Titan anthology?

[Epsilon IX]

Considering how we have had anthologies relating to the characters of New Frontier (No Limits), The Next Generation (The Sky's The Limit), S.C.E and anthologies set in alternate universes (such as Infinity's Prism to name one), I was wondering whether there would be one to do with the adventures and characters of the Starship Titan on the horizon?

If there were to be one, who do you think the stories should be about, and what should they be about?

To start us off I would avoid writing ones relating to Riker, Troi and Tuvok, since I think that they've been covered sufficiently, both on the box, as well as in the other spin-off novels, so I believe we've covered all we can without making it feel rather dragged-out, and like flogging a dead horse. I also feel that Alyssa Ogawa would not be strong enough to carry her own story, simply because I don't find her sufficiently interesting. This is just my opinion of course, and chances are there will be those amongst you, possibly the authors, who may disagree.

I would therefore choose characters who were introduced in the Titan novels or slightly before (eg. in the A Time To series), and would concern their lives prior to joining the Titan crew, and possibly what happened to them that motivated them to join Starfleet, or Titan over any other ship or installation.

My choices would therefore be Christine Vale, Ranul Keru, Dr. Xin Ra-Havreii, Jaza Najem, Melora Pazlar, Dr. Ree and Aili Lavena (ie. the other primary characters). I think that all these characters are strong enough to carry their own story, and this would be a good opportunity to flesh them out a bit more with a backstory, as well as to give a bit more insight into the culture and beliefs of some of their societies, which in some cases needs to be fleshed out more.

If we were to include secondary characters, my choices would be Bralik, Torvig and Dakal.

What's everyone else's opinion?

 

[Christopher]

It wouldn't make sense to exclude the lead characters from a Titan anthology, since those characters would be the main draws for a lot of the potential buyers out there. This is a profit-making enterprise, after all. And Titan has always been an ensemble series, spreading the wealth around among its cast.

There really are no "secondary characters" in Titan. I daresay that Torvig has ended up being just as prominent as some of those you list as "primary." And Aili Lavena was certainly a "secondary" character until I chose to make her the focus of Over a Torrent Sea. There's nothing stopping a future novelist from doing the same for Dakal or Bralik or anyone else. In a TV cast, where actors have to be paid, there's a financial and logistical incentive to focus on a core cast of regulars and treat other characters as secondary, but there's no such pressure on TTN's authors, no requirement to favor some characters over others. Anyone could be a lead character if it suited the story the author wanted to tell.

Not to mention that you never know what kind of great ideas your writers might come up with for a given character. Prohibiting them from using certain characters could be cheating yourself out of an opportunity.

And saying that you don't think Ogawa can carry a story is the sort of thing a lot of writers would see as a challenge. Nothing like a story that proves its readers' preconceptions wrong.

As for setting, I'd rather have it be an actual Titan anthology, with the crew aboard that ship, rather than a set of prequel stories (or at least I'd like a mix of both, heavier on shipboard stories). For one thing, the prequel format has already been done with No Limits. For another thing, there are massive jumps in time between Orion's Hounds and Sword of Damocles (nearly 3 months), between SoD and Destiny (nearly 8 months), and between the prologue and first chapter of Over a Torrent Sea (2 months) -- over a year's worth of adventures that haven't been chronicled. I'd like to see those gaps filled in.

 

[Thrawn]

I would love something like this. The NF anthology was not the greatest, but I've highly enjoyed reading all the rest, especially Prophecy & Change. And Christopher is right; there's a TON of time to be filled in.

 

[TerraUnam]

Torvig is an interesting character, he fills the role of the imp who plays on other characters. In his case it's always benign, and more the fact that his foot often reaches his mouth, but he's proven to be entertaining and to me compelling.

Ogawa has son, Noah, so the possibilities there are right under her nose. Plus there's the whole Keru/Ogawa thing to fill in.

I'm not entirely sure where Ree is going, but it seems like the writers have plans for him after his escapade in OaTS.

 

[captcalhoun]

when did we get an SCE anthology? did i miss something?

 

[JD]

I would definitely be up for this. I could honestly see alot of the characters being able to carry their own story, even Ogawa. And we could still get plenty of background and development with stories set during the series, look at OATS, it was set entirely during the series and gave us tons of background and development of Aili. As for who I'd like to see, I'd be especially intersted in Bralik, Ree, Huilan, Chaka, Dakal, and Ogawa. Now I can understand not wanting to do the characters we've seen on the shows, but just because we saw them on the shows doesn't mean there aren't still intersting stories about them. I'm sorry, but IMO if you were gonna do a Titan anthology you'd really would need to stories on the Trois, and Tuvok, they're just to big a part of the series not to.

