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Upcoming Publications: December 2009/January 2010

Rosalind

Rosalind

TrekLit's Dr Rose Mod
Admiral
Wow, is it December already? What happened to the first decade of the 21st Century?

December 2009
------------

Star Trek: Vanguard
  • Precipice
    (Mass paperback) by David Mack
    ISBN-10: 1439130116


January 2010
------------

Star Trek: Mirror Universe


Note: This list is subject to change.
Note2: For September-November publications, see next post
 
September 2009
------------

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine


October 2009
------------

Star Trek: Enterprise
  • The Romulan War
    (Trade paperback) by Michael A. Martin
    ISBN-10: 143910798X

Star Trek: Voyager
  • Unworthy
    (Mass paperback) by Kirsten Beyer
    ISBN-10: 1439123489


November 2009
------------

Star Trek: Titan
  • Synthesis
    (Mass paperback) by James Swallow
    ISBN-10: 1439109141

Star Trek
  • The Art of the Film
    (large format hardcover) by Mark Cotta Vaz, and a foreword by JJ Abrams (Titan)
    ISBN-13: 9781848566200
 
Rosalind said:
Wow, is it December already? What happened to the first decade of the 21st Century?
Click to expand...

It's got a year left to go. Since a decade has ten years in it, the decade isn't over until the end of its tenth year (which would be 2010).

Unless, of course, you think the last century/millennium ended at midnight on December 31, 1999.... :p
 
^A calendar has no objective reality to it; it's merely a cultural construct, and when its subdivisions begin or end is thus a matter of cultural consensus. Billions of people commemorated January 1, 2000 as the beginning of the new millennium (and thus its first decade as well). It was a huge worldwide event, at least in every place that uses the Gregorian calendar. No such vast celebration accompanied January 1, 2001. The consensus of the global culture is clear: the Millennium was nearly ten years ago, not nearly nine. Its first decade ends within four weeks.

And the whole "The calendar didn't begin on the year 0" argument doesn't wash because it didn't begin on the year 1 either. The Anno Domini system was devised in the year we now call AD 525; its start date was chosen based on a miscalculation of the birth year of Jesus Christ (the Biblical references place Christ's birth anywhere from 4 BC to 18 BC as we reckon it today). There never was a real "beginning" for our calendar, so it's spurious to try to define the beginning of a decade by reference to a totally imaginary event.
 
^I can't remember where I read it, as it was years ago now, but I believe that one of the prevailing theories with some juice states that it is believed that this Christ fellow was born in September of 9 BCE. The star in the sky is believed to be a comet that went by around this time and was visible from the area, and a census, according to some (Roman?) record that I can't quote as my memory fails me, did take place in the area around that time as well. Which would actually turn 2009 into 2018. As Christopher stated, it is believed the birth happened anywhere between 4BC and 18BC which would mean that 2009 could actually be anywhere from 2027 to 2013. Just not 2009. Funny, eh?

Either way, it still all sounds rather far fetched to me. A magical carpenter born in a trough of horse shit who was sent to save the world? At the time, would have you followed?
 
This may not be literally 2009 years since the birth of Christ, but it is 2009 AD or CE. The calendar we use isn't actually based on the birth of Christ, it's just based on a set of arbitrary calculations and conclusions of someone who lived 1500 years ago and established our calendrical conventions. It doesn't matter whether or not something happened 2009 years ago, not in terms of the dating scheme we use today. All that matters is that the scheme is commonly accepted and used within our culture, that it provides a common reference point we can use to communicate temporal information to one another in the here and now.

And any theory to explain the Star of Bethlehem as a real astronomical phenomenon is spurious both as science and as Biblical interpretation. The text describes a star that hovered in place above Bethlehem for days. The only thing that could possibly do that in a literal sense is a geosynchronous satellite; in fact, it would have to be a powered craft maintaining a forced orbit, because Bethlehem is well north of the equator. Either that or an aerostat keeping station in the upper atmosphere. If we discount the idea that it was an alien vessel, that leaves only two possibilities: a complete myth, or a genuine miracle. If one believes in divine phenomena, I see no reason not to go all the way and just accept the Star of Bethlehem as an act of God. And if one believes that Biblical phenomena must have more mundane explanations, I see no reason not to go all the way and just call it a myth. The Bible was written in a time when storytelling was expected to be symbolic and allegorical rather than journalistically precise; thus the story of the Star would not reflect actual accounts of the time but simply a literary device to convey the message that Jesus' birth was a cosmically significant event.
 
