I definitely like where the books are headed for the most part. Voyager is strong, DS9 has a new direction but still needs to coalesce a bit and flesh the characters out a bit more, and Titan is about the same as usual. TNG is the weaker link here, and it's suffering from the high crew rotation, and new characters being introduced before we really know what's going on with the old ones. I would definitely like to have an era of TNG stories where the cast just stays as-is for a while to find its new equilibrium, before it starts changing up the status quo. When changes to cast are being made without us having established a status-quo, it's hard to be as attached to those events seeing as how every couple books something is different. That said, it does have a lot of potential.
Anyone else disappointed where the books have gone?
- Thread starter timmy84
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Not too long ago? Pocket never stopped publishing them.
Heck, we've got an entire TOS trilogy coming out this summer (he says shamelessly).
I know I'm looking forward to the trilogy!
Thanks!
As it happens, I fired off the (hopefully) final corrections to Book I just last week.
...So I guess you don't watch TOS any more, either? After all, pretty much every episode of that show ends with the status quo being restored (as do most episodes of TNG, come to think of it). It seems odd to bring an expectation to the tie-in fiction that doesn't exist with the show it's based on.
I'm pretty much always up for a Pike story, but I'm kind of the opposite of you when it comes to more movie era stories with the original crew. That era is pretty well mined by the movies themselves, unless they're set during the longer gaps between TMP and TWOK or TFF and TUC. And even then you're handicapped by what the movies tell us about those times. Does anyone really want to read a story about Kirk's uneventful life at Starfleet Academy just before TWOK? And we know that it had to be relatively uneventful; otherwise Kirk wouldn't have grown so bored with it.
Oh, I love rewatching shows as much as I like re-reading books. But when it comes to NEW material set in that area, I would just as much not want new episodes of TOS set between what we already have as I would not want books set in that setting.
I would like to read a book about captain Sulu and the Excelsior in the 24th censury.
Or about The Federation-Cardassian War and the setlik 3 massacre.
Or about The Federation-Cardassian War and the setlik 3 massacre.
"The Slow Knife" by James Swallow in the Seven Deadly Sins anthology covers Setlik III. Jeri Taylor's Mosaic and Pathways cover the Federation-Cardassian conflict to an extent.
The Federation-Cardassian War seems to be something that could be covered in some kind of Lost Era Terok-Nor-trilogy style novel series.
Pretty much no. The only time I ever watch TOS is if I'm showing it to a friend that's never seen it. I saw the series once, and that's enough for me solo.
Oooh, good thought. Along with more TOS movie-era/Enterprise-A stuff, this would also be right up there near the very top of my potential Trek novel wish-list.
The thing about the Federation-Cardassian "War," though, is that it can't be some massive conflict like the Dominion War. After all, the conflict was clumsily retconned into existence in "The Wounded" in the mid-fourth season, with the claim that the war had only ended a year before, and yet the first season or two of TNG had portrayed a Federation that was emphatically at peace and a Starfleet that was more a research organization and rescue patrol than a combat force. The only way to reconcile that is to assume that the conflict was relatively small, intermittent, and probably little more than a technicality by the time TNG began. Often nations can remain in a formally declared state of war for decades after the actual shooting stops -- for instance, North and South Korea are still formally at war even though there's been hardly any actual combat in the past 63 years.
This is consistent with the way Mosaic and Pathways portrayed the conflict, as an on-and-off series of border clashes over decades, largely settled down by the late 2350s. In The Buried Age, I asserted that the conflict had pretty much fizzled out by 2360, though it took some years more for an actual treaty to be signed.
So anyone who's looking for another huge epic war story is probably looking in the wrong place with this conflict. It's more just border clashes here and there, and between the Taylor novels and "The Slow Knife" it's probably gotten about as much attention as it warrants.
This is consistent with the way Mosaic and Pathways portrayed the conflict, as an on-and-off series of border clashes over decades, largely settled down by the late 2350s. In The Buried Age, I asserted that the conflict had pretty much fizzled out by 2360, though it took some years more for an actual treaty to be signed.
