2018 Releases

I was sorry the Romulan books written by Micheal l Martin weren't to be completed and published like he originally planned to be released. I wish that Pocket books would someday print the books as they were planned to fill in the missing gaps in the very last book of the series.

 

Read the whole book years ago not long after it was published, love the Trill and think its a great way of tying up the "Conspiracy" loose end. Can't remember much about the Bajor novel, but that means I get to discover it all over again

 

It is not a 'big' narrative in the way of any of the other worlds texts - it's more scenes from daily life - "genre" to use the art historical term. Like some one let Linklater into trek. It also really made Asarem Wadeem [sic?] interesting, brought back an excellent character from The Circle in a fascinating conversation, and was perhaps the last happy look at all the Siskos in all these years. It captures the feel of Bajor better than I can ever remember, that planet the show forgot...

 

"A happy look" other than that ending where Sisko starts to get worried that shit's about to get weird after Jake meets his wife from "The Visitor" timeline. That one left me feeling like the bottom was about to drop out (and it kind of did, considering what happened over the course of the time jump).

 

Worlds of DS9 had a lot of strong entries - I agree the Bajor story was an excellent tale, the second after Rising Son that showed Jake could lead a story without the rest of the main cast. Sisko recognizing Korena didn't have the same 'forboding' feeling for me that @RuthlessNate mentioned - the fact that Jake had found a wife who he loved was probably one of the few instances in his experiences during The Visitor that might have been a happy moment for Sisko. In essence, meeting her again might show that this was someone Jake had a chance of finding lasting happiness with. At least, that's what I got from it.

As far as the other tales in this mini series, I probably count the Andor one as my favorite of the bunch. I love what Heather Jarman did with the Andorians, and Shar's departure from the main cast is probably the one I miss most, however much I also liked the others. The great selling point of the Worlds of DS9 mini series to me, was that each story showed it could be great while only focusing on a few of the main characters and rely heavily on new characters introduced in the books, and both Bajor and Andor are probably the clearest examples of that. Both are also relatively small scope and intensely personal stories - Korena's journey as a young person trying to find her place and Prynn's struggling to balance her feelings for Shar with his grief over Thriss - which I also enjoyed a great deal.

 

Have we seen Jake and Korena at all since the WoDS9 Bajor novella?

 

Seen? Not that I recall. But they were both mentioned in the last DS9 outing where "Little Sister" Became a Soul-borg for about a minute till she pulled a Wanda Maximoff, went all Prophet, and Agamotto'd that crazy.

Bonus points for anyone who followed that statement.

 

You went full Eliot and Margo there...

 

I believe Jake at least appeared in Rough Beasts of Empire, though I can’t recall if Korena said anything.

 

We know they have a daughter named Jennifer as of the early 2400s, thanks to the framing story in The Good That Men Do.

 

Korena appeared in both Rough Beasts of Empire and Raise the Dawn; she had dialogue in both.

 

Anything on the contract? Hell, I'll even take rumors at this point. This seems an unusually long time for news on the novel front at this point. Did they hit a snag?

It's great that I can catch up on some of my back reading, but as more time goes on, the more concerned I get that there's a problem or issue tying things up.

 

Total silence from official sources for eight months now...

 

Has anyone in the thread mentioned the Autobiography of Mr. Spock (by David Goodman) yet?

Amazon has a listing up and it's released this fall.

 

Does anyone else think that the potential CBS/Viacom merger may have a role in the delay here? With the licensing agreement for books being a lower priority and with potential changes abound if this unlikely merger did come about, perhaps this deal has been shelved until that is figured out? Honestly I cant say I know a lot about what details are relevant in this kind of a deal but just a thought I had when I saw that headline about the merger last week.

Thoughts?

 

Would certainly make sense. Althought Trek would be the biggest franchise for either company, it's just one aspect of two massive media conglomorates, and the novels even lower down on the Trek heirachy when compared to Film, TV, Streaming rights, etc.

 

Only thing is this issue has been ongoing for a year, and if Im not mistaken this proposed merger has been a pretty recent development.

 

So possible the original negotiations were nearly complete (they made the announcement about the inclusion of elements from '09, Into Darkness, and Beyond), but then this came up and threw things into whack /again/, thus making us wait even longer?

 

No. A possible merger isn't going to hold up a licensing deal.

 

Besides, when the companies split it had no impact on the license, so them merging shouldn't either.

I'll admit, at this point there must be something going on. When word was given back in August that the new license would include Kelvin timeline material, that carried the implication the new license was a done deal or close to it. After all, as a general rule of thumb you don't talk about these things until the coast is clear. Indeed, this line keeps getting repeated every time someone tries asking for updates on the matter. It's now been eight months since we heard that statement about the new license, that's almost the length of a standard pregnancy, and we've heard absolute squat since. Indeed, we are a month and a half away from the release of the last Trek novel contracted under the old license, and after that everything currently on the table is from Titan. While I'm hardly an expert, I doubt the leadership change at Pocket typically brought up as the snag in the renegotiations derailed things quite that much.

And just how much longer can we be kept in the dark without any information, anyway? This thread started the end of July last year, meaning that back then there were already glimmers of something, and now that we're in the middle of a "gap year" so to speak with no light at the end of this tunnel. Some publishers are already putting their January 2019 products up for pre-order, while we don't have any word on a new Trek novel from Pocket past June 2018.