^Mike Barr's version of Kirk's first mission on the Enterprise from DC Comics's first annual, though it conflicts with E:TFA in many ways (and is a far superior story), makes the same choice with regard to McCoy -- includes him on the first mission, but hints that he'll be taking leave soon.
You're right. I don't see any way to fix this problem. I haven't read the Vulcan duology. Does Sarek interact with the "big three" in those in a way that it obviously must take place after "Journey to Babel"?
Oh, absolutely, yes. The big three interact heavily with Sarek and Amanda in both the Lorrah novels, and it's unambiguous that they occur some time after "Journey to Babel."
Well I suppose given the necessity to pick between the two, I will have to reevaluate favoring the post Journey to Babel setting.
Yeah, all things being equal, I'd disregard the letter in Precipice, as it's a relatively minor part of its narrative.
Honestly, I found it kind of surprising that the references to the Lorrah books were included. I thought those were among the many '80s-continuity books that had been superseded by new canon. (For instance, there's no sign that Sorel and Corrigan's regenerative technology exists in the 24th century even though it was a pretty successful medical breakthrough in the books. And its assertion that the death of a bonded Vulcan would endanger the life of his or her bondmate has never been supported in canon, and has probably been contradicted elsewhere in the literature.) My main problem with The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic, even back in the day, was that their Vulcans were just too... cuddly. They were these nice, wise, friendly, and really rather emotional people, and that was hard to reconcile with the more aloof, often jerky portrayal we got onscreen. Sure, there were some bad eggs among them, but the majority were just nice. Honestly, it had a bit of a fanfic sensibility. They're enjoyable books to read because of that cozy, charming version of Vulcan, but not entirely plausible. It's not too bad; if anything, I feel I ended up giving my Vulcans in Uncertain Logic a similar tone, without specifically trying to emulate Lorrah. But it's a matter of degree. I tried to retain more of the detachment and coolness.
That happened to Selar in NF, didn't it? That is, her bondmate died without any endangering of her own health. T'Prynn sort of too; her health was certainly endangered, but it wasn't because of Sten's death per se.
^Yeah, and probably others too. And I think there's a canon example: Sarek and Perrin in "Unification." I'm pretty sure TVAM established that a human could be affected by the bond, but Perrin wasn't.
Ooh, I love this sort of thought experiment! I've always been a sucker for timelines and chronologies and all the interesting story insights that emerge out of them. (Although I was never a particular fan of the "official" Okudachron, even though it became the basis of so much later canon and fanon... it just relies on too many arbitrary assumptions, neglecting or even defying details of story logic. Most famously, of course, it discarded the very specific canonically stated span between Space Seed and TWOK, but that's hardly the only example.) However, poking around this territory on my own, I've come to (slightly) different conclusions than the thread starter. Basically, I think there are enough gaps, elisions, and open questions in the internal timeline of the Vanguard books that it doesn't really pay off to try to (re)arrange the whole FYM timeline around that framework. I'd rather structure the FYM around the preponderance of other evidence, and squint as necessary at some of the references in Vanguard. Thus my own interpretation (undeniably a work in progress) looks basically like this (condensed, so as not to bore everyone with a super-long post!)... Fall 2264 - Kirk takes command of the Enterprise. (And like CLB, I'm more than happy to dump the Ent: First Adventure version of this in favor of "All Those Years Ago" from DC's ST Annual #1.) A few months of shakedown missions follow — as per Captain's Peril, My Brother's Keeper:Ent, and so forth. 