I heard it mentioned in another thread that the Corps of Engineers series has been canceled. I knew Vanguard was ending but I had not idea as to the Corps of Engineeers Why? Poor sales?
Well, first off, it ended four and a half years ago (though there are still a couple of trade paperbacks' worth of stories to be reprinted). And that's a factor in why it was cancelled. It was indeed a matter of sales. SCE/Corps of Engineers was perhaps a bit ahead of its time, an e-book series published before e-books really began to catch on the way they are lately. So readership was always low.
Well if the time of ebooks is now at hand, has anyone given a look at maybe starting the Corps of Engineers series back up again? I for one would love to see Stevens and Corsi, and the rest of the team. And as always... Vance Hawkins is my Hero! ala (Grand Designs - Failsafe by David Mack pp.390-392)
To me the SCE books captured the "spirit of exploration" far better than most written Star Trek adventures. Perhaps it was all the "archeological" type missions.
I do wonder why there hasn't been a attempt at a 'relaunch' of the series. (ANOTHER relaunch, I'll concede.) Put a SCE book under the Typhon Pact banner and jump the series to modern times?
I really loved Corps of Engineers. In a way it's perhaps the closest TrekLit has come to the feel of being another Star Trek television show: Due to the length restrictions, the storytelling had a very TV-like economical feeling to it, that is the strings-of-scenes nature was made more apparent because each scene absolutely had to advance the plot and get to its point quickly. At the same time, however, the characters and their arcs were handled really well, relationships growing and developing in satisfying and interesting ways from "week to week". Didn't hurt that, being a techy sort of person myself, I also enjoyed its procedural hook. Edit: BTW, I'm not saying that all TrekLit should be like that and sort of emulate the TV feel. Rather, it's very exciting to see Trek being treated to other styles of storytelling and employ their unique strengths. But it was fun all the same to also have something akin to a TV show going on.
I hope so. They have been doing some original e-books again, so I'm really starting to hope that there might be more CoE in the future.
Sadly there's no known schedule, and the last omnibuses they released were just gap fillers to compensate for pulling those NuTrek novels.
I also loved the SCE series. The evolution of the characters through deaths (I won't spoil here), the addition of crew, and the personal trials and tribulations of all made for some very memorable reading. With the exponentially growing popularity of eBook readers, it may well be time to relook at re-launching the series again. I know characters have moved on, but there are still lots of potential stories to tell from the da Vinci period.
Knight Templar, if you are interested KRAD talked about the entire S.C.E. series on his radio show. Here is a link: http://chronicrift.com/node/1599 Great insight into the series
^ My three part feature/interview Miracle Workers: Remembering S.C.E. with Keith R.A. DeCandido, David Mack, Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore for Unreality-SF.net from 2010 might be a nice companion piece for that: Part One Part Two Part Three
The problem with SCE is the price. S&S has priced it out of reality for the size of the stories. So no, it would not sell well now unless S&S priced it like it was before they went agency.
Did Scott Pearson also post this Publishers Weekly link here somewhere? Lots of people received e-Readers last Christmas, perhaps?
They did yes. Sony even had a sale on their T1 for only $99 for the Christmas season plus a trade-in that gave $50 from an old reader. And for Valentines season Sony had the sale again, no trade-in though. But look at the price of the individual SCE/CoE stories now that S&S is an agency publisher and they won't sell at those prices. S&S is charging $5.99 for the individual stories.
That's just ridiculous. Out of curiosity, I checked the prices on Amazon...they have SCE #1: Belly of the Beast selling for $5.99 like you said, right next to the Have Tech, Will Travel kindle edition that contains SCE #1-4 selling for...$5.99! Why would you sell an e-book for the same price as another e-book that contains the first e-book and three other stories?
Other of the omnibus editions (in eBook) are $13.99 & $16.99 and not all of the omnibus editions are eBooks. I think the last 2 or 3 are not. So the only way to get the stories as eBooks is to pay the ridiculous price being charged.
Agreed! The SCE ebooks cost nearly as much as a regular full-length novel. I'm more than willing to buy the e-books, but not at the price they are currently at. I was waiting around for the omnibus print editions to come out, but I feel I will be waiting forever.