As I recall, it was Resistance where he claimed never to have met her, when in fact he did so in the previous novel Death in Winter. But if he said that in Before Dishonor as well, that would be doubly embarrassing...
"That book never happened!"
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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As I recall, it was Resistance where he claimed never to have met her, when in fact he did so in the previous novel Death in Winter. But if he said that in Before Dishonor as well, that would be doubly embarrassing...
Is it really too much to ask? I mean he gets paid for it, right?
I assume the
We've also had examples where books were written for different editors, and accidental overwriting of factoids have resulted, eg. the sex of Alyssa Ogawa's only offspring.
Yeah, I was half joking. But I do admire people who are passionate about their job and pay attention to detail. Worst case would probably be an editor who has no knowledge of Trek at all and who also has no intentions of expanding his knowledge.
The thing about editing (and proofreading)- and I have held that position, both as an amateur and an inexperienced editor, who ended up in a pro position (and being paid at a teacher's rate, which at the time was a lot more than most pro literary editors I met at the time):
because the readership never sees the original manuscript, they can only judge an editor's contribution to the work by the final product. Nor do the readers know how much time is left between receipt of the manuscript and the printing deadline. Neither do we see the galley proofs. A manuscript might come in early and require 400 changes, and three get missed. A different manuscript might come in extremely late, but require only 80 minor changes, but ten get missed in the shuffle. Which manuscript required the most of what you will judge as the editor's "attention to detail"?
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You can be passionate about your job, have meticulous attention to detail, and be as diligent as humanly possible, but still let the occasional mistake slip through because there's just so much to keep track of and only so much time to spare for any single project.
One also has to keep a sense of perspective. Personally, I'll make an effort not to contradict any recent Trek books that might have touched on the same subject matter. But am I going to throw out a good idea because it contradicts, say, three lines in an old Bantam paperback published thirty years ago? Probably not.
There's a sliding scale here in which some inconsistencies are not worth losing sleep over . . .
When I wrote my Khan books, I went back and reread Vonda McIntyre's novelization of The Wrath of Khan, and lifted a few ideas from it, but I didn't feel obliged to be 100% consistent with a movie novelization published umpteen years ago. I had my own version of Khan's story to tell.
Just as the recent IDW Khan comics weren't obliged to treat my books as gospel . . . nor should they have been.
There's a sliding scale here in which some inconsistencies are not worth losing sleep over . . .
When I wrote my Khan books, I went back and reread Vonda McIntyre's novelization of The Wrath of Khan, and lifted a few ideas from it, but I didn't feel obliged to be 100% consistent with a movie novelization published umpteen years ago. I had my own version of Khan's story to tell.
Just as the recent IDW Khan comics weren't obliged to treat my books as gospel . . . nor should they have been.
And, I hate to say this, but it's irrational to get so worked up about something that's not even real. It's just fiction and should be enjoyed for what it is. The authors and editors work their hardest to provide us with novels for entertainment... not history texts. Just read and enjoy. None of it actually ever happened or will happen anyway. 
Yeah, that's interesting, but I much prefer Leslie Fish's exploration of andorian culture/society/etc. myself: http://andorfiles.blogspot.com/2009/09/summary-of-physiological-roots-of.html
Well, you realise Pocket Books was not able to use the material, but this article by Leslie Fish certainly seemed to "set" a lot of fannish/fanon thinking about the Andorians in the 70s. This material predated even Ballantine's "Star Trek Starfleet Medical Reference Manual", IIRC.
^^^
I do realize that, of course. However it does not change my opinion of the matter whatsoever. Official Trek is free to do what they will, but in my head andorians are the way Ms. Fish described them.
Also: Trip tucker did die as seen on-screen; Saavik was never half-Romulan; and female Starfleet personnel are never addressed as "sir" because, well because that's just silly.
Your milage may vary.
I do realize that, of course. However it does not change my opinion of the matter whatsoever. Official Trek is free to do what they will, but in my head andorians are the way Ms. Fish described them.
Also: Trip tucker did die as seen on-screen; Saavik was never half-Romulan; and female Starfleet personnel are never addressed as "sir" because, well because that's just silly.
Your milage may vary.
Well, not to question your right to believe he's dead, but technically we didn't actually see him die onscreen. We saw the still-living Trip being slid into the imaging chamber, and then we saw a scene with Archer and T'Pol talking about Trip being dead. The actual moment of death was never shown (probably because the producers wanted to hedge their bets just in case of a miraculous fifth-season renewal).
That's been used multiple times in canon. And depending on how you parse the etymology, it's not that silly. It's true that "sir" is a shortening of "sire," the term for a male parent or authority figure; but conversely, "sire" is derived from Latin senior, meaning an elder regardless of sex. So one could argue that the gender-specific quality of the word is a cultural imposition rather than something intrinsic to the word itself. Or at least that if the word's ancestry went from gender-neutral to masculine, there's no reason it can't go back the other way.
You probably know this too, but that one wasn't a novel invention either; it was cut from Wrath of Khan but stayed in the novelization. So while it became a TrekLit thing, it wasn't really a TrekLit invention.
Here's the deleted scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rKw66EU5Fc
Andorians were describes as having four genders on-screen though...
No, as already discussed up-thread, the on-screen dialogue only said that andorian marriages required four people. Said nothing about the gender(s) of those invloved.
It was never said canonically that Saavik of ST III and IV was a full Vulcan either.
A lot of things weren't said; doesn't turn Saavik into a Romulan or the model in Sisko's office into a Daedalus-class ship, though.
LOL. Canonically, it was never said that she is not Spock's daughter, so technically...
It's funny that you were earlier bemoaning the fact that people have come to expect character death to be temporary and you're areguing in favour of it here.
I can understand hedging their bets on a 5th season and the novelists taking advantage of the loophole that existed but it's still a character we were led to belive was dead and actually isn't. The "no body" rule is one that has caused all sorts of miraculous escapes from the reaper.
On purpose. To encourage speculation. When the character of Saavik was first announced, fans were already speculating such possibilities, esp. the the female Romulan Commander from "The Enterprise Incident" and Spock had somehow produced an offspring.
As MargaretClark explained her choice at the time, what interpretation of Trip's fate gives the ENT novel line the maximum, interesting story possibilities?
There was also no indication that the writers were planning to write out the Trip character and break the actor's five-year-contract. There was no request to break contract (Yar, during Season 1; Wesley mid Season 4), friction with the actor (Crusher, absent Season 2 TNG), no reunion telemovie (Pulaski, absent Season 3, TNG), no pay dispute (Jadzia, absent Season 7 DS9), no character arc dissatisfaction (Kes, absent most of Season 4, VOY). Admittedly, the ENT episode was a concept that was floating around as a "just in case" script. Remember this episode was, at one time, meant to be a vehicle for Shatner (playing Chef) if negotiations had been successful.
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If I understood him correctly, Christopher's point in that other thread was not that resurrections are never a good idea or that one can't find ways to resurrect characters. His point was that it shouldn't be the default assumption.
There's no contradiction between saying that resurrection shouldn't be the default assumption and saying that sometimes it's justifiable.
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