Will those new to Trek Fiction be overwhelmed?

I have been reading Trek fiction for about 30 years now -- started when I was 15 and now pushing 50. I've read probably about 90% of the Trek Books that have been published -- of course over a 30 year time period.

I was skimming through some of the old books and thought "this book was crap then, and still crap", others were "Gee, I loved this book when I was 17, but I doubt I could read this now, how did this book turn out to be so horrible?" and others were, "I barely remember anything about this one"

I wonder how people new to Trek would ever get caught up -- as there is a bunch of books to read, plus of course, I'm sure most people have a pile of Non-trek books to read too.

Since the current 2018 book line seems to be on hiatus -- or at a minimum severely curtailed -- it gives me a chance to catch up on books I haven't read plus a few re-reads. Wonder if anyone experienced the same?

 

Good question. This intrigued me since I'm new to Trek everything as of 2016. I've always been into science fiction, but the real Trek phenomenon was just a tad before my time. I was laid up from a back surgery in 2016 and decided to binge all of the shows in production order ( TOS / TAS / TNG / DS9 / VOY / ENT ).

Well, once I knocked that out - along with other shows like BSG, B5, SG-1 and so on - I wanted to get into some of the Lit Verse.

I decided to tackle it in a twofold approach: (1) My OCD kicked in and I decided to go through it chronologically as best I could using lists compiled by multiple sources. (2) I wanted to focus on newer publications - mostly post 2000s - because I figured more would be available as ebooks and it just limited my scope a bit. I figured I would mix in some of the classic Pocket novels of the 80s and 90s if they were recommended in the various literature threads. The focus remains chronological - even if that means going back to Discovery novels or ENT novels if another Rise of the Federation comes out.

To answer your question - perhaps it is overwhelming as I do still mix in other genres and nonfiction that I enjoy, but I've had a blast the last two years. I started in 2151 with Broken Bow, and I'm currently in 2279 with the New Earth series. I'm on the cusp of moving on from TOS movie era into Stargazer and TNG territory. I've skipped over a lot of the older books, but I intend to sweep back through someday and hit them all if I can find them.

I'm sure there won't be many re-reads for me, but it's been nice exploring all of these for the first time and checking them off my list.

 

Ive been reading since the mid-90’s. I’ve read all the Voyager novels, including the Starfleet Academy novels at least once.

Enterprise I’ve read all of them. Although I wasn’t able finish the most recent one.

Deep Space 9, I still have one or two to read.

TNG I’ve read most of the main series but there are still spin-offs for me to read.

Discovery I’m currently partway through my first book (Drastic Measures).

TOS, I’ve probably only read 1/10 of the books.

 

I started a little over a year ago and it didn’t overwhelm me. If you’re reading post Nemesis novels, just make sure you read them in order

 

I think there enough sources of information out there on the books, like here, Memory Beta, and Memory Alpha that it shouldn't be to overwhelming for new readers.

 

I myself am not new to reading ST fiction, but I am new to a more stepped up reading of more of it. And sure, I find it overwhelming to contemplate, often. I narrowed my reading focus. I keep the books I will read packed up, with the books that I'm closer to reading more available. I read the next book when I'm ready for my ST fix, after reading other books I'm interested in. I have a long-term end goal in mind, which I'll reach eventually by reading one book at a time; after which I'll take on the next goal if I feel like I'm still having fun with it.

I can't deny that it can be intimidating to contemplate the whole picture. Especially given that I'm also a slow reader. But reading these books is supposed to be fun, so I've tried to put that larger picture in it's place, so it doesn't put me off from carrying on with the next book, and then the next one after that.

 

I mean, people start watching Star Trek even though there's 700-and-what hours of movies and TV. I'm sure there will be people whose first Trek is the Old Picard series, and people who avoid it because they'll have some idea that they need to watch everything that came before to understand it, which I never really got. It's all just people, in the end. The bald old guy is in charge and likes to ask what people think. The big guy with the forehead thinks everyone is about to start a fight.

It's not that terrible to jump into the middle, and it's considerably easier in a book, which has plenty of space for exposition to fill you in on whatever is relevant, as anyone whose read a sequel and not realized it can attest.

 

For me the big issue is trying to rectify and fit the pre-1995 TOS novels into the Trek universe, even what had been established by 1995. The TOS novels from that time period will reference stuff that was later contradicted by TNG, DS9 and Voyager.

 

While this has generally been true of most Star Trek novels I've read, it's not always true of all novels. I remember my extreme confusion after hurriedly checking out a stack of books before going on vacation when I was younger, and feeling lost most of the way through Asimov's Foundation and Empire, since I had neglected also checking out Foundation, the first of the trilogy. I remedied that when I returned home...

 

Yeah, I've regretted some of the big gaps I've ended up with between The Dresden Files books, the author doesn't do a lot of detailed recapping. It's definitely not a series you could just jump into part way through.

 

There's so much time between the novels for the last few, I've read every one of them and I have trouble remembering where we left off.

 

^ In case anyone is curious, there's been an especially long gap since the last one, which is apparently because the author was in the process of building a house, a project that was intended to take about 9 months but took just over 3 years. All's well now and he says he's making progress and it should be done soon, possibly this month, and published next Spring.

 

I was wondering about that. I was looking through them books the other day, and was surprised to see how long ago the last book came out.

 

It'd probably be nearly impossible for someone that's just starting out with Star Trek novels to find everything that's ever been released.

 

I think this is a great question and the answer is probably wrapped around degrees of interest. In my own case, I felt a sense of "Oh shit, where do I get back in" a few years ago after Timeliners had taken a bit of a break. I'm pretty studious in how and why I read the books, so the reality that I have to read the books in pretty much a certain order was something I was aware of. Of course, we are talking 5 or 6 years ago, so whatever was coming out at the time, they weren't even on my radar screen and I may not be able to get to some of them for a while yet.

I *think* my case is pretty rare, because I have this timelining disease. It mattered to me to catch chrono clues and place chapters in the timeline, so if I read things even a little out of order, it was a bit disappointing. I was surprised to get beyond the Destiny books and experience massive time jumps within individual novels and then again within series of novels. On one level there was worry, as I thought all of those months and weeks would filled in by books I had missed, but on another level it was refreshing. Pocket and different authors had made the decision to move the line and the characters forward, which was wrapped in its own awesomeness.

I think someone coming into the experience now probably wouldn't have anxiety, because they wouldn't have the chronological mine fields to navigate. I'm just wondering what that experience would be like, because there is a significant chance their fandom would be anchored with Discovery, so they would probably start with those books/stories. That said, they would be reading them, but they would not connect the dots in a way that folks who have read most of treklit are able to. Moving into TOS would be pretty easy, because most of those novels can be read out of order. I think it would be fairly stress free undertaking, especially with Ryan's website, Timeliner's previous published stuff, the flow chart.

That said, the original question is a pretty interesting one to ask.

 

Well, that's nice for Trek books, but doesn't do a lot for The Dresden Files books.