There was also a graphic novel by Kevin J Anderson.
Charting the Novel-verse
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
- Start date
^But The Gorn Crisis was during the Dominion War, thus the Enterprise-E era, not the D. That's why I didn't mention it.
News: Star Trek Corps of Engineers is starting in Germany. Cross Cult posted the preliminary cover on their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/startrekromane
https://www.facebook.com/startrekromane
Has anyone here read the very first original Star Trek novel, Mission to Horatius? Is it compatible with modern novels?
Not in the slightest. It's not even compatible with the Star Trek episodes that existed at the time.
Plus, it was written for 8 year olds.
Bashir Trikona
Lieutenant Junior Grade
The last cover is epic.
So after perusing these forums for a few months, I've been *considering* getting back into trek novels. The last book I remember reading (which I'm sure isn't the last one I read, but it's the one that stuck with me) is SD Perry's Unity, which I remember thoroughly enjoying. Assume I haven't read anything post-that.
I see all these handy flow charts and lists and the like, and it looks to me like a lot of the numbered trek books I read when I was a kid (which I read TOS - VOY pretty religiously) aren't there. Is a distinction then made from earlier books to what's "canon" in the novelverse? It looks like a major undertaking to catch up with every series too, and that's more frightening by how much they interconnect. So what would suggestions be? I'd say in order of preference series wise I'd be into:
1. DS9
2. TOS
3. TNG
4. VOY
and I haven't even watched all of Enterprise yet so gonna hold off there. There seems to be a number of authors' own personal ships' crews as well? I remember when New Frontier came out, probably read the first 4 of those as well (and that crossed over with the Shatner penned books I think with a few characters?).
And next information wise my favorite books from the trek verse when I was younger were: Unity, Imzadi, My Enemy My Ally, Federation, The Captain's Daughter -- in no particular order there. Would appreciate recommendations!
I see all these handy flow charts and lists and the like, and it looks to me like a lot of the numbered trek books I read when I was a kid (which I read TOS - VOY pretty religiously) aren't there. Is a distinction then made from earlier books to what's "canon" in the novelverse? It looks like a major undertaking to catch up with every series too, and that's more frightening by how much they interconnect. So what would suggestions be? I'd say in order of preference series wise I'd be into:
1. DS9
2. TOS
3. TNG
4. VOY
and I haven't even watched all of Enterprise yet so gonna hold off there. There seems to be a number of authors' own personal ships' crews as well? I remember when New Frontier came out, probably read the first 4 of those as well (and that crossed over with the Shatner penned books I think with a few characters?).
And next information wise my favorite books from the trek verse when I was younger were: Unity, Imzadi, My Enemy My Ally, Federation, The Captain's Daughter -- in no particular order there. Would appreciate recommendations!
So, there isn't a hard distinction made between earlier books and current ones, it's more that after the TV shows started ending, the books had a wider set of possibilities to play in, and as the narrative became more serialized more authors kept - by choice - attaching their stories, until a pretty enormous interconnected continuity resulted.
It wasn't planned that way, or rather it wasn't all planned that way, but it kept being more fun for authors and readers when the stories connected. The flowchart makes no judgement as to quality - there are a lot of great novels not on there - those are just the books that inter-relate the most. Thankfully, the vast majority of the interconnected stores are remarkably great novels, on average I'd say vastly above the quality of the numbered novels.
If you love DS9, the place to start is the DS9 relaunch. Ignore basically everything that connects to it except possibly Mirror Universe if you're into that. The first 5 stories are collected in an omnibus titled Twist of Faith. That omnibus includes DS9 entries into two crossover miniseries - Section 31 and Gateways - but you really don't need (or probably want) to read the other entries in those miniseries. So when that all crosses over on the flowchart, don't let that scare you off. Just read from Avatar straight down to The Soul Key, and you'll have a blast.
After that, the usual recommendation is to skip the first 6 A Time To... novels (which ended up being pretty minor works) and start the big interconnected middle section with A Time To Kill. From there, read everything in the TNG / crossover / Titan columns below that. That's the heart of the ongoing continuity, especially the Destiny and Typhon Pact stories. (And Voyager, starting with Full Circle, is also incredibly good, perhaps the best novel series currently running. That comes from someone who didn't like the Voyager show at all; when/if you get there, you should really give it a shot. One winner after another.)
Alternately, since you say you're a TOS fan, if you're looking for a smaller time investment the Vanguard series takes place during TOS on a space station, and is just goddamn made of awesome. It's only 8 books and it's over, ended on purpose, and there's definitely something appealing about that.
It wasn't planned that way, or rather it wasn't all planned that way, but it kept being more fun for authors and readers when the stories connected. The flowchart makes no judgement as to quality - there are a lot of great novels not on there - those are just the books that inter-relate the most. Thankfully, the vast majority of the interconnected stores are remarkably great novels, on average I'd say vastly above the quality of the numbered novels.
If you love DS9, the place to start is the DS9 relaunch. Ignore basically everything that connects to it except possibly Mirror Universe if you're into that. The first 5 stories are collected in an omnibus titled Twist of Faith. That omnibus includes DS9 entries into two crossover miniseries - Section 31 and Gateways - but you really don't need (or probably want) to read the other entries in those miniseries. So when that all crosses over on the flowchart, don't let that scare you off. Just read from Avatar straight down to The Soul Key, and you'll have a blast.
After that, the usual recommendation is to skip the first 6 A Time To... novels (which ended up being pretty minor works) and start the big interconnected middle section with A Time To Kill. From there, read everything in the TNG / crossover / Titan columns below that. That's the heart of the ongoing continuity, especially the Destiny and Typhon Pact stories. (And Voyager, starting with Full Circle, is also incredibly good, perhaps the best novel series currently running. That comes from someone who didn't like the Voyager show at all; when/if you get there, you should really give it a shot. One winner after another.)
Alternately, since you say you're a TOS fan, if you're looking for a smaller time investment the Vanguard series takes place during TOS on a space station, and is just goddamn made of awesome. It's only 8 books and it's over, ended on purpose, and there's definitely something appealing about that.
I think the big difference between the numbered novels and the current books since the DS9 relaunch is that there has been a concentrated effort on the part of the Editor overseeing the Star Trek line to create both large stories that spanned multiple novels, and smaller stories that still had interconnected pieces between the novels. It's been a collaborative effort between the authors (again supported by the Editor of the trek line) to carry over details of plot and character growth between each other's work.
Well, there hasn't been just one editor in that time. Marco Palmieri may have done the most to establish the modern continuity, but he did so in collaboration with others including John Ordover, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Margaret Clark, Ed Schlesinger, and Jaime Costas. And of those, only Ed and Margaret are still involved with Trek editing.
So for the DS9 relaunch both Ryan's page and the flowchart list Avatar as being the beginning of it, though I went back through my books and saw a "Rising Son" by SD Perry as well, and I seem to remember they tie into each other. This is where things get a little confusing continuity wise! So I suppose if I were rereading Avatar to start, it sounds like skipping rereading Rising Son is doable (in order to speed up on catching up, not speaking to the quality of the book because I don't remember at this point) and not much continuity stuff will be missed there?
I'll give Vanguard a look and see what I think.
I'll give Vanguard a look and see what I think.
Rising Son takes place over the course of the six books following Avatar and was intended to be read after those six books, just before Unity.
All we know at this point is that it will be billed as a TNG book, the title is Takedown, and it's due into stores in the last week of January 2015.
It was mentioned in this thread: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=248221
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