Seconding that idea. Add in Airiam...
2019 Releases
- Thread starter Jarrod
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Sorry about the apparently unrelatedness of my posts. I believe someone mentioned wanting Kelvinverse books upthread - I was saying there's plenty of stories that could be told which happened in between ID and Beyond.
I had very similar experiences myself in school. I can remember every year in middle and high school, taking classes in both US and World History. US History was supposed to cover everything basically from the founding of the 13 colonies up through the then-current 1980s. But it never worked out that way. It seemed like every year we would start with Jamestown in August, we'd get to the Civil War about February, and reach the start of the 20th Century around April 1. They'd end up covering everything since the Wilson Administration in super-fast mode because they'd gotten so far behind.
World History was even worse. I can't remember a year when we even got much past the Renaissance. And yes, it was every bit as Western-centric as others have mentioned. I do recall briefly studying the 4 "cradles of civilization" which were the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, the Yellow River, and... I can't even remember what the 4th one was. But they all got short shrift. Very little mention of anything else in Asia other than the travels of Marco Polo. Nothing at all about African before the Age of Exploration, and the Americas were apparently a total blank before Columbus. On the other hand, we spent forEVER on Feudalism. Gah. Everything I know about world history outside of the West I have learned through my own study over the years and I know full well that I still don't know as much as I should.
I blame a lot of it on the way the system was (and presumably is) set up. We covered the same stuff year after year. It was never anything new. I can remember looking ahead in my history books and wondering if we would ever talk about World War I. (We usually didn't.) There should have been more emphasis on non-western cultures and there would have been plenty of time for it if those in charge had cared. You can't understand world history without studying the history of the whole world, not just part of it.
Indeed. I know I have prejudices, but I do my best to master them, and avoid letting them control me. And I tend to get very irritated when anybody accuses me of wallowing in any of them, but I also generally redouble my efforts at mastery over them.
Back to Star Trek and ethnic stereotypes: Certainly, Chakotay is a significant improvement over Dawson Walking Bear, from "How Sharper . . .", who was himself a significant improvement over how the Native People of the Americas had been portrayed in television and film. And yet, Chakotay, and the "Akoonah" technology he used for vision quests, were controversial from inception.
During the Obama Administration (and maybe towards the end of the George W. Bush Administration as well), gay rights activists were condemning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as barbaric and discriminatory. I was there when President Clinton enacted it. Being neither gay (so far as I'm aware), nor in the military, I wasn't directly involved, but I have very clear memories of that time. It was in fact a vast improvement over the homophobic witch-hunts that preceded it, and it was about as progressive as the military -- and the general public -- were ready to deal with at the time. It was a tactical retreat from what President Clinton had wanted to do, made necessary by the fact that he'd been pressured into doing too much for gay rights, too soon, without adequate political capital, and it probably cost him any chance at enacting healthcare reform, but it was progress.
Yes, exactly. People forget that literally the very first official action Clinton took after his inauguration was to sign an executive order that would've completely banned military discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But the GOP-controlled Congress was furious at that and was pushing for legislation that would ban gays in the military altogether. So "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the compromise Clinton had to settle for in order to keep things from getting even worse.
My world history classes literally jumped from Ancient Greece and Rome, with tiny, tiny bit on Egypt, to WWII. I still don't really know much WWI, beyond what they dealt with in the Wonder Woman movie, and a few TV documentaries that touched on it a little.
This was in reply to me!To clarify my comment in the interest of alleviating concern (and in a futile attempt to avoid wild speculation), here’s what I said on my Facebook page when this topic came up:
“What I can honestly say is that I was aware this was in the works even before I began developing my outline for the TNG book I'm currently writing, and that carrying on the TNG storyline as we've been laying it out all this time was my specific mandate, both from my editor and CBS Licensing. I point-blank asked about any particular concerns or issues which might impact what I was planning should this come to pass, and was told to carry on with what I was doing.
Personally, I'm not too worried about the TrekLit status quo, at least as things currently stand, but that's me, speaking only for myself but based on the conversations I've had about this.”
Thanks!
I guess you could say it's available on Amazon US
I hope a real DS9 trilogy by KRAD, Bennet or Mack.
Or new IKS Gorkon novels, or lost era novels
Or new IKS Gorkon novels, or lost era novels
I find it weird that, while I've technically written for every Trek TV series except Discovery (so far), my DS9 output is limited to a single novelette in Prophecy and Change. Well, plus a DS9-adjacent S.C.E. story guest-starring the O'Briens, and the DTI series spinning off a couple of one-time DS9 guest characters, but just the one story in the main series itself.
I hope a real DS9 trilogy by KRAD, Bennet or Mack.
Or new IKS Gorkon novels, or lost era novels
I would also be happy about a DS9 trilogy. Maybe with more depth for some characters. Ro for instance.
I’d just be appreciative to get a DS9 novel or novels that lets me get a firm grasp of who’s who and does what on the station at this point. It’s been taking way too long for a real baseline of these things took shape. Characters have gotten a scene where they talk like they’re important, then vanish for the rest of the book, and I don’t think Prynn Tenmei, who was a fairly regular character in the old days, has had much more to do that flying around the new park in Revelation and Dust, which was a handful of novels ago.
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