series.

 

[Cicero]

Of these I would say that Capture the Flag (a Starfleet Academy book) and Prisoners of Peace (a DS9 book) stick out the most to me.

I too loved Capture the Flag. For some reason, it really captured my imagination, both with the straightforwardness of its situation and with the fresh novelty of a Starfleet version of capture the flag, which has always been a compelling game in stories.

(Remember where Soleta, McHenry, and Zak Kebron came from? I think my hatred of New Frontier may well stem from the fact that beyond Peter David's Pythonesque sense of humor, what he did with those characters later was tantamount to stepping on my childhood. Even finding out what happened to poor Tak from Prisoners of Peace wasn't that sad!)

That he couldn't leave these characters alone (let alone keep them all from ending up assigned to the same place) was the first step in my eventually thorough dislike of Mr. David.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I think maybe a reason that particular version of "capture the flag" got my attention was because...well, I am not the most physically-adept person, and never was. It earned me a LOT of unkind treatment in P.E. in school. So seeing Geordi become critical in winning for his team even though he wasn't the biggest star athlete (and had a disability) really meant a lot to me.

As for Prisoners of Peace, I think it was in part a theme I've always loved since I was tiny: getting past the "all bad guys" image of a group and getting to know the individuals. Man, I'm a sap. And I SO don't care.

I don't think it was the simply picking up those characters again that bothered me. I mean, John Peel did it in Objective: Bajor. Though he never said it, I am almost 100% sure that the reason Tak got demoted was because Gul Gavron got called on the carpet for opening fire on Deep Space Nine after his daughter ran away (which of course was an act of war and "thank Oralius" that Sisko, being a father, decided not to press the matter!). And since Kam Gavron used him to get onto Deep Space Nine...guess who took the fall?

I don't know that John Peel posts here--but to this day, I'd LOVE to get an answer to that, if I'm right.

I was really sad to see Tak's fate--yet THAT didn't come off to me the way the use of the SF:A characters on New Frontier did.

I don't want to spend the thread running Peter David into the ground, though...I do have a lot of good memories of his work that I think deserve to be left intact.

 

[Therin of Andor]

they weren't "young adult" books at all...

They were called "young adult" stories because they were essentially chapter books aimed at young (sometimes teenage) reluctant readers who wouldn't be caught dead reading a picture book and were incapable of tackling a thicker adult novel.

I don't know that John Peel posts here--but to this day, I'd LOVE to get an answer to that, if I'm right.

Try asking at his website:
http://www.john-peel.com/

 

[Idoliside]

Theres a load of the young adult star trek book near my local book stall on the marketplace. Might have to have a peruse around them.

 

[Steve Roby]

Did anybody else here read these books, and are there any fond memories?

I still have a couple I haven't read yet. Saving them for the proverbial rainy day, I guess. Bearing in mind that I was 30 when Pocket's biggest attempt at YA Trek started with the Starfleet Academy and DS9 YA books, they weren't exactly formative experiences for me. For that you'd have to go back to Mission to Horatius by Mack Reynolds. If you haven't read William Rotsler's Star Trek II Short Stories and Star Trek III Short Stories, published by Pocket in the early 1980s in basically the same format as the Starfleet Academy books, they're worth checking out, too.

 

[Dayton Ward]

I enjoyed Capture the Flag all the more because it was a game I played as a kid

I wasn't a kid when the YA Trek books came out, but I read them anyway because I was interested in what they were doing. I liked them for that they were and what they were trying to present to their target audience. At the time, I was in the middle of a course aimed at writing for kids, and I liked the SFA series enough to write my own story and pitch it to the editor (I was younger and dumber then ), only to find out that a story that was close enough to it in general plot and tone was already in the pipeline. I think I still have the very polite and supportive rejection letter I received in a file somewhere.

Edit: Found the letter. It was from Lisa Clancy, who was editing the line when I submitted the story (which I'd forgotten I did in 1996, well before the first SNW contest was even announced....how's that for ignorance masquerading as courage?). It's longer and more detailed than I remember, and offered several notes on how to improve the story I'd written as well as writing for kids/young adults in general.

 

[KRAD]

Lisa Clancy is an excellent editor -- I worked with her on my early Buffy books (The Watchers Guide and The Xander Years -- and her departure was a big loss to S&S.

 

[Cicero]

they weren't "young adult" books at all...

They were called "young adult" stories because they were essentially chapter books aimed at young (sometimes teenage) reluctant readers who wouldn't be caught dead reading a picture book and were incapable of tackling a thicker adult novel

Oddly enough, when I read Peter David's Worf stories in fourth (?) grade, I'd already read several of his regular Star Trek books (Q-In-Law stands out to me). For whatever reason, I discovered young-adult fiction other than Isaac and Janet Asimov's Norby and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys well after I started reading novels. (I think I actually started reading the Robots and Foundation series the year after I read those books - first or second grade, probably.)

