It's not a history exam you have to study for.
Now you tell me

Older books that fit the assumptions of an earlier version of the continuity are part of its history, a reflection of the form it took at the time, and that's worth preserving.
I view all the books like historical documents - they are a product of their time. It can be fun reading older books and seeing how they interpreted and extrapolated events compared to later tv series.
That's one reason I'm enjoying re-reading the older Pocketbook novels from the 1980s. It's a look at Star Trek through the eyes of someone writing a story with only the original series, maybe animated series (I generally find that's more the exception than the rule in early novels), and a couple of movies. It's a fun look at how Star Trek was seen when there was no spin-offs, and only a fraction of the continuity we have today. In many ways those early authors probably had more freedom as a result.
Nobody even considered the idea of rewriting Federation to accommodate the Zephram Cochrane backstory in First Contact, nor should they have.
Actually, I'm pretty sure there have been threads here where people have tried to reconcile/rewrite Federation to fit around FC![]()
I read that novel after seeing First Contact. While there are significant parts that can't be reconciled, it's not 100%. I always thought the parts about the Optimum Movement and Adrik Thorsen (forgive me if I misspelled that, I'm going by memory and it's been years since I read it) that could fit, particularly the role they played in WWIII and the movement itself could fit in the very limited information we were given in Enterprise "Terra Prime". In the brief snippet of Colonel Green's speech that sounded very similar to the objectives of the Optimum Movement (and IIRC Adrik also had a chronic condition that ironically would make him less than, well, optimal). Say with a good imagination about half could fit in continuity as we know it today--though I'm not suggesting any re-writing--it's fine as is. Just saying some parts of the book could still be consistent with canon.
No. In my opinion, the books should stay as they were originally written, with updates limited to things like spelling, grammar, or formatting errors. It’s up to fans to use their imaginations to make them consistent with the current continuity (if that matters to them)
I agree, I'd leave them as is. Sometimes a future novel writer will adapt a prior story to fit the continuity as we know it today, but usually that occurs when most of that prior story is still consistent with canon and there are maybe a few things out of sync (and it usually involves a continuing story like the relaunches). Then a later author may either let it go and pretend it never happened (basically ignoring the out of sync thread), or realign it in some fashion--usually through some creative storytelling to make a square peg fit in a round hole.
But the current 24th century litverse is so far out of sync with Picard that there's probably no way to make the two storylines sync up from about Destiny-on. Saying it's 95% inconsistent may be generous. It almost seems like the show runners read all the litverse novels and intentionally did everything they could to make Picard inconsistent. I mean, I know that's not how it works. I know the show runners wouldn't do that (if they even read the novels in the first place) but if I were more prone to conspiracy theories it almost seems too incredible to think every single storyline in the litverse was upended by Picard.
I mean, I knew probably a good chunk of the litverse would be upended going in, but I guess I figured there might be a few salvageable elements. But literally almost nothing syncs. The only running novel series that might bring the 2 together might be the DTI novels because they have dealt with some of that already. Perhaps there's a workable story there, I don't know. That's why Christopher gets paid the big bucks


But again, I do not believe that was on purpose. And given the hints we were given by some, maybe the litverse will live on in some fashion in new novels.
But back to the original point, I prefer to leave the older novels-ebooks as is. Later stories can reconcile them to the current continuity if there's a need.