So anyone who's looking for another huge epic war story is probably looking in the wrong place with this conflict. It's more just border clashes here and there, and between the Taylor novels and "The Slow Knife" it's probably gotten about as much attention as it warrants.
I would like to see what happened to Sulu by the TNG era. Out of all the original NCC-1701 officers, he's the only one whose fate in the 2360s/2370s/2380s hasn't been addressed. And on that note, I would like to see a meeting between Leonard McCoy and Ezri Dax.
I would also like to see updates on Klag, Liviana Charvanek, Saavik, and Akellen Macet.
I would also like to see updates on Klag, Liviana Charvanek, Saavik, and Akellen Macet.
If I remember correctly, it's implied in David R. George's Lost Era works that Sulu is deceased. I'd have to go back and look at them to be sure.
Not quite. In One Constant Star,
Sulu is believed to have died in 2308, but is then rescued in 2319. The Excelsior is destroyed, though, meaning the Excelsior that Sulu commands in 2320 in Burning Dreams would have to be a replacement, probably NCC-21445.
And Day of Honor: Armageddon Sky features a character who's emphatically implied to be an elderly Sulu, though it's never made explicit.
I know! I want to see a story, possibly DTI, following up on Roberta Lincoln and Rain Robinson, wherein Rain Robinson and Tom Paris meet again!
Some great story ideas I'd love to read!
I'm really enjoying the direction Voyager and Enterprise are going, I've been too busy to keep up with much TNG as I've started delving into DS9, which I confess I've struggled with. I do appreciate the backstory that gets inserted into DS9 because I'm pretty spotty on reading order. I've never found it overly intrusive in the other series.
I'm really enjoying the direction Voyager and Enterprise are going, I've been too busy to keep up with much TNG as I've started delving into DS9, which I confess I've struggled with. I do appreciate the backstory that gets inserted into DS9 because I'm pretty spotty on reading order. I've never found it overly intrusive in the other series.
A little background.
I started reading the books starting with the DS9 relaunch. I loved the show and wanted to read more and I wasn't disappointed. I eventually expanded out to Voyager after that ended and TNG after Nemesis (I've found books that took place during the series I didn't enjoy much, but post series books I enjoyed a lot. Probably since the writers were free to make more impactful stories or something like that).
Now we are here today. Reading the DS9, TNG, Titan, Voyager, and Enterprise books. Lots of reading material for me. However, I've found myself extremly disappointed now with most books. I find Voyager returning to the Delta Quadrant great as well as the Enterprise books showing the start of the Federation. The Titan books I have always been disappointed with, but my desire for more Trek has kept me coming back book after book, and this new direction has potential. But DS9 and TNG? I just don't care for them anymore. I haven't read a TNG book in a while (I personally think the Typhon Pact storyline was weak) and the last DS9 book I found more interesting in the past segments then in the present.
I guess this is more of a rant then the start of a discussion, but I am wondering if people in general are satisfied where these series have gone or are going.
You're not alone. I tend to read modern "novelverse" books more our of habit than desire. I don't know how to describe it, but the books from the 80s and 90s had a certain je ne sais quoi about them. Maybe it was the episodic nature, with a few arcs. I don't know. But sometimes my brain gets all twisted with books and characters spanning series, a gazillion captains all carrying their own part of the story -- seemingly without any meaningful reason for their inclusion aside from "just because we can."
I'll say this much for the current era. The DTI books are really great. The best of the modern era easily. They're solid, tight, a group of core characters and supporting folks that keep the story moving. I enjoy them very much. And Kirsten Beyer's Voyager books are great also. Even though they tend to mix in the same ways I described above (especially with multiple ships in the Delta fleet), she just writes in that kind of old school style. When I read her work, I feel like I'm a teenager reading a Diane Duane novel during study hall, soaking up every carefully created nuance and detail.
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