It's certainly a balancing act to make the fictional environment credible by creating a fictional history that audiences find familiar and dating the material or making creative decisions that will make it seem quaint when it is viewed years later.
Anyone read the Eugenics Wars novels?
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It's certainly a balancing act to make the fictional environment credible by creating a fictional history that audiences find familiar and dating the material or making creative decisions that will make it seem quaint when it is viewed years later.
One reason I soured on the EW books was that Greg Cox didn't manage to work the 1991 Gulf War into the conflict some way.
How can you try to integrate the Eugenics Wars into our real timeline and ignore the largest U.S. military operation since World War II.?
IIRC, Cox once posted that he wanted to work the Gulf War into it but couldn't figure out a way to make it work.
How can you try to integrate the Eugenics Wars into our real timeline and ignore the largest U.S. military operation since World War II.?
IIRC, Cox once posted that he wanted to work the Gulf War into it but couldn't figure out a way to make it work.
I read them about a year and a half ago, I loved Gary Seven (actually my introduction to the character, didn't get the TOS season with Gary Seven till afterward) and the James Bond movie feel of the first novel and a lot of the plans of Khan and Seven in the second.
The two things that detracted from my enjoyment though were that it wasn't the war that I expected (not the author's fault, just after hearing about the Eugenics Wars for so long I imagined armies clashing and cities being nuked) and that Khan just gave up at the end. Khan just getting up and going along with Gary and launching himself out into space didn't seem like the Khan I had known.
Still well worth the read and highly recommended.
The two things that detracted from my enjoyment though were that it wasn't the war that I expected (not the author's fault, just after hearing about the Eugenics Wars for so long I imagined armies clashing and cities being nuked) and that Khan just gave up at the end. Khan just getting up and going along with Gary and launching himself out into space didn't seem like the Khan I had known.
Still well worth the read and highly recommended.
Hmm. Thinking about it now, I'm glad he didn't; it would be unrealistic to expect that, after centuries of warfare, suddenly there's no conflict around the globe except for that initiated by contests between the rival Übermensch. Regular people, like Hussein or Bush, can be just as aggressive and generally asshole-ish as the genetically engineered variety.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
I very much concur on that matter.
Although I've read them once back when they were published in paperback 2002/3 and I really did enjoy them, but as it was five or so years ago and I haven't read them since, I can't really remember much about them.
Personal opinion: Understandable from where I sit.
my interpertation of the EW for my fan-fic did mention the Gulf War, but only as a means to allow one of the supermen to eliminate Saddam and take over Iraq. not that it did him much good since the Allies had thrashed the millitary so comprehensibly. which lead to him readily allying with Khan of India...
While the books were fun, and I don't mind the "continuity-porn", I have the feeling that the second book was a bit of a letdown. My own take on the eugenics war was something pretty much like the books, but where in the last year (1996) saw a lot of more fighting than what we saw on the books, with the turning point being a naval battle between the Great Khanate Navy and a combined US/Russian/NATO armada (something like that was mentioned in a novel, where Offenhouse son was killed on board of the Enterprise)
I liked that part as well.
Another "fate" for the U.S.S. Enterprise CVN-65 was mentioned in one of the posters of "Ships Named Enterprise" or something like that.
It said that CVN-65 was destroyed when it deliberately rammed and destroyed an enemy supercarrier transporting a large number of nuclear devices in the North Atlantic.
I mostly enjoyed the trilogy (and the nod to Rain Robinson being Roberta Lincoln's protege provides much scope for fanfic). However, in the third book Khan spends too much time congratulating himself on his superior genes, and musing how poor Marla's genes are so inferior... and in the meantime I just kept repeating, "Invent a stillsuit, twit! It worked in Dune -- how can you not be smart enough to see that?"
I liked Marla's redemption and that Kirk finally knew of it.
I liked Marla's redemption and that Kirk finally knew of it.
That's was DEBTOR'S PLANET, fyi, from which I shamelessly stole the notion that Ralph Offenhouse helped finance the rise of Khan . . . .
Just to give credit where it's due.
To be fair, one of the reasons it would never work to put the Gulf War into The Eugenics Wars is that Saddam Hussein had been around too long. He was already an established figure in Iraqi politics in the late 1960s -- so there's no way he could have been one of the Augments, who originated from the early 1970s. And it's certainly not as though Bush Sr. and Co. were the aggressors in that conflict.
^ One could easily have said that one of the supermen (is it silly that I find it anachronistic to refer to them as Augments?) had manipulated the conflict, most likely by exhorting Saddam to invade Kuwait (never the most stable of men, after all - didn't he once claim the invasion came to him in a dream from Allah?). The real question is: what would that superman have had to gain by triggering a war in the Gulf, unless he or she had financial interests in oil or the military-industrial complex?
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Perhaps one of the supermen encouraged Hussein to invade Kuwait just to tie down the U.S. military for years on end.
Keeping the U.S. distracted while they made their moves elsewhere.
If he did say that, it was just propaganda and hypocrisy. Saddam was a secular ruler who came to power on an Arab nationalist platform. He wasn't particularly religious; his only ideology was self-interest and the craving for power. So when fundamentalist Islamism became an increasingly major political force in the Mideast, it served his agenda to grab onto the coattails of that movement and claim his actions were religiously motivated/inspired.
Rain Robinson as Roberta Lincoln's protege...ugh. Thanks, I was thinking about trying to track these down and that lets me know that I should avoid them like the plague.
^ It's something that's implied, based on a scene in the final pages of the second book. We never actually see them "team up" or even know if Rain stuck around after tracking down Roberta.
(Of course, that's the whole implication.)
(Of course, that's the whole implication