2265 - in contrast to some of the posts above... Midyear - Ent sent on "Galactic Rim" mission. Spans several weeks/months of travel; events of WNMHGB happen. Aug - While returning, Ent encounters Vanguard station. (Earliest it could be going live given the span since the 2263 flashback that opens the series.) Harbinger, Summon, and Reap occur over the span of a couple of months. Sep - FYM officially begins, after Ent refit. (I consider it to run through Dec 2270, allowing for a few months of "interruptions" as others have noted.) Oct- Corbomite Maneuver. Other episodes follow in production order. One basic assumption: given that 78 TOS eps were spread across just over three years, I figure roughly two eps per month (except when story details or calendar constraints dictate otherwise). Charlie X in late Nov (around Thanksgiving). Balance of Terror (first Romulans) and WALGMO close out the year in Dec. 2266 - Production order continues, S1 leading into S2. Notable eps/stories: Menagerie c. early spring (placing Talos IV 13 years earlier at 2253, and Spock's 11 years under Pike at 2253-64). Reyes trial (in Open Secrets) soon thereafter. Arena c. May Errand of Mercy (Klingons/Organians) c. Sep Amok Time (S2) c. Dec EOV and EOF novels c. Jan & Sep respectively 2267 - Production order, S2 into S3... Deadly Years c. late Mar (shortly after Kirk's 34th birthday) Tribbles c. Apr Journey to Babel c. May (Sarek is 102; first words to Spock in 18 years, hence 2249) Vulcan Academy Murders & IDIC Epidemic (yes, let's keep 'em!) c. Jun/Jul — note, no conflict w/JTB Diplomatic relations established on Nimbus III (some dates from Precipice are skewed by a few months) Private Little War (first M'Benga on Ent) c. late summer Fall: **Space Seed (I bump this by about a year from production order, to keep it close to 15 years before TWOK — my preferred date for which is Mar 2283, still a bit earlier than the general consensus.) Spectre of the Fun (S3) c. Dec 2268 - S3 continues Starts w/Paradise Syndrome (takes 3 months) Ent Incident c. Mar Midyear - What Judgments Come, Storming Heaven (Vanguard station destroyed) Dec ends with All Our Yesterdays 2269 - final TOS episodes, into TAS c. Jan - **Day of the Dove (also slightly advanced from production order, to accommodate the internal reference to "three years" since Organia in 2266) c. Feb - Prime Directive - ship & crew decommissioned for four months c. Jun - TAS episodes start (no Chekov) 2270 - last of TAS, plus lots more c. May- Counter-Clock Incident (Robert April) Chekov returns May-Dec - lots of novels Dec - FYM ends (Black Fire, The Lost Years) Thoughts? Reasonable?...
I too have always had a love/hate relationship with the Okudachron. It is a great resource, but I wish they had made a few different choices on key issues. We are stuck with it now. I would love to see an update to both it and the Pocket timeline. Personally I don't see how Kirk could have taken command so early. That would mean that he spent more than six years "out there". I prefer that any pre-5YM time under his command to be kept under 6 months. That's a little tidbit that I had forgot to consider. Looking at my timeline though, it does work out that Kirk would have turned 34 a few months before when I have The Deadly Years placed. I would greatly prefer to date TWOK in March 2283 as well, but since everyone dates TFF in 87 I just don't see how it can work. It's almost impossible to understand those four films has having taken place over the course of two years let alone four. I have this one as taking 2 months. Did I miss something? I have to assume those were Klingon years. Otherwise it just doesn't work for me. Seems reasonable to me. If I were to toss out all the timeline references in Vanguard and Forgotten History, I imagine I would get something very similar to this. My preference though, it to include as many of the "clues" as I can. Very glad you found this thread, though, and glad to have found someone else you loves thinking about this kind of thing as much as I do.
