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

Sorry, I didn't realize this was that big of a deal. It just looked like people were getting kind of close to the line, and I just thought I'd speak up before someone stepped over it. It honestly didn't even occur to me that this could be against the rules.

 

I wonder if it’s going to be a grand story like Destiny or something smaller?

 

Are the "A Time To..." series of TNG novels a good jumping-in point for the litverse? I figured since we're probably in for a Trek drought in 2021 (except for the animated stuff) I might as well take the time to fully dive into the books.

I did read the first two Voyager relaunch novels and the first handful of DS9 ones (Avatar up to the first Mission: Gamma) but then just got busy with college and never went back to them.

 

You can start there. They tell the story of TNG between Insurrection and Nemesis.
There is a thread on here where people have named the big novels to read before you start the post Nemesis stuff. They’re usually just books that get referenced later on.

 

I would start with the Destiny trilogy and then maybe Cold Equations.

 

Early 2021, yes, but the second season of Picard, the first season of Strange New Worlds, and the fourth season of Discovery have all finally started filming, so the second half of the year should be chock full of Trek on the tee vee.

This is BY NO MEANS to discourage you from reading the books, and as the guy who wrote the final book in that series, I wholeheartedly recommend A Time to...

 

You know what - I'm going to move my reply to the moderator notes thread since this is about forum behaviour. Then people can discuss if they want to without derailing this thread. Expect a post there soon... ish

Here's the link https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/mod...ules-of-behaviour.280025/page-5#post-13705014

 

But aren't you the most poweful moderator on this forum?

 

I likely will get no answer. But how far back in time, with the Litverse be retconned/rebooted?

 

For TNG everything post-Nemesis I would assume.
Titan to some extent. The first couple of novels are referenced in the latest Picard novel.
DS9 & Voyager I have no idea.

 

Time to start the Dayton for Mod campaign trail...

 

Depends how much you want to read

If nothing else, read A Time for War, a Time for Peace, but A Time to Kill/Heal would be worthwhile too as events lead directly on to War+Peace

From memory I had to find them second hand though, weren't available on kindle.

Overall it sets up the situation in Nemesis (Wesley and Worf in uniform, Troi+Riker going off to Titan, etc), then following from Nemesis, Death in Winter through to Destiny are worthwhile too, but if you read nothing else pre Destiny, I recommend Q&A. It's stand alone, but ties into the series, from Farpoint to All Good things and beyond.

https://www.thetrekcollective.com/p/trek-lit-reading-order.html

Is the essential guide IMO.

Start at A time to Kill on the TNG strand, read down the list as the buildup to destiny as far as Greater than the Sum, then read Articles of Federation and into Destiny. Personally I really liked The Red King as well.

 

I kinda hope they "retcon" it to the Borg origin or earlier, if something like that happens at all. Or have some sort of explanation like one of the Beyond writers retrospectively applied to the Kelvin timeline, that there were ripple effects that went backwards in time.

Part of me just hopes that there aren't any time travel/reset shenanigans and the LitVerse continuity can just co-exist with the Picard one without real explanation. Even if we won't get any more books after that.

 

That originated with the Okudas in the revised Star Trek Encyclopedia. It just happened to come to Simon Pegg's attention before the STE came out, so he was the first to mention it publicly, leading to the mistaken impression that it was his idea.

And it was just that there could be retroactive, minor ripple effects, as a handwave for potential inconsistencies, not that there absolutely must have been.

 

Sure, and that'd be also great to have for the LitVerse, if there is an in-universe reset, so when someone at CBS wants to do a Borg origin, LitVerse continuity still works (as well as it did before).

 

I think there's room for multiple Borg origin stories without timey-wimey shenanigans. After all, it's possible that various different civilizations have independently invented cyborg hive minds that ran out of control, and since it's their nature to assimilate and homogenize things, if two or more such cyborg hive minds met, then one would assimilate the other or they'd mutually merge into a single collective. So the Borg could have several "origins" that would all be true.

 

That may work in broad strokes, but often strains suspension of disbelief when the details are considered. Like how both The Beginning and Destiny establish the name "Borg" for their respective species and establish a Queen (although the one from The Beginning could have been phased out, of course). Or how in Forgotten Light the Enterprise crew learns of one Borg origin, yet never brings that up during Destiny.

And of course the Borg aren't the only issue, there are plenty of other pre-Nemesis things that new TV Trek could easily contradict (most notably of course the other 24th century relaunches, but even something like the Columbia going missing during the Romulan War), so covering bases with a blanket "time ripple" might be a worthwhile idea, if the trilogy's goal is to provide an in-universe explanation for how the LitVerse relates to the new on-screen stuff.

 

My hypothesis is that there would be some backward propagating timeline changes , even before Nemesis.

 

I'm not saying it's guaranteed to work in every case, just that it conceivably could, depending on the specifics.

Well, since "Borg" is obviously just short for "cyborg," it can easily enough be interpreted as the storyteller's translation into English of whatever term was actually used.

Although my headcanon for "The Beginning" is that it's a secondary origin -- at some point in the planet's past, a Borg ship crashed there, and the experimental nanotechnology used on the story's main character is reverse-engineered from Borg nanoprobes. So she's the "first" Queen as far as anyone on that planet knows, but not the first overall.

 

Mr. Bennett has headcanon?!?

(For anybody who wasn't reading Johnny Hart's BC strip back when it was actually funny, just do a Google search on the quoted phrase, "clams got legs.")

At any rate, I guess that also means that my own unpublished short story, "The Gray People" can coexist with Destiny.