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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
(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.)
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.
(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...)
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.
Cordially agree to disagree. The birthdays people really care about tend to be the "milestone" ones.
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.)
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.
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.
The issue is that tie-in authors were required to follow the Okudas' dates exactly barring evidence to the contrary.
Really? This was required by editorial mandate? I'm surprised.
Actually I gather it came from the studio licensing department.
And you phrase this in the past tense — when did that mandate end, and what (if anything) serves as the baseline chronology now?
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.