Whoops, you're right about Paradise Syndrome: 2 months, not 3. Mea culpa for the typo. And this doesn't require tossing all the references from the Vanguard books — they're not all internally consistent anyway, after all. Mostly what it calls for ignoring is just where those books place the year breaks. Dating the TOS film era remains a bit contentious, but my speculations, FWIW... I place ST1:TMP in late 2273 (2.8 years after the end of the FYM, per GR's novelization — although this requires fudging some internal date references in the Lost Years novels, particularly Flag Full of Stars, if memory serves). I heartily endorse the popular but entirely non-canon idea of an additional FYM under Kirk after the events of TMP (among other things, this provides a handy place for several otherwise hard-to-date novels, notably including several of Diane Duane's books, which I really don't want to relegate to mere apocrypha). I stubbornly insist that ST2:TWOK falls in 2283 — not only is that the implied date from the wine bottle gift, not only is that the only date that can plausibly keep the span since Khan was marooned credibly close to 15 years, but it just makes sense that Kirk's 50th birthday would be the one inspiring his melancholy thoughts about aging. ST3:TSFS occurs later that same year, a matter of a few months at most. ST4:TVH occurs in early 2284, after the interlude on Vulcan. There is an unspecified time gap at the end of TVH, during which the Ent-A is prepared and commissioned. As far as I'm concerned this could be quite a few months; indeed it would neatly accommodate the period mentioned in Generations when Kirk considered retiring with "Antonia," before deciding to return to Starfleet. At this point there's time for another (third!) FYM, spanning late 2284 to late 2289. This provides space for the DC Comics series (if one wants to include it), and a few novels as well. It's really only with ST5:TFF that things get a bit off-kilter (surprise, surprise). That film (if one really wants to accommodate it at all) falls during the middle of this period, in 2287, 20 years after the settlement on Nimbus III. There are references in the film to make it seem that the ship has just been launched for a shakedown after the previous movie (e.g., Scotty's difficulties), but those can be explained away as the result of an interim refit or somesuch. (The Ent-A bridge did look a lot different from the end of TVH to TFF, as one can see here.) After that Sulu is given his own command (2290), while the Enterprise is called home and relegated to occasional high-profile missions. For instance... ...the diplomatic mission in ST6:TUC, set in early 2293 (Sulu is returning from three years in the Beta Quadrant). Finally, Kirk disappears at the Ent-B launching in late 2293, in ST7:Gen — nine years after flirting with retirement (as he states in the Nexus), and 78.2 years before the main portion of the film, set in 2371.
As I recall, that was rather explicitly dated at July 2269 (the Tricentennial of Apollo 11). Obviously not feasible now. The way to fix that next time it's reissued (unless you just want to throw the whole novel out) is move it to December 2272 and say it's the Tricentennial of Apollo 17 (the last lunar flight of the 20th Century). The refit of the Enterprise is said in the novel would take 'another year' to complete, putting us right at late 2273 as per speculation.
There's no way the Lost Years novels can fit in the modern novel continuity. They're an integral part of the '80s continuity, which was its own distinct thing. The first TLY book is a continuation of J.M. Dillard's three previous novels in its character arcs, and also references Carey's Dreadnought! And the later books in the TLY series conflict with each other anyway, due to coming out under different editorial regimes. The current novelverse version of the end of the 5YM is the one I depicted in Forgotten History (after previously describing it in Ex Machina), and it's entirely incompatible with TLY. A post-TMP five-year mission is an established fact in the modern novel continuity; it was acknowledged explicitly in The Captain's Daughter, a book that's been referenced by multiple novels since including Serpents Among the Ruins and Ex Machina. Also, TCD dates the end of the second 5YM to shortly before the loss of the Bozeman in the Typhon Expanse, which pretty much confirms a 2273-78 timespan for it. I think it's safe to say that a 52nd birthday would inspire at least as much melancholy as a 50th -- possibly about four percent more, even. As for the year count, we are far, far too locked into the Earthbound assumption that a "year" can only be 365.24 Earth days. Every planet in the galaxy has a different year length. I quite like Greg's solution in To Reign in Hell -- it was 15 Ceti Alpha V years, which converts to 18 Earth years. That doesn't quite solve Kirk's use of "15 years," but maybe Kirk was misremembering the timing. Personally, I wish it could be 15 years. But by now, there have just been too many tie-ins using the 2285 dating for anything else to be feasible. Probably less, given the rate at which Spock regenerated on Genesis. Even if his growth rate sped up exponentially, it's hard to believe he needed months to regenerate to a child and only a day or two to mature the rest of the way. In the novelization, it's only three days. I make it about a month myself. Per Harve Bennett, there's a 6-month shakedown period between the two movies. For myself, I ignore the Okudachron and put TFF in 2286 -- close enough to 20 years for rounding. People tend to overlook that the Okudachron itself explicitly said that its date estimates and extrapolations beyond canon were merely conjectural -- suggestions only, not inviolable gospel. The authors themselves told us in the introduction that we were free to reinterpret or ignore their suggestions. And the canon certainly did; the first edition of the Chrono put the first warp flight in 2061, but First Contact bumped it to 2063. The issue is that tie-in authors were required to follow the Okudas' dates exactly barring evidence to the contrary. The Chrono may not have been canonical, but it was an official publication written by staffers from the show, so it was considered the next best thing in terms of authoritativeness, and thus freelance authors like us had to defer to it. Which isn't a problem most of the time, but it has made things tricky when it comes to the movie era.
