Spoilers DTI: Forgotten History by C. L. Bennett Review Thread

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by Sho, Apr 15, 2012.

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Rate Forgotten History.

  1. Outstanding

    58 vote(s)
    50.9%
  2. Above Average

    41 vote(s)
    36.0%
  3. Average

    10 vote(s)
    8.8%
  4. Below Average

    3 vote(s)
    2.6%
  5. Poor

    2 vote(s)
    1.8%
  1. CaptainDonovin

    CaptainDonovin Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Sadly we have real world versions of the silly party but not the sensible party.
     
  2. Yevetha

    Yevetha Commodore

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    Could somebody post a link to the excerpt?
     
  3. Sho

    Sho Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    ^ There's one in the first post of this thread. I always include them in my review threads.
     
  4. Yevetha

    Yevetha Commodore

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    Thanks.
     
  5. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Got it, read it, like it, more later.
     
  6. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I can't see it working as anything other than a Myriad Universes adventure, due to the ever-changing futures we've seen in Trek over the years. IIRC, in "Watching the Clock", there was doubt as to whether the 29th century and 31st century time cops represented different points along the same future, or two divergent ones.
     
  7. Reanok

    Reanok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I read the sample chapters of Forgotten History I plan on buying this book. I want to find out how Kirk and his crews play a role in this novel and the DTI agents as well.
     
  8. MatthiasRussell

    MatthiasRussell Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I wonder how many pages this thread will get up to before the book is actually released and what the amount of conversation says about the amount of anticipation for it.
     
  9. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^Well, rfmcdpei already said he's read it, so I'd say not quite two pages.
     
  10. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Keep in mind I read quite quickly--I got the book today. (Working at a bookstore has its charms.)

    First reaction? Silly as it sounds, I should watch TAS.
     
  11. Admiral_Young

    Admiral_Young Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    @King Daniel yet Jenna still continued to interact with the DTI agents of downtime. I'm positive that if Christopher came up with an idea or plot for an uptime book it would work as a novel length story, I'd take a short story though as well :)
     
  12. Yevetha

    Yevetha Commodore

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    When will the annotations be up?
     
  13. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I'm not sure whether you're saying you think your reaction would sound silly to us or that TAS sounds silly to you. If it's the latter, I'd say that TAS's silly ratio isn't substantially worse than that of TOS itself.


    I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to get around to them. Plus I like to hold off a bit, give people a chance to read and form their own reactions before I post spoiler notes.
     
  14. Yevetha

    Yevetha Commodore

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    The excerpt was huge.
     
  15. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    My reaction was the former. I've read quite a bit of Trek literature, and I've watched all five of the different live series, all four save Enterprise in their entirety. I haven't watched TAS before, though. I don't know why I haven't done it before.I should. One reason is because elements of TAS (excluding "Yesteryear") have made it into Trek TV canon, never mind Trek literature. Without providing spoilers, I can say that Forgotten History is the recent Trek novel that has the greatest amount of content derived from TAS. Watching TAS would provide some more background.
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Well, then, I've achieved what I was kind of trying to do. I think TAS is an underappreciated series, and since we're past the era when the studio licensing department expected us to tiptoe around TAS, I decided it was time to embrace it. (Although a large part of what motivated me was that I'd re-read Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek Log series shortly before I got the gig, so it was fresh in my mind.)


    It sounds to me like you meant to say few elements other than "Yesteryear" have made it in. There have been some subtle references in canon to things other than "Yesteryear." There is of course Kirk's middle name Tiberius, first established in TAS (as was Amanda's surname Grayson). The name of Kor's ship in "The Time Trap," Klothos, was made canonical in DS9. There have been several onscreen references to Edosian orchids or animals, based on Edos, Mr. Arex's homeworld according to behind-the-scenes material. And the felinoids in the UFP council chamber in ST IV were implicitly supposed to be Caitians (I gather). Also, Star Trek Remastered used the design of the cargo drones from "More Tribbles, More Troubles" as the basis for the Antares in "Charlie X" and the Woden in "The Ultimate Computer" as well as a background ship in "Court-martial."

    Probably. That Which Divides makes significant use of Arex and M'Ress, but I cast a rather wider net than that. And those two aren't in FH, so the two books kind of complement each other TAS-reference-wise.
     
  17. Sho

    Sho Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I've never watched TAS ...
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    The entire series is available for streaming on both StarTrek.com (for free) and Netflix (with a membership). At least it is in the US; I don't know about overseas. The whole series totals under 9 hours running time, so it doesn't require a huge investment of time.
     
  19. Sho

    Sho Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    StarTrek.com sadly doesn't stream to Germany, and Netflix isn't available at all.

    I'm actually somewhat curious as to why I've never watched it, though. After all, I've seen every other episode in the franchise at least three times (and that's definitely the low-low-lower bound ...). Maybe it never aired in Germany while I was growing up? Though that doesn't explain why I never sought it out later ...

    Ah well, maybe Forgotten History is the kick in the butt I needed. To stay on topic: Since Watching the Clock is the only 2011 release I read in 2011 (because I'm so far behind everyone in all the series, and the description made it seem fairly stand-alone initially) I'm really looking forward to reading this one, since it's likely to be also the only 2012 release I read in 2012. Basically, DTI is my lifeline to the TrekLit frontier right now.
     
  20. RPJOB

    RPJOB Commander Red Shirt

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    I'd be interested to see how Christopher could re-work the time flowing backwards, black stars on white space of The Counter Clock Incident. I would imagine the idea of the physics involved would drive the DTI science department mad. If I'm remembering TAS correctly this is the only episode to touch on any sort of time travel except for Yesteryear.