The Past Decade of Trek Lit

[Mr Light]

I used to read Trek Lit like crazy ten years ago, but I stopped around 2002... so... what did I miss?

What were the best books? The biggest events? I'm mainly looking at DS9... TNG if it's really good. Based on my wikipedia scanning it looks like the DS9 Relaunch kind of petered out? I stopped reading at Mission Gamma which I just found completely uninteresting.

I'm reading "The Art of the Impossible" right now because I just went to a writers summit that Keith Decandido hosted and he mentioned it being his favorite work of his own. It's interesting so far.

When I was flicking around websites I saw there some kind of big Borg War? What books were those in? Was it a crossover between the shows? That sounds cool.

I don't know if anyone is still around from those days, but I was actually the moderator of this forum circa 2001

 

[DorkBoy [TM]]

You missed some good stuff.

The DS9R was great up until Unity. After that it kind of petered out. There were some really good individual books, but they also introduced a lot of storylines that didn't get followed up on (or took them years to follow up on). The books came out widely spaced, until Soul Key, which finally wrapped one of those storylines. Then they sort of skipped everything else and jumped DS9 ahead to the same time period as the other 24th century books, leaving a lot of stuff unexplained.

The Destiny trilogy was the big Borg crossover event. It was awesome, definitely the best thing to happen to Trek lit, maybe ever.

The Voyager relaunch has been very successful, and kind of grew out of Destiny.

Also, you should check out Vanguard. Its a TOS era series about a space station (sort of like DS9 but completely different), with a definite beginning and ending. It didn't just peter out like these things tend to. It was great from start to finish, but particularly the first 3 books. I'd describe it as great "hard" sci-fi that just happens to be set in the Star Trek universe.

Also, if you like DS9, there is a new author, Una McCormack, who is really good. She writes about the Cardassians. You should look up "The Never Ending Sacrifice" and read it. Its a DS9 book but it stands alone really well.

 

[KRAD]

Hey Derek! It was great to meet you in person yesterday, and glad you're reading The Art of the Impossible which, ten years later, I remain inordinately fond of.

 

[Defcon]

I used to read Trek Lit like crazy ten years ago, but I stopped around 2002... so... what did I miss?

This reading order chart by TrekBBs members Thrawn and 8of5 pretty much covers most of the 24th Century stuff that has been published since the novel continuity came to be. I think it's up-to- date until early this year, and according to the comments in the link above an update will most likely come when the current mini-series The Fall is completed.

In addition to that a whole lot of stand-alone TOS novels have also been published, especially in the last few years.

When I was flicking around websites I saw there some kind of big Borg War? What books were those in? Was it a crossover between the shows? That sounds cool.

That would be the Destiny trilogy, which indeed is a crossover between TNG, Titan, Enterprise, and

Spoiler: a DS9 crewmember

Ezri Dax as Captain of her own ship, the Aventine.

 

[Relayer1]

Yes, you've missed some great stuff - I'd drifted away from Treklit but I got drawn back into the relaunch (a bit late, with Destiny) and have been catching up.

It's a lot more dynamic universe now with real change and development taking place in the books. I'd recommend any of Keiths novels - I have a real fondness for Articles of the Federation and A Singular Destiny. Recently I've enjoyed the hell out of two trilogies - David Mack's Cold Equations novels and David R George's Rough Beasts of Empire/Plagues of Night/Raise the Dawn. Christopher L Bennett's stuff is very good too. Lots to enjoy...

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Past Decade of Trek Lit

Spoiler: Vague spoilers

People moved on. Shit happened. Big crossover. Some people died and stayed dead, while others died but got better. PTSD for all. There was a time skip of a few years on DS9, randomly dropping a bunch of plotlines. An assistant counselor became the captain of the Federation's most advanced ship. Vanguard reference. Blue people got cranky. A bunch of the non-Federation worlds teamed up. Spock made some progress. Something spindly unexpectedly blew up. Crazy space art leaves squillions dead. We're still waiting for that supernova.

 

[ryan123450]

That pretty much sums it up.