I humbly disagree that the modern novel continuity has to be seen as a "distinct thing" from earlier novels. Naturally you have a strong investment in the contemporary "litverse," as an author of prominent parts of it (and some very entertaining parts indeed!), but IMHO it needn't be at the expense of earlier works or be seen as mutually exclusive from them. After all, none of what we're talking about here is officially "canon." Thus it falls to all of us (individually and collectively) to construct our best estimate of what Trek "fanon" includes. Certainly there are some contradictions between newer and older novels. Of course, there are contradictions among newer novels as well (although the current authors and editorial crew seem to do a pretty good job weeding most of those out). Heck, there's no shortage of contradictions even between on-screen stories that are canon. Ultimately it comes down to the creativity of dedicated fans to identify the good stories worth acknowledging, of whatever vintage, and figure out how to reconcile, elide, or massage the contradictory details. And it never pays to underestimate the creativity of Trek fans. You're clearly familiar with the full run of Trek novels, as evidenced by the Continuity of Days Gone By and Charting the Novel-verse threads (among others). So it seems fair to ask, what do you envision as the insurmountable inconsistencies? I don't see anything that major. Mostly it comes down to books that built on continuity assumptions that were later revised by TNG. Some novels relied on the Goldsteins' Spaceflight Chronology for dates (most prominently Strangers from the Sky, if memory serves). Some explored alien cultures (John Ford's Klingons, Diane Duane's Romulans) in ways that are different from (and IMHO often superior to) what TNG later offered. Some implicitly placed stories during a second pre-TMP FYM. A few offer a version of Zefram Cochrane than differs from ST: First Contact (which, to be fair, itself paid little heed to prior Trek history). What else? None of those are really major obstacles. Dates can be adjusted without affecting stories. Cultural traits can be reinterpreted to accommodate new information. The second FYM can be relocated to post-TMP. Cochrane's tangled biography consists more of lacunae than actual information anyway, and can be fleshed out in various ways. Indeed, many of your fellow authors seem to agree that the obstacles are surmountable, as references to the older works keep popping up in newer ones. E.g., as discussed in this very thread, Vulcan Academy Murders and IDIC Epidemic are clearly referenced in the Vanguard series. Sherman and Shwartz's Vulcan's [word] series uses lots of Duane's Rihannsu material. Several stories and novels by KRAD reference elements from Ford's Klingon culture. The unofficially official backstory for Saavik still seems to be drawn from The Pandora Principle, right up through the recent Unspoken Truth. And so on, and so forth. TL;DR: It's all an intersubjective construct. Any version of a TOS timeline that I would actually care about is going to accommodate a lot of the '80s novels. If it's been published, it's fair game! (Granted, the end of the FYM may be one of the most contentious issues. I've seen a couple of treatments of it in comics, and at least three in novels. Nothing too critical seems to depend on which version one prefers, though, so long as we agree that it ended.) Thanks for the reminder — I've read TCD, but didn't remember that it explicitly confirmed this (as opposed to implicitly, which quite a few books do.) Of course it's still not canon, but it just makes sense... and it's a span of years that can be used to integrate events from older and newer novels. (Indeed, TCD itself came out in 1995, way back when the novels were still being numbered — so even though it's post-TNG it's arguably more of an older novel than a current Litverse one in its own right. Not that there's any clear and uncontested cutoff point...) Cordially agree to disagree. The birthdays people really care about tend to be the "milestone" ones. On this I agree with you, in principle. However, the "we" you're talking about isn't just some small subset of fans — it's basically "the entire history and canon of Star Trek." References to years in Trek have always been to Earth years, unless clearly specified otherwise. This has been true whether the reference comes from a Terran, a Vulcan, a Klingon, or anyone else. (Chalk it up to an artifact of the Universal