It's funny - somehow I knew, when I wrote that post, that Christopher would come along and explain that I'd gotten it all wrong... :p
 
ClayinCA said:
It's funny - somehow I knew, when I wrote that post, that Christopher would come along and explain that I'd gotten it all wrong... :p
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For what it's worth, I agree with you, ClayinCA. Not for religious reasons, but because when the calendar was invented, they didn't use zero. The calendar goes from -1 to +1. Therefore at the start of the year 2000CE, it has been exactly 1,999 years since the official "start" of the calendar. That is, they're saying "This year is the two-thousandth year of the common era", not "We have completed two thousand years of the common era".

Taking clocks (and 24hr time) as a counterexample, if you were to use the same method, the first minute of the day would be "0101" not "0000", that is it would be "The first minute of the first hour". We would use "0160" for "The sixtieth minute of the first hour", that is what is known as "0100" now.
 
^But why should the way people in the present day choose to define a decade be rigidly constrained by the decisions of some guy who lived 1500 years ago? I don't follow that logic, that slavish appeal to a long-dead authority. It's not like the calendar will somehow stop working if we fail to follow its original definitions with absolute precision. People have reformed the calendar multiple times since Dionysius Exiguus first made up his arbitrary definition of what constituted "the year 1." Dionysius' Anno Domini system was itself a reform of the existing Julian calendar, and it was reformed by others in subsequent centuries. For a long time, different countries started the year on different days -- some on January 1, some on Christmas Day, some on March 25 (the date of Jesus' Incarnation or conception), some on Easter, while Eastern Orthodox countries used March 1 for a time and then September 1. Then in 1582 the Gregorian calendar was introduced to reform the leap day, solstice, and equinox calculation errors of the Julian calendar. Making the switch required jumping forward 11 days, the amount of the accumulated error. Different countries made the switch at different times over the centuries, with Eastern Orthodox countries generally not making the switch until the early 1900s. And to this day, we periodically add an extra second to the year to correct for the slowing of the Earth's rotation.

So the calendar is not an absolutely rigid system written into the physical laws of the universe. It never has been. It's a construct invented by humans for our own convenience, and we have reformed and reinterpreted it many times. So why shouldn't we have the right to decide when we want a decade to begin? Why should we act as though we're enslaved to the will of people who died fifteen centuries ago, especially when that contradicts what the vast majority of people today are actually going to do anyway? If New Year's Day 2000 proved anything, it's that the vast majority of the people who use the Gregorian calendar believe that a century or a decade begins on a year ending in 0 and ends on a year ending in 9. That's what most people are going to live by, regardless of whatever historical arguments you can make. And that renders those arguments as little more than sophistry, because they're not going to change what people actually do.
 
Piper said:
Anyway..... those upcoming publications, eh? They sure look swell. :techman:
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Yes. Getting back on topic (thanks Piper for the subtle reminder), is there any good website for finding out the forthcoming schedule as much as it is known?

ETA: (Christopher: Fine, let's just agree to disagree on this one. ;))
 
Thanks both of you! :)

(Perhaps the links need to be added to the FAQ? I know we *did* have links to a few places a while back, but PsiPhi stopped being updated.)
 
Regarding the upcoming Sorrows of Empire, I read in one place that it is a revised and extended version from one place and that it is simply a reprint of the previous story from another. Does anyone know which one it is? I like to find out before ordering it on Amazon so I don't waste my money if it is just a reprint.
 
It's an extended version of the story by the same name in one of the Mirror Universe anthologies, Glass Empires.
 
^ Confirmed. It is a much-extended new edition, more than twice the length of the original. In addition, I have tweaked and polished up some of the original material to make the new edition read as consistently as possible from start to finish.
 
Just supplementing what David says with something he said in an interview with Unreality SF earlier this month:

The fact that the novel is an expansion of an existing story might lead to scepticism amongst readers as to whether the new version is worth buying. What, in David’s opinion, makes the new Sorrows a worthwhile read? “The first reason is that the new novel is more than twice the length of the original, clocking in at around 92,000 words.” But quantity isn’t everything, so David has made sure to improve the existing material, too. “In the course of adding new material, mostly in the form of new chapters, I have also taken the opportunity to streamline much of the original work. In some cases this was done to mesh old and new material; in other cases I was addressing stylistic issues, tweaking my word choices, or otherwise applying the lessons I have learned in the last few years since I wrote the original.”

The expansion has also given him the chance to explore some plot elements and characters which were sidelined in the short novel in more depth. “I’ve plumbed deeper into characters other than Spock,” he reveals, “and I’ve detailed at least one event from each of the 28 years spanned by the story. Marlena’s point of view is given greater examination, and I’ve worked to better integrate the characters who previously had made only cameos - in particular, Saavik and, to a lesser degree, T’Prynn from the Vanguard series.”
Click to expand...
 
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