New Alan Dean Foster Star Trek novel?

[Steve Roby]

From the GeekDad blog at Wired:

Me: I read on your website about a follow-up Star Trek novel you’ll be working on. Is there any more word on that?
ADF: I signed the contract, so that’s a go. At least the first step is a go. The second step is for Pocket Books and Paramount to approve the outline. They wanted an outline. Sometimes when I’m asked to do a book, I just get a book contract for two books or three books or whatever. Sometimes they’ll ask for a very brief synopsis of what the general idea is. Not even so much for the editor. The editors are generally satisfied at this point that I’m going to do what I say I’m going to do. But they have to present something to marketing so that marketing has something to promote from the get go. So marketing will want a description. It’s obviously different with a novelization where you have a film studio involved, sometimes somebody else, like in this case, Hasbro. They want to know what you’re going to do with their franchise. There is a lot more riding on it than just a book by me that’s going to be published. So I did a fairly extensive outline for the book which has the tentative title of “Star Trek: Refugees” which I can’t explain without giving anything away. I mean, I just signed the contract. But hopefully the outline will be approved since the book is due in October.

I wonder if they just scooped one of the big Shore Leave announcements...

 

[Allyn Gibson]

With that title, I wonder if it's a sequel to the film.

 

[Mysterion]

With that title, I wonder if it's a sequel to the film.

That'd be my first guess.

The prospect of a new ADF Trek novel is very welcome, IMO.

 

[JAG]

This sounds very interesting. Happy to see him back again.

 

[Thrawn]

I thought the novelization was pretty intensely useless, actually, so I'm not as happy about this, but I suppose we'll see. I haven't read any non-novelizations by ADF except his Star Wars one, The Approaching Storm I think, which was fairly awful.

I'd rather some of the old hands take a crack at nuTrek, especially Christopher.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I thought the novelization was pretty intensely useless, actually, so I'm not as happy about this, but I suppose we'll see. I haven't read any non-novelizations by ADF except his Star Wars one, The Approaching Storm I think, which was fairly awful.

I'd rather some of the old hands take a crack at nuTrek, especially Christopher.

Waste a precious Christopher Bennett book slot on the new continuity when he could have been working on the Prime continuity? The Deranged Nasat froths and rages at the suggestion.

 

[William Leisner]

I'd rather some of the old hands take a crack at nuTrek, especially Christopher.

Hold on... Not Foster, but Bennett... because Bennett is an "old hand"??

Dude. If you want an "old hand," you go with DeCandido! You go with Ward! Guys who have been at this tie-in game since the 1990s!! I mean, come on...

 

[Thrawn]

I'd rather some of the old hands take a crack at nuTrek, especially Christopher.

Hold on... Not Foster, but Bennett... because Bennett is an "old hand"??

Dude. If you want an "old hand," you go with DeCandido! You go with Ward! Guys who have been at this tie-in game since the 1990s!! I mean, come on...

Sorry, I phrased that badly, I'm well aware of how long ADF has been at this game

I meant one of the authors that has already shown a proven ability to deepen characterizations and flesh out continuity, both of which I think are necessary following the film. ADF did neither of those things in his novelization, and CLB's Ex Machina is basically the poster child for how to do them right.

 

[Stevil2001]

All joking aside, if there's any "current" author who I'd like to see tackle nuTrek, it would be Ward & Dilmore. Those two are obviously jonesing to write a proper 5YM-era novel, and yet no one's ever let them do it. (I guess this wouldn't be it, either, but it would be plenty close.)

 

[Steve Roby]

I meant one of the authors that has already shown a proven ability to deepen characterizations and flesh out continuity, both of which I think are necessary following the film. ADF did neither of those things in his novelization, and CLB's Ex Machina is basically the poster child for how to do them right.

And yet he did a lot of that stuff in the Logs books, when he had time to actually do so. (I say that as someone who thought the movie novelization read like a rush job and was one of the less satisfying Trek movie adaptations.) He'll have more time to write Refugees than he had to wrote the novelization, so it's not really fair to base on any assumptions about the former on the latter.