Translator if you must.) Besides, in the case at hand both Khan and Kirk were born and raised on earth, so it's the reference they would naturally be using. Once again: cordially agree to disagree. I can't think of a single story (outside of TWOK itself) for which that date was actually an important plot point. Hear hear. Once it saw print, almost everyone treated it as gospel, presumably just for the sake of standardization, for good or ill. Everyone except the actual creators responsible for new canon, that is... not just FC, but also (e.g.) the writers of Voyager's "Q2," which gave us the 2270 date for the end of the FYM that we're all using now as a key data point! Really? This was required by editorial mandate? I'm surprised. (Surprised any of the PTB cared that much, to be honest!) And you phrase this in the past tense — when did that mandate end, and what (if anything) serves as the baseline chronology now?
What "expense?" There's no value judgment. All these stories are imaginary, so it's not like some are "less real" or worth less than others. It's just a matter of organizing them into the continuity families that make the most sense. You wouldn't try to shoehorn a Showa-era Godzilla movie into the Heisei continuity, or work an episode of Batman: The Animated Series into the continuity of The Batman; they just don't fit together. But that doesn't make one better or more "right" than the other. See, that's the thing. I used to try to cram all the Trek fiction I liked into one big continuity, back before I realized it wasn't a value judgment to leave something out. Eventually it got to the point that I was having to ignore or mentally rewrite major portions of the books, and I realized something: I wasn't letting myself experience them as the author intended, because I was mistakenly prioritizing continuity over the simple enjoyment of the story. I was worrying so much about forcing them to fit that I wasn't just reading them and immersing myself in the experience. That was when I figured out that continuity should not be the highest priority of a reader. If a story doesn't fit, that's fine; just let it not fit. That doesn't diminish it. What diminishes it, I feel, is performing Procrustean surgery on it to try to force it to become something it isn't. Let it be its own distinct thing. Let it be in whatever continuity works best for it, or none at all. Trying to force everything together even if you have to edit it enormously is counter to the principle of infinite diversity. So I'm not talking about some kind of in group and out group. That's just silly. I'm talking in terms of creative intent. The editors and authors of Trek Lit in the mid- to late '80s were consciously building a loosely interconnected continuity. Books referenced and cross-pollinated each other in an interconnected whole. Then, there was a long gap as new Trek came along onscreen and continuity in the literature was suppressed, and when many of the core assumptions of the '80s book continuity were overridden by new canon. And then, starting around 2001, the Pocket editors started building a new novel continuity. Not better than the old one, but distinct, just as the Heisei-era Godzilla movies are distinct from the Showa era, or the post-Crisis DC comics are distinct from the Silver Age comics. I just feel that, since the '80s novels were meant to refer to each other, to form their own interconnected whole, it's best to let them. Let them be part of the continuity they were meant to belong to, and let the modern novelverse be its own thing. Which is just the sort of thing I don't want to do, because it's rewriting the books into something other than what their authors intended. It's like recutting a film with no input from its director. Just because it can be done, that doesn't mean it needs to be done, or that it improves the work in any meaningful aesthetic sense. Continuity is not quality. It's just bookkeeping. Except that there's a difference between homaging a work and integrating it. Batman comics adopted Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya from Batman: The Animated Series, but were still an entirely distinct continuity from it. Ditto with early Superman comics adopting Jimmy Olsen and Perry White from the radio series, Marvel adding Phil Coulson to its comics, etc. After all, this isn't history, it's storytelling. These are not facts, they're just ideas. Paying homage to an element of another story isn't about continuity or bookkeeping, it's about