Spoilers NO SPOILERS FOR CODA - A Lit-verse Grand Finale...What We Know (Spoilers for Entire Lit-verse)

Would you describe your interconnected TOS novels as part of the LitVerse, or at least adjacent to it?

 

On other hand, it's perhaps possible to get too hung up on which books are part of a collective "LitVerse."

It's funny. Several years ago I referenced YESTERDAY'S SON in one of my TOS books, only to be caught by surprise when suddenly there was a slew of excited posts about how, omigod, YESTERDAY'S SON had been officially "restored" to the LitVerse or whatever, as though this was some sweeping executive decision that was going to affect future books down the road.

Um, no. That was just me tipping my hat to the late Anne Crispin, who had recently passed away. Honestly, it was news to me that YESTERDAY'S SON wasn't considered in continuity anymore.

Granted, I do remember some editorial discussion as to whether modern readers would remember a book that old, but I argued that YESTERDAY'S SON was a classic, New York Times bestselling Trek novel that was hardly forgotten these days. Plus, honestly, it just felt weird returning to Sarpeidon without acknowledging Anne's work, so I kept the reference in. And nobody approving the ms. ever told me that, no, YESTERDAY'S SON didn't "count" anymore.

But that was just me being sentimental about a deceased friend and colleague. It wasn't meant to mean anything more than that.

 

No single device is intrinsically good or bad. But any device can be overused. Star Trek is a franchise whose literal mission statement is to seek out the new, but it's spent most of the past two decades rehashing its own past. Enough already. Let's move forward again. The show is called Strange New Worlds. Let that actually mean something.

Of course. Every Trek novel and story I've ever had published is in the same continuity, though I doubt that will last much longer. You can find all sorts of cross-references, shared worldbuilding, and ongoing threads among my various Trek works.

 

I think the Enterprise novels, if I may be so bold, are the safest from any continuity conundrums, because even Strange New Worlds is about 90 years after the latest date in those novels, plenty of time for things to change.

Now, on the odd chance that Section 31 happens at the dawn of the Federation or we get an Archer-centric Short Trek, then that will (likely) wipe clean alot of what Christopher and other authors have established. But it may be years before that happens, it seems. If we get some holodeck adventure on Lower Decks centered around the NX-01, that's more likely that McMahan will pay homage to the novel continuity in some manner (as he is wont to do), but not guaranteed.

 

Interestingly, Keniclius calls out Kirk for lying about the supposed 100-year peace, citing old enemies such as the Klingons, Romulans, and Kzinti, and Kirk neither confirms or denies that it was an outright lie. It turns out Keniclius was right.

Also of interest, Keniclius shouldn't have known of Federation history over the last 100 years, but he knows about Klingons, confirming, in TAS, that the Klingons were a known hostile group at least 100 years prior. A fact that was usually ignored until Enterprise confirmed it again much later.

 

Onscreen Star Trek has been shitcanning the Star Trek fiction since 1979, when the opening scene of The Motion Picture negated the events of James Blish's Spock Must Die! Complaining about it now is leaving it a bit late.

 

Not only was Yesterday's Son "hardly forgotten," Pocket had reprinted it around the turn of the millennium with Time for Yesterday under new branding, "The Yesterday Saga."

It's certainly never occurred to me over the years that Yesterday's Son didn't "fit." Time for Yesterday I struggle with because Ann blows up some stars, including Alpha Centauri B, mere weeks before Star Trek II, but maybe the Guardian getting reset by Zar also pushed a reset button that reverted that, so maybe the book wasn't as cataclysmic to the Federation as it seemed.

Given that Time for Yesterday acknowledged the work of a lot of other 1980s Star Trek authors -- I've sometimes called it "the finale of 1980s novel continuity" for that very reason -- I imagine Ann would have appreciated your tip of the hat, Greg.

 

It's borderline, even just in terms of the continuity that existed at the time. It's supposed to be at least two years after "All Our Yesterdays," but still during the 5-year mission, which doesn't quite add up. So it's kind of in that category of '80s novels that implicitly presumed the mission lasted longer than 5 years. Plus there's no mention of "Yesteryear" ever having happened; it's their first visit to the Guardian since "City."

