Any of these DS9 books any good?

[Christopher]

Basically, The Laertian Gamble happened because John Ordover, who was editing the Trek books at the time, is the world's biggest Sheckley fan and couldn't resist giving one of his all-time favorite writers a shot at writing a Star Trek novel. It was an experiment that perhaps didn't pan out as well as everyone hoped.

I think the problem was that readers would've been expecting a tale in the style of DS9 and they instead got a tale in the style of Robert Sheckley. Naturally if you bring in one of the legends of the industry to write a book for you, you let him do whatever the hell he wants, but that doesn't necessarily produce something that feels like the show. So it's that cognitive dissonance, I think, that threw so many readers.

 

[Greg Cox]

Basically, The Laertian Gamble happened because John Ordover, who was editing the Trek books at the time, is the world's biggest Sheckley fan and couldn't resist giving one of his all-time favorite writers a shot at writing a Star Trek novel. It was an experiment that perhaps didn't pan out as well as everyone hoped.

I think the problem was that readers would've been expecting a tale in the style of DS9 and they instead got a tale in the style of Robert Sheckley. Naturally if you bring in one of the legends of the industry to write a book for you, you let him do whatever the hell he wants, but that doesn't necessarily produce something that feels like the show. So it's that cognitive dissonance, I think, that threw so many readers.

Good point. It was kinda like hiring Kurt Vonnegut to write a Deep Space Nine novel. Or Douglas Adams for that matter.

 

[DS9forever]

Someone mentioned Proud Helios, which I also liked. A little slow, but there is a lot to like in it.

 

[Garrovick]

I think the problem was that readers would've been expecting a tale in the style of DS9 and they instead got a tale in the style of Robert Sheckley. Naturally if you bring in one of the legends of the industry to write a book for you, you let him do whatever the hell he wants, but that doesn't necessarily produce something that feels like the show. So it's that cognitive dissonance, I think, that threw so many readers.

Well, it certainly threw me. I freely admit that I am not as familiar as I could be with Robert Sheckley's body of work. I am merely conveying how the novel struck me personally. I meant no offense by my comments, but The Laertian Gamble did not work for me. It was my first Sheckley novel, and perhaps if I'd read some of his other work before, I'd have felt differently about it. It's food for thought. I'll keep an eye out for some of his works next time I'm in the bookstore.