 

[Trent Roman]

As for setting, I'd rather have it be an actual Titan anthology, with the crew aboard that ship, rather than a set of prequel stories (or at least I'd like a mix of both, heavier on shipboard stories). For one thing, the prequel format has already been done with No Limits. For another thing, there are massive jumps in time between Orion's Hounds and Sword of Damocles (nearly 3 months), between SoD and Destiny (nearly 8 months), and between the prologue and first chapter of Over a Torrent Sea (2 months) -- over a year's worth of adventures that haven't been chronicled. I'd like to see those gaps filled in.

I'd buy that sight unseen.

when did we get an SCE anthology? did i miss something?

I assume he means the anthologies collecting the ebook novellas. Different breed of anthology, I know.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[DS9Continuing]

Yep, I'd buy it. I'd be especially interested in filling in the gaps - there were too many of those in my opinion.

But I still want comics aswell! Visual representations!

 

[Smiley]

While I'm up for new Titan stories in any form, it feels too early to be talking about an anthology. The DS9 and VOY anthologies came out on the 10th anniversaries of their respective series and took advantage of the missed opportunities of the TV shows. TNG and TOS took much longer to get their anthologies, and New Frontier had the honeymoon story and Peter David's name to help sell the book.

If I had to pick a new trade paperback to come out, it would be the next Romulan War story.

 

[Christopher]

While I'm up for new Titan stories in any form, it feels too early to be talking about an anthology.

On the other hand, we're getting the Vanguard: Declassified anthology, and VNG is a slightly younger series than TTN (by four months).

 

[Allyn Gibson]

What's everyone else's opinion?

Anthology, yes. Titan-specific? No.

The novels, event-driven as they are, are big, bold, epic stories. The routine missions, "Strange new worlds" stuff, that is 95% of Star Trek, are somewhat absent in the novels, largely because the typical kind of story isn't epic enough for a novel.

It is, however, epic enough for a short story.

I'd like to see an anthology called something like Star Trek: 2382 that tells the kind of "day in the life," "strange new worlds" stories that the television series did so well, but that don't really fit with the novels any more. Imagine an anthology of stories like Ezri leading an away mission, Troi dealing with a letter from Betazed, Picard attending an archaeological conference, things like that. Stories that aren't as big, stories that aren't as earth-shattering. Smaller scale stories.

That's what I'd do.

 

[Smiley]

On the other hand, we're getting the Vanguard: Declassified anthology, and VNG is a slightly younger series than TTN (by four months).

I was ignorant of this Vanguard anthology until now. I try to stay out of announcement threads to remain as unspoiled as possible about upcoming plots, and I thought that Declassified was just the name of the next novel. Congrats to all the authors lucky enough to get a slot in that collection.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Vanguard: Declassified will be a collection of four novellas, written by the folks who've already been doing the novels (Dave Mack, Marco Palmieri, Kevin Dilmore, and me). We just decided to shake things up a bit.

 

[Trent Roman]

Marco's writing? Has he written before?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Marco's writing? Has he written before?

He wrote a story for the Batman anthology, The Further Adventures of the Joker, about twenty years ago.

I had Marco autograph this at Shore Leave back in 2003, and his reaction was... amusing.

 

[Turtletrekker]

As for setting, I'd rather have it be an actual Titan anthology, with the crew aboard that ship, rather than a set of prequel stories (or at least I'd like a mix of both, heavier on shipboard stories). For one thing, the prequel format has already been done with No Limits. For another thing, there are massive jumps in time between Orion's Hounds and Sword of Damocles (nearly 3 months), between SoD and Destiny (nearly 8 months), and between the prologue and first chapter of Over a Torrent Sea (2 months) -- over a year's worth of adventures that haven't been chronicled. I'd like to see those gaps filled in.

I'd buy that sight unseen.

Me too. Include a Pava story and I'd buy two.

 

[elaithin]

I'd certainly buy it. I'd really want to see something like Mere Anarchy, though. (On a much shorter time scale, of course.)

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

As for setting, I'd rather have it be an actual Titan anthology, with the crew aboard that ship, rather than a set of prequel stories (or at least I'd like a mix of both, heavier on shipboard stories). For one thing, the prequel format has already been done with No Limits. For another thing, there are massive jumps in time between Orion's Hounds and Sword of Damocles (nearly 3 months), between SoD and Destiny (nearly 8 months), and between the prologue and first chapter of Over a Torrent Sea (2 months) -- over a year's worth of adventures that haven't been chronicled. I'd like to see those gaps filled in.

I'd buy that sight unseen.

Me too. Include a Pava story and I'd buy two.

Ditto - Pava was my favorite character in the Starfleet Academy comics and I was very excited when I learned that she was on Titan.