your favorite standalone novel?

[Tirius]

I actually had problems finding stuff that qualifies as stand-alone. So much is serialized these days...

TOS: none that comes to mind, this is by far my smallest shelf. And it's dusty.
TNG: Dominion War duology by John Vornholt (standalone story, if split over 2 books)
DS9: A Stitch in Time by Andrew Robinson
VGR: Pathways by Jeri Taylor
ENT: A Choice of Futures by Christopher L. Bennett * (I guess this qualifies as standalone until the next one is due)

... and of the novelverse series:

NFR: Once Burned by Peter David
KE: Diplomatic Implausibility, by KRAD
and if any part of Titan can be qualified as standalone: Orion's Hounds, by Christopher again.

I'm reasonably sure SCE and Vanguard don't really qualify for the list, or if TLE does, so I'm leaving it at this.

 

[trampledamage]

Memory Prime, I think for me. I need to dig it out of the basement and read it again - hey, Christmas hols are coming up, perfect time to lose myself in Classic Trek novels again...

 

[Smitty]

I actually had problems finding stuff that qualifies as stand-alone. So much is serialized these days....

Agreed, which why figured I would ask, trolling for ideas I guess.
I love the series but they take longer to get into and finish.

 

[ronny]

TOS - Prime Directive or Federation - There are quite a few stand alone TOS books I like.

TNG - Vedetta, Q-in-Law, Dark Mirror - Really want to put Imzadi here but it's got a sequel.

DS9 - Fallen Heroes or A Stitch in Time - I think ASiT was written as a stand alone even though it fits in with DS9R

ENT - Rosetta - Not many options and nothing else is close. Last Full Measure is second but not sure if that counts as a stand alone. If you remove the wrapper and focus on the novel then yeah.

VOY - nothing is really coming to me. Only Voyager books I've liked are Beyer and those are part of the main series but I haven't read most of the old numbered books. Maybe the Greg Cox book is good, he usually is.

 

[BobtheGunslinge]

The Final Reflection, hands down.

Same here. I've read about 100 or so (have about 90 of them, in a box somewhere) since the early 80s and this is the only one for which I recall the title instantly and remember in any great detail (and I read it when it was first published). One of my biggest disappointments about Klingons on-screen after this book came out is how different (and inferior, to me) they have been compared to those in this book.

Do you mind going into more detail? I'm trying to understand why this was such a popular book for so many.

I read it a few years ago and I found it totally forgettable. I mean, I kind of remember an Ender's Game scene in the beginning, and Klin-zha as a chess game/game of thrones kind of metaphor and something about Klingons having transporters before the Federation, but I just don't see the greatness. What made The Final Reflection so meaningful?

 

[Slyvon]

I haven't nearly as much as some of you but some of the standalone novels that come to mind:

Articles of the Federation
Rising Son
The Battle of Betazed
Vendetta
Dark Mirror

 

[Therin of Andor]

Very solid standalones for me: "The Entropy Effect", "Strangers from the Sky", "Uhura's Song" and "Ex Machina", plus "TNG: Metamorphosis", "TNG: Vendetta", "DS9: Fallen Heroes", "Captain's Table: NF: Once Burned", "Captain's Table: VOY: Fire Ship" and "DS9: Rising Son"!

 

[Trek Survivor]

Lots of the earlier TNG novels rank very highly for me, in no particular order:

#23 War Drums
#28 Here There Be Dragons
#07 Masks
#09 A Call To Darkness
Reunion
Q-Squared
Dark Mirror
Imzadi

Michael Jan Friedman and John Vornholt are my favourite Trek authors (I only really read TNG; have tried others, but not enjoyed them so much).

 

[Christopher]

Really want to put Imzadi here but it's got a sequel.

Several of the other cited "standalones" in the thread so far have sequels as well, so go ahead.

 

[Starbreaker]

TNG: Q-Squared
VOY: Fire Ship

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

The Final Reflection, hands down.

Same here. I've read about 100 or so (have about 90 of them, in a box somewhere) since the early 80s and this is the only one for which I recall the title instantly and remember in any great detail (and I read it when it was first published). One of my biggest disappointments about Klingons on-screen after this book came out is how different (and inferior, to me) they have been compared to those in this book.

Do you mind going into more detail? I'm trying to understand why this was such a popular book for so many.

I read it a few years ago and I found it totally forgettable. I mean, I kind of remember an Ender's Game scene in the beginning, and Klin-zha as a chess game/game of thrones kind of metaphor and something about Klingons having transporters before the Federation, but I just don't see the greatness. What made The Final Reflection so meaningful?

Speaking only for myself (although I think there are others here who probably agree), The Final Reflection was the first attempt to explore in-depth an alien race that hadn't been very fleshed out on screen. When it was published, we'd only seen Klingons in TOS, TAS, and very briefly in ST:TMP. So it presented a very different view of Klingon society than what we later saw on TNG and DS9.

It also did something very characteristic of Star Trek -- took a race that up until then had been seen as villains, and showed a sympathetic view of their side of the conflict with the Federation. And it was set about 40 years prior to TOS, and so gave us the first glimpse of a different time period in Trek history.

I do remember that when the book first came out I found it somewhat slow moving and hard to get into, but when I reread it a couple of different times several years later I really enjoyed it each time.