evoking an idea or doing a variation on a theme. Sometimes it's just an in-joke, a tribute to a story the author liked. Anyway, a point of order: The Saavik backstory originated in Vonda N. McIntyre's novelizations of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock. The Pandora Principle just elaborated on it. Just about every Saavik story has borrowed from McIntyre's backstory for the character (at least those in which her past comes up), but not always in the same way. Unspoken Truth's version is consistent with McIntyre's and draws one or two ideas from TPP's, but also conflicts with TPP in some ways (its portrayal of life on Hellguard is not quite so savage, and it includes the idea of Saavik being adopted by Sarek and Amanda, which comes from sources other than TPP). There are seven distinct versions that I know of: in prose, The Lost Years, Ex Machina/Forgotten History, Crucible, and the Strange New Worlds 10 story "Empty," and in comics, DC's "The Final Voyage," DC's "Star-crossed," and IDW's Mission's End. It dates from the period of non-continuity, but it's been acknowledged and built on in multiple modern novelverse titles, and has no major inconsistencies with canon or the novelverse; thus, it's pretty clearly been folded into the continuity. Every subsequent prose version of John Harriman and Demora Sulu has drawn on it. Yes, but that doesn't mean he would never feel old again after his 50th. For all we know, he got even more depressed about aging two years before. Heck, I'm still a few years shy of 50 and I'm depressed about aging. Besides, why couldn't 52 be a milestone? Just because we have 10 fingers, that doesn't mean multiples of 10 are the only numbers we're capable of ascribing significance to. 52 is an important number. It's the number of cards in a deck, the number of weeks in a year. Maybe some important mentor figure of Kirk's died at 51. (Not his father, since he saw Kirk take command of the Enterprise at 30ish, and was old enough at his birth to be the Kelvin's first officer.) I think Generations is a key one. You interpreted it as Kirk "flirting with" retirement, but it seems evident to me that he actually was retired and living with Antonia for some time. That makes most sense if it happened before TWOK, and we know it ended in 2284, nine years before GEN. There's also "Infinity" in The Lives of Dax. It's canonical that Torias Dax died in 2285, and "Infinity" places his death shortly before TWOK, as a consequence of the transwarp tests for the Excelsior project. Actually I gather it came from the studio licensing department. For all I know, it may still be the case. I just haven't run across it in a while, so I was limiting myself to what I can say for sure, that it was in effect in the past. The baseline now is pretty much the Pocket Chronology from Voyages of the Imagination, I'd say, but that's consistent with the Okudachron except where overridden by canon like "Q2" and First Contact. So it's basically the same thing.
Christopher already had a pretty good response for you, but I have to ask: Hypothetically speaking, what sort of contradiction would you consider major? Because to me at least a couple of those do seem major, and I'm curious where you stand. I can imagine something on the scale of "Earth's Sun has gone nova"/"no it hasn't" would, but what's the weakest contradiction you'd consider big enough to qualify as major?
A further thought: What I'm trying to get at here is that the contradictions aren't a bug, they're a feature. Instead of trying to pit two incompatible ideas against each other and pick one at the other's expense, having multiple continuities allows you to enjoy both of them. It can be satisfying to have more than one alternative way of interpreting an event (like the end of the 5-year mission) or even interpreting the whole continuity. For me, one of the neat things about the '80s continuity is the portrait it creates of a Trek universe built solely on the original series (and TAS and the movies), as opposed to our modern Trek universe which is an amalgam of elements from multiple different series. And that's an intriguing difference, which is why I like to let the '80s continuity be itself rather than try to force it to fit the modern facts and assumptions of the Trek universe. Keeping the '80s continuity separate, to me, gives it more value, not less. Because as fun as it is to build a Trek continuity, it's added fun to build another one, to see how it fits together as its own thing.
