Another "anyone recognize this novel" thread?

[bfollowell]

Does this novel sound familiar to anyone?

I believe it was a Next Generation novel. It would have to have been one of the earlier numbered novels. It was one of those adventure of the week novels. The Enterprise arrives at some new world bent on saving the inhabitants from something. It seems like they're always at war but no one ever really dies. They keep getting reincarnated somehow through something akin to transporter technology and keep fighting over and over and over. Of course the Enterprise crew get mixed up in it.

It seems like I read it in college so it would've been the late eighties. Maybe it was right after I graduated and was sometime in the very late eighties or early nineties.

Ring a bell?

I looked at the blurbs for the first twenty or so numbered TNG novels but nothing rings a bell.

- Byron

 

[zarkon]

Sounds a bit like "Mudd in your Eye", but that's a TOS novel.

 

[bfollowell]

hmmmm. Nope, I know I've never read that one, though the stories may be similar.

Thanks for trying.

- Byron

 

[Trek Survivor]

I've read all the earlier TNG novels and this doesn't ring a bell. The whole "ongoing war, nobody dies, get brought back to life" sounds a bit like the DS9 episode "Battlelines".

Is there a chance the passing of time has made you mix up a few different plot points from across the Trek landscape?

 

[bfollowell]

I've read all the earlier TNG novels and this doesn't ring a bell. The whole "ongoing war, nobody dies, get brought back to life" sounds a bit like the DS9 episode "Battlelines".

Is there a chance the passing of time has made you mix up a few different plot points from across the Trek landscape?

Easily. My wife would tell you that I can't seem to remember much of anything without her around to remind me!

I could easily be mixing up which series it was from and maybe it wasn't quite as early as I remember but I do know it was a novel I read and not an episode that I saw.

It'll probably come back to me eventually. If not, in another week or two I'll probably completely forget that I was wondering about it in the first place.

Thanks.

- Byron

 

[borgboy]

Hopefully nobody minds if I piggyback another novel question in the thread.
I remember reading an old Trek book, probably published in the 70s or early 80s, where we find out that one of the Enterprise female crew members got pregnant before a pivotal point in her career and chose to have an abortion for the sake of her career, to not lose her place on the ship or whatever. I don't remember anything about the plot except that detail, which stuck with me, as it was pretty adult material for me at that time, being a kid. It's pretty controversal material even today, but I think the really old Trek novels got away with a lot because they weren't being watched over very closely.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

That actually sounds like the Deep Space 9 episode "Battle Lines" rather than a TNG novel.

--Sran

 

[Galekarens]

Hopefully nobody minds if I piggyback another novel question in the thread.
I remember reading an old Trek book, probably published in the 70s or early 80s, where we find out that one of the Enterprise female crew members got pregnant before a pivotal point in her career and chose to have an abortion for the sake of her career, to not lose her place on the ship or whatever. I don't remember anything about the plot except that detail, which stuck with me, as it was pretty adult material for me at that time, being a kid. It's pretty controversal material even today, but I think the really old Trek novels got away with a lot because they weren't being watched over very closely.

I seem to recall reading a passage like that in an old TOS novel; the crew woman (on a landing party?) was remembering back when she had "sadly" (I think) decided not to continue the pregnancy. But I don't remember the book - I read a lot of Trek novels in the 70's/80's. I wonder though if it was a book by author Jean Lorrah; I believe she wrote books with "modern" touches (concerning issues having to do with the times), but don't know for sure.

 

[borgboy]

I'm planning to reread the really old Trek books at some point (but first I've got to rebuy them since I've lost the really old ones at some point over the last 30-odd years), so maybe I'll come across it again. I'm thinking this was one of the Bantam books, but I'm not sure.

 

[T'Ressa Dax]

I've read all the earlier TNG novels and this doesn't ring a bell. The whole "ongoing war, nobody dies, get brought back to life" sounds a bit like the DS9 episode "Battlelines".

Is there a chance the passing of time has made you mix up a few different plot points from across the Trek landscape?

Easily. My wife would tell you that I can't seem to remember much of anything without her around to remind me!

I could easily be mixing up which series it was from and maybe it wasn't quite as early as I remember but I do know it was a novel I read and not an episode that I saw.

It'll probably come back to me eventually. If not, in another week or two I'll probably completely forget that I was wondering about it in the first place.

Thanks.

- Byron

COuld you have read a summary of Battle Lines?

 

[T'Ressa Dax]

Hopefully nobody minds if I piggyback another novel question in the thread.
I remember reading an old Trek book, probably published in the 70s or early 80s, where we find out that one of the Enterprise female crew members got pregnant before a pivotal point in her career and chose to have an abortion for the sake of her career, to not lose her place on the ship or whatever. I don't remember anything about the plot except that detail, which stuck with me, as it was pretty adult material for me at that time, being a kid. It's pretty controversal material even today, but I think the really old Trek novels got away with a lot because they weren't being watched over very closely.

A search for the keywords on Google Books came up with World Without End. Bantam, 1979. So it's possible.

 

[bfollowell]

I've read all the earlier TNG novels and this doesn't ring a bell. The whole "ongoing war, nobody dies, get brought back to life" sounds a bit like the DS9 episode "Battlelines".

Is there a chance the passing of time has made you mix up a few different plot points from across the Trek landscape?

Easily. My wife would tell you that I can't seem to remember much of anything without her around to remind me!

I could easily be mixing up which series it was from and maybe it wasn't quite as early as I remember but I do know it was a novel I read and not an episode that I saw.

It'll probably come back to me eventually. If not, in another week or two I'll probably completely forget that I was wondering about it in the first place.

Thanks.

- Byron

COuld you have read a summary of Battle Lines?

Nope. This was definitely a book I read, not a blurb. Besides, I just read the blurb for Battle Lines and it sounds nothing at all like what I described. It was published in '99 too, long after I'd gotten burned out on TrekLit and long before I came back to the fold.

Heck, I'll probably find it eventually and find out it wasn't a Trek book at all, though I really think it was.

- Byron

 

[Christopher]

A search for the keywords on Google Books came up with World Without End. Bantam, 1979. So it's possible.

I don't remember an abortion in that one, but it might be the one the original poster was asking about, with people dying in a war and being reborn. But it was through some kind of organic process, I think, being consumed and reconstituted by some master organism that had spawned them all in the first place, or something.