 

[JoeZhang]

Yeah, I love that book and a far more nuanced take on the klingons than anything we saw on the screen.

 

[Thrawn]

TOS: Ex Machina, Federation
Lost Era: Art of the Impossible, Serpents Among the Ruins, The Buried Age
TNG: Vendetta, Imzadi, Q-Squared
DS9: The Siege, The Lives of Dax
VOY: Captain's Table - Fire Ship
Myriad Universes: Places of Exile

I don't usually like standalones, but those are a few that stood out.

 

[JD]

TOS: Spock's World, Strangers from the Sky, The Chimes At Midnight, A Less Perfect Union
TNG: Immortal Coil, Imzadi (both of these have sequels/follow-ups now, but they were originally written as tandalones)
DS9: The Never Ending Sacrifice, A Stitch in Time,
Titan(although it's an ongoing series, the Titan book's individual stories are pretty good): Orion's Hounds , Sword of Damocles, Synthesis
VOY: Places of Exile
Myriad Universes: A Gutted World
Non Series Specific: Articles of the Federation

 

[Ovation]

Same here. I've read about 100 or so (have about 90 of them, in a box somewhere) since the early 80s and this is the only one for which I recall the title instantly and remember in any great detail (and I read it when it was first published). One of my biggest disappointments about Klingons on-screen after this book came out is how different (and inferior, to me) they have been compared to those in this book.

Do you mind going into more detail? I'm trying to understand why this was such a popular book for so many.

I read it a few years ago and I found it totally forgettable. I mean, I kind of remember an Ender's Game scene in the beginning, and Klin-zha as a chess game/game of thrones kind of metaphor and something about Klingons having transporters before the Federation, but I just don't see the greatness. What made The Final Reflection so meaningful?

Speaking only for myself (although I think there are others here who probably agree), The Final Reflection was the first attempt to explore in-depth an alien race that hadn't been very fleshed out on screen. When it was published, we'd only seen Klingons in TOS, TAS, and very briefly in ST:TMP. So it presented a very different view of Klingon society than what we later saw on TNG and DS9.

It also did something very characteristic of Star Trek -- took a race that up until then had been seen as villains, and showed a sympathetic view of their side of the conflict with the Federation. And it was set about 40 years prior to TOS, and so gave us the first glimpse of a different time period in Trek history.

I do remember that when the book first came out I found it somewhat slow moving and hard to get into, but when I reread it a couple of different times several years later I really enjoyed it each time.

It's been a long time since I've read it (and it is one of the very few Trek novels I've read more than once) but what appealed to me most was the idea that Klingons were a far more multi-faceted society than they'd been portrayed on-screen until then (and far more so in the book than their subsequent portrayals from TNG onwards). I also liked the way their short lifespans influenced their culture (something completely different than the century old Klingons we see in TNG era Trek).

 

[Jarvisimo]

^^ I love The Final Reflection too, and whilst I love some of TNG Klingons, that depiction in its variety, coldness and polyvalence was far more ... fascinating! TFR is, like many of the best of that era, such a piece of classic 80s science fiction. As a child I didn't get that period - it didn't match the tv - but now ... the variety and boundary-pushing make it fascinating.

More so, I love how it feels like a piece of 80s dystopian science fiction. A good analogue is Iain Banks - indeed it is akin, somewhat superficially in actual plot but thematically akin, to his 'The Player of Games' or other texts of that period. I mean the 70s/80s! Such a period!!!

 

[kirk55555]

I'll try to pick just a few per series

TOS:
The Vulcan Academy Murders
The Captain's Daughter
Bloodthirst

TNG:
Q-Squared
Rogue Saucer
I, Q
Reunion

VOY:
Haven't read enough

ENT: Haven't read any

DS9:
Fallen Heroes
The Lives of Dax

This isn't a great list of my favorite Trek books, obviously (even if they are multi part stories, its hard to keep out the Q-Continuum Trilogy and the Cold Equations Trilogy) but these are all memorable books that I enjoyed. I could have listed a lot more for TNG/TOS, but I tried to keep it to just a few books. I'd probably put more DS9 books, but I haven't gotten to read to many of the standalone ones from before the relaunch.

 

[BillJ]

I've never read The Final Reflection! Just ordered it for my Kindle.

 

[tomswift2002]

TOS: The Return
TNG: Survivors -great character story about a character who only appeared for one season.
TNG-SA: Capture The Flag - this is not your typical Trek conflict story, it's more of a sports book.
DS9: Warchild -really great Doctor Bashir story that sort of brings out a side of Bashir that we wouldn't see again till "The Fall", plus the ending has a really nice twist. Now, if only we could see the Navark in the post-DS9 stories.
VOY: The Escape -I read this book before I had seen any VOY episodes, and I was surprised at how close to the actual TV characters the characters in this book are.
ENT: I've got to give this to "By The a Book", although the Daedalus duology is really my favorite story (even the similarly titled episode pales to this duology). Again I read the book before I saw any episodes, and, unfortunately, unlike Voyager, the episodes were extremely lame and pointless compared to the books. The books I consider to be the "canon" for Enterprise (including the novelizations).; the TV episodes are apocrypha.

 

[Wadjda]

The Buried Age