 

[Mysterion]

I thought the novelization was pretty intensely useless, actually, so I'm not as happy about this, but I suppose we'll see. I haven't read any non-novelizations by ADF except his Star Wars one, The Approaching Storm I think, which was fairly awful.

I've enjoyed his non-Media-Based work. His Humanx Commonwealth stories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanx_Commonwealth) are a lot of fun and worth a look if you've not read them.

As for Foster on Trek: I really liked the way he fleshed-out the TAS stories in his Log series back in the '70s. I'm hoping he'll write more than one book in the nuTrek continuity and flesh-out these versions of the characters the same way.

 

[DarkHorizon]

ADF: I signed the contract, so that’s a go. At least the first step is a go. The second step is for Pocket Books and Paramount to approve the outline. They wanted an outline. [...] So I did a fairly extensive outline for the book which has the tentative title of “Star Trek: Refugees” which I can’t explain without giving anything away. I mean, I just signed the contract. But hopefully the outline will be approved since the book is due in October.

Such a short lead time does not exactly fill me with confidence - three months is not much longer than what he had for the novelization, and I wasn't particularly impressed by that...

I imagine this would either be out concurrent with the DVD release, or maybe Christmas.

 

[Stevil2001]

Speaking of the Logs, I'm launching a campaign to bring back the wily Commander Kumara right here, right now!

 

[Mysterion]

Speaking of the Logs, I'm launching a campaign to bring back the wily Commander Kumara right here, right now!

Did you noticed that Kumarra got name-checked in the movie novelization?

EDit to Add: Whoops, mis-remembered that. It's another familiar Klingon name that gets mention, not Kumarra. Sorry.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Speaking of the Logs, I'm launching a campaign to bring back the wily Commander Kumara right here, right now!

I'm sure he'd only be Lieutenant Kumara at the timeframe of the film.

Assuming, of course, that Refugees is set in the new film's continuity.

 

[Christopher]

All joking aside, if there's any "current" author who I'd like to see tackle nuTrek, it would be Ward & Dilmore. Those two are obviously jonesing to write a proper 5YM-era novel, and yet no one's ever let them do it. (I guess this wouldn't be it, either, but it would be plenty close.)

I'd love to see what Dayton & Kevin could do with a Kelvin novel.

Assuming, of course, that Refugees is set in the new film's continuity.

Foster calls it "the sequel book to the STAR TREK movie" on his site.


And Thrawn, I appreciate the vote of confidence.

 

[William Leisner]

Sorry, I phrased that badly, I'm well aware of how long ADF has been at this game

All right then.

I meant one of the authors that has already shown a proven ability to deepen characterizations and flesh out continuity, both of which I think are necessary following the film. ADF did neither of those things in his novelization, and CLB's Ex Machina is basically the poster child for how to do them right.

Well, that's not really a fair comparison, given that Ex Machina was, IIRC, a longtime dream project of Christopher's, written more than two decades after TMP was released. And, needless to say, ExM was Christopher's own, not an adaptation of someone else's story.

Such a short lead time does not exactly fill me with confidence - three months is not much longer than what he had for the novelization, and I wasn't particularly impressed by that...

Three months for the actual writing, following however much time already spent developing the actual story and outline.

 

[Ronald Held]

I would rather keep the current writers on Prime novels, and leave ADF to the movie adaptations.
I do wonder what the Vanguard storyline might be in that universe...

 

[Mysterion]

I would rather keep the current writers on Prime novels, and leave ADF to the movie adaptations.
I do wonder what the Vanguard storyline might be in that universe...

I'd like to see ADF do both nuTrek and "mainstream" Trek. Anything TOS-related, definitely, but I'd be interested to see what he might do with the other incarnations of Trek.

 

[JD]

Trekmovie has an article up about this, and they do confirm that it is both a nuTrek sequel novel, and it is also one of the big announcements for Shore Leave.