I personally see the merit of both the views represented by Christopher and lawman. In my TOS reading list I try to split the difference in that I include the 80's continuity books in the same list as the modern Lit-verse, but differentiate them using a different color scheme.
There's definitely a sense in which I agree with this. When I'm reading a particular novel (or watching an episode), first and foremost I try to enjoy it as a story in its own right. But that's not the only way I enjoy it — its role as part of a larger fictional construct is interesting and stimulating as well. And context is everything: in this thread we're not just talking about any particular story. We are, very explictly, talking about an effort to fit all the Trek fiction we (or the OP) like into "one big continuity." So it's perfectly reasonable to explore differences of opinion as to what does and doesn't "fit." In that context, I was basically replying to your comment that (emphasis added)..."There's no way the Lost Years novels can fit in the modern novel continuity. They're an integral part of the '80s continuity, which was its own distinct thing. ... The current novelverse version of the end of the 5YM is ... entirely incompatible with TLY." That seemed pretty adamant and unequivocal. So I was just pointing out that there are a lot of different places (and ways) we can choose to draw these lines; really it's all subjective. See, that example can cut both ways as well. The post-Crisis DCU wound incorporating a lot of Silver Age stories, after all, as various writers saw fit, usually with minor modifications to accommodate a single-earth history and other more recent continuity. Fair point; I stand corrected. The larger underlying point I was using that example to illustrate still stands, though: lots of authors appear to find no inherent obstacle to retaining and reinterpreting material from older novels. I was (and am) totally unfamiliar with that SNW10 story. Is it worth looking up? The only ones? No. But the most common ones? Yes. It's just basic human psychology. We mark the passing of decades as more significant than the passing of individual years, however arbitrary the underlying points of demarcation may be in reality. Here's a question for you (and the thread), since my copy of VOTI is tucked away in a box in storage somewhere... given that it attempts to integrate all the novels (up to its publication date), how consistent is it with the similar effort available online on Memory Beta? It's a subjective matter, of course. The whole thing we're haggling over in this thread is questions of dates, so adjustable dates don't bother me. The placement of the second FYM doesn't bother me in the slightest. Apparent inconsistencies in the presentation of Klingon and/or Romulan culture bother me rather more, but c'mon... read Duane's My Enemy, My Ally then go watch Nemesis, and tell me you'd rather ignore the former for the sake of strict conformity with the latter. Yeah, didn't think so. Honestly, some of the continuity inconsistencies that bother me the most come not from prose (of any era), but from the series Enterprise. Yeah, it did improve in the fourth season, but still... if it comes down to it, in my conception of fanon I'm more than willing to relegate that whole series to an alternate timeline for the sake of preserving what I value about the 23rd- and 24th-century shows. (Or to be more precise: I can regard it as a variant version of history that only happened "after" the time incursion we witnessed in First Contact. From the POV of "original" TOS, there never was an Enterprise NX-01.) But then why stop at two? There are enough contradictions out there in Trek fiction (both written and filmed) to argue for a whole host of variant continuities. Where does one draw the line? My default preference (notwithstanding my remark just now about ENT) is to try to integrate things, rather than exclude them. Sure, it's not always possible... but more often than not, it is. On this I agree. Of course, as a matter of personal preference, that's the Trek I value the most anyway. If I have to make a choice between a story element from TOS & its films, and an element from any latter-day series, 99 times out of 100 I'll go with TOS. (Naturally, anyone else's mileage may vary.) So if embracing the present Litverse means abandoning that... nope, sorry, not gonna happen. Sounds eminently reasonable! It preserves useful information while, at the same time, it seems emblematic of the preference I mentioned for finding ways to include things rather than exclude them.
Could you not do that, please? Assume my opinion rather than ask for the sake of rhetoric, I mean. Whether or not I would end up agreeing, it's just a pet peeve of mine; it comes across as though you wouldnt actually care about my opinion were I to end up disagreeing. I never even said anything about ignoring anything, I was just asking a question about your position.