One continuity issue I had with it in the past is that I found it hard to believe that Spock could find out he had a son but it would never come up again. But now we know he had two siblings he never mentioned to his friends, so I guess that part is plausible after all...

 

Probably another thread, but who will be the Psycho Pirate of the rebooted Litverse?

 

Or the Power Girl, whose past is entirely gone yet still exists?

 

Woah this is exciting.

 

So previously in this thread, mention was made that the alternative to only resetting the timeline to just before Nemesis, and thus leaving the pre-Nemesis Lit-verse untouched by this Temporal Apocalypse (and thus still in danger of being contradicted in the near future) is to posit a situation where random ripples changed various things throughout the centuries. This could erase anything in the Litverse that would later be out of continuity with the new canon.

I doubt what occurred to me today, but the thought did pop in my head that perhaps the new timeline after the Temporal Apocalypse is not only PICARD but also DISCOVERY. All the modern era shows could be the result of the Temporal Apocalypse reset, as a way to also explain away any major differences between TOS and Discovery/Strange New Worlds. I doubt this would be the route the authors take, but it would be an interesting potential ramification of the ‘random changes across the centuries’ theory.

 

Kinda like how the last Star Trek Encyclopedia postulated that effects from Nero's incursion may have rippled backwards in time also, possibly explaining any other continuity errors.

I was suggesting that as the aftermath of the Temporal War in Discovery season 3 explain all continuity issues in Trek. Why aren't they transwarp beaming to other worlds in Discovery S3 with a tap of their badges? Maybe Scotty's formula was erased from history. Why does Disco and SNW look so different to TOS? Temporal war. Kirk's badge switches sides for a shot in "The Enemy Within"? Temporal war.

And I wonder if the Temporal Wars of Discovery's 30th century are related to the Temporal Apocalypse?

 

Russel T Davies considered proposing an ENT/DW crossover. Imagine fusing the Last Great Time War and the Temporal Cold War together. It'd be a glorious mess

 

It does sound rather apocalyptic

 

Sounds like a DC comic story. Are you sure it’s not called Crisis?

 

I’ll admit to passing on Discovery season 3. I assume this conflict is the same as Enterprise’s Temporal Cold War?

 

Spoiler

You could always have Guinan remember, because she's partly outside of time anyway (thanks to the Nexus) and we've already seen her aware of other timelines ("Yesterday's Enterprise"), and she's so cryptic anyway the knowledge wouldn't have any bearing on her appearance in Picard. That said...

It has to be Ranul Keru, doesn't it? We already know he exists in Picard's continuity (The Dark Veil), so what if he remembers a universe where Hawk died and the Borg were destroyed completely, only neither are now true? Now he's carrying this grief for a man who's not dead -- and maybe, in the intervening years, dumped him -- and it's all tragic.

I was thinking of something even weirder yesterday. Behind a spoiler cut...

Spoiler

You can quibble with when the LitVerse starts. Avatar is usually pointed to as the beginning, but some works (Stitch in Time, Millennium, SCE) actually came out before Avatar. But, for most people, Avatar is effectively the start. And Avatar sees Elias Vaughn arriving on Deep Space Nine.

What if Coda ends with Elias Vaughn...

...arriving on Vanguard in 2265?

Like, after all is said and done, the universe saved from the temporal incursion, Vaughn is unmoored in time and his whole life history gets shifted back in time by 150 years. Maybe he's only 40 years old instead of 100, but he's effectively the same person in a different century.

UPN cancelling Enterprise saved us from that, but man, I'd have loved to see Christopher Eccleston and Scott Bakula chewing the scenery. IIRC, the episode would have gone where "Boomtown" went in Doctor Who's first series.

I know anthologies don't sell well compared to novels, but I really wanted a Tales of the Temporal Cold War anthology that showed various fronts in the 23rd- and 24th-centuries

 

Spoiler

Didn't Hawk die in First Contact? So that should have still happened, right?

Well, I'm glad we got "Boomtown" ^^