A good juvenille novel, though, can be enjoyed at any age; Harry Potter is a signal example.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Therin--Thanks for the historical background on how they got into the "young adult" section! And also the link to John Peel's site...I might well take you up on that one, because I really would love the answer to that one.

Idolislide--I didn't know anybody was still selling the SFA novels. When I browsed at Barnes and Noble recently, all I saw was Star Wars.

Ha, same here, Cicero--I was reading the adult novels and "YA" ones at the same time!

Of course, I only took the adult ones to school considering the grade I was in by the time we had required reading in class. I had this one teacher who was really cool, though, and you got to do some creative writing as a response to whatever you'd been reading. (A way of proving you'd read it, that annoyed the other students, but I loved.) I still have the two files from YEARS ago that I did from DS9 novels: in the first one the assignment was to make a character write a thank-you letter to another one. I had Glinn Berat from Betrayal write one to Sisko to thank him for helping him in spite of all the trouble he caused on-station. Something just stuck with me about that character for some reason! For another one I had to write a "controversial issue" letter-to-the-editor/author. Now, I wrote it because I HAD to come up with something, not because I really disagreed with the author, but I wrote this one that basically said Gul Mavek's death in Devil in the Sky may have been deserved, but the method constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Man, those were the days!

 

[JD]

I read all of the YA Star Trek books when they came out, well actually my parents read them to me originally, because I was still to young to read them myself, and I loved them all. I think they might even have been the first books chapter books I read myself. The only ones that have really stuck in my mind are the Peter David Worf books, and that's mostly because I like NF.

 

[LightningStorm]

Let me head off this thread with one of my favorite quotes ever...

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of being childish, and the desire to be very grown up." --C.S. Lewis​

Wow. I have heard this quote many times before, however apparently only part of it:

"When I became a man, I put away childish things"

This of course GREATLY changes the overall message. So thank you for bringing that gross injustice to quoting to my attention. I much more prefer the original to the apparently bastardized shortening of it.

 

[Rush Limborg]

I have David's Worf's First Adventure. I LOVED it!

I don't care what anyone says. David is one of the BEST Trek writers EVER!

And I'm all too aware of David's style of humor. It is EXCELLENT. So David doesn't take the characters with 100% seriousness. So what? At least in his books, the characters know how to lighten up--and laugh at themselves!

Take this exchange from Strike Zone. The context is that the average Klingon hides a dozen knives in his uniform:

Picard: Mr. Worf, you don't have twelve knives about your person, do you?

Worf: Of course not, sir.

Picard: Good. (Long pause, then...) How many knives do you have?

Worf: Fourteen.

Klingon Ambassador: Fourteen knives? In a uniform not designed for concealment? Very impressive!

Worf: Everything about me... is impressive....

Picard:

 

[Christopher]

Let me head off this thread with one of my favorite quotes ever...

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of being childish, and the desire to be very grown up." --C.S. Lewis​

Wow. I have heard this quote many times before, however apparently only part of it:

"When I became a man, I put away childish things"

This of course GREATLY changes the overall message. So thank you for bringing that gross injustice to quoting to my attention. I much more prefer the original to the apparently bastardized shortening of it.

No, the original quote is from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." C. S. Lewis was doing a fakeout there -- beginning with a familiar Biblical quote that meant one thing, then surprising the reader by saying something different that reversed and critiqued the original sentiment.

 

[Rush Limborg]

C. S. Lewis was doing a fakeout there -- beginning with a familiar Biblical quote that meant one thing, then surprising the reader by saying something different.

Ah, that Lewis. Great writer, great sense of humor.

Come to think of it, his Narnia books kinda raised the standard for "young adult" fiction, didn't they?

 

[Turtletrekker]

Sadly, at the time, I just couldn't make room in my budget for the YA fiction. I have read the PAD books with Worf, and recently found two of the DS9 Jake/Nog books, which I enjoyed, but otherwise this is all unknown territory to me.

 

[LightningStorm]

Let me head off this thread with one of my favorite quotes ever...

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of being childish, and the desire to be very grown up." --C.S. Lewis​

Wow. I have heard this quote many times before, however apparently only part of it:

"When I became a man, I put away childish things"

This of course GREATLY changes the overall message. So thank you for bringing that gross injustice to quoting to my attention. I much more prefer the original to the apparently bastardized shortening of it.

No, the original quote is from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." C. S. Lewis was doing a fakeout there -- beginning with a familiar Biblical quote that meant one thing, then surprising the reader by saying something different that reversed and critiqued the original sentiment.

Interesting. I see.
C. S. Lewis's version is still better IMO.

And Thanks to you too for clearing that up.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

No, the original quote is from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." C. S. Lewis was doing a fakeout there -- beginning with a familiar Biblical quote that meant one thing, then surprising the reader by saying something different that reversed and critiqued the original sentiment.

I'm not sure it critiqued the original sentiment so much as the way it's commonly used to squelch fun. Part of growing up is also putting aside the fear of what others will think of you.

And Rush--my comments about the New Frontier series aside, I DID like Peter David's YA work a lot.