 

[Mr Light]

Nice to meet you too KRAD! That was a hell of a coincidence that you came to the very library where I live and where my ex works, or else I never would have known! When she showed me the flyer I flipped out!

I remember my favorite books from back in the day were 34th Rule and Stitch in Time, and continuity porn books like the Reeves-Stevens DS9 trilogy and of course the Shatnerverse books. Those were cinematic in a way that the tv shows and other books never were. I recall not being greatly enthused by the DS9 Relaunch books, though I applauded them moving the story forward in a different way.

Having read a few synopses I definitely want to check out the final "Time Of" book that directly leads into Nemesis! The other ones don't sound as interesting.

 

[Slyvon]

I'm fairly new to the Star Trek universe as well. Its a great time to be into the novels. The universe is going strong, with some really great series, and a talented group of writers. When I started reading I was amazed at how cohesive the universe was between books!

Just to throw out my own recommendation, Check out "Articles of the Federation." Not only a great Star Trek book, but one of the best novels I've read in a long time!

 

[Mr Light]

Ah yes I actually remember hearing about that back in the day, the West Wing political novel.

It's so weird to be reading a Star Trek novel. I basically haven't given Trek any thought in the past decade outside of the JJ films, yet I actually remember who Elias Vaughn and Tain were! I did have to look up Rachel Garrett though!

 

[Relayer1]

I should also mention Kirsten Beyer has worked wonders with the unloved Voyager relaunch, and Una McCormack's Never Ending Sacrifice - an unappealing idea for a novel featuring characters I barely remembered from the DS9 series. What a fantastic novel !

Her other books are pretty damned good too...

 

[Mr Light]

I really don't think I care enough about Voyager to read its relaunch. I think I read the first book back in the day.

 

[ryan123450]

The Beyer books make people who never loved Voyager see it in a whole new and much better way.

 

[Relayer1]

The Beyer Voyager novels are better than the earlier ones.

Hell, they're better than the TV show...

 

[JD]

Another couple of series I really enjoyed that no one has mentioned yet were the Mirror and Myriad Universe series. The Mirror Universe series is series of stories set in the Mirror Universe from TOS, DS9, and Ent. and it weaves it's own arc throughout the episodes and after them. It originally started with two collections of three novellas, one for each of the TV series and one for NF. These were Glass Empires and Obsidian Alliances. After that was short story collection, Shards and Shadows, which featured sequels to the stories from the first two collections and stories for the series not previously featured. This was then followed by an expansion of the TOS story from the Glass Empires, The Sorrows of Empire, into a full length novel. The storyline that had been building since the original TSoE was then concluded in Rise Like Lions. This is a great series, with the highlights being the two novels, which both absolutely amazing.
The Myriad Universes series was a series of 9 standalone novel released in three collections and a comic book miniseries. The collections were Infinity's Prism, Echoes and Refractions, and Shattered Light. The comic book miniseries is The Last Generation. I haven't read the comics, but the novels in the collections pretty much all range from good to amazing.
I'd highly recommend all of both series.

 

[DorkBoy [TM]]

Yeah, in my recommendation of the Voyager re-relaunch, I should have mentioned that I never cared much for Voyager either.

People who didn't care much for the show (or the earlier novels) are raving about it. That's about as strong a recommendation as you can get.

 

[Mr Light]

I really, really, really got sick of the Mirror Universe. I know I read a couple Mirror books circa 2000, I don't remember if I liked them or not.

 

[David Mack]

^ Those books were long before the current Treklit incarnation of the Mirror Universe. You might want to consider giving the new MU novels a look before you write them off.

By the same token, before you read Keith R.A. DeCandido's A Time for War, A Time for Peace, you might want to consider reading the two novels that immediately precede it in continuity — my own A Time to Kill and A Time to Heal.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Don't ask me; the last Star Trek book I read was Spock Must Die!

 

[JD]

I really, really, really got sick of the Mirror Universe. I know I read a couple Mirror books circa 2000, I don't remember if I liked them or not.

Like David Mack said, these were long after that. The first one, Glass Empires, came out in 2007. They also turned what started as a gimmicky concept into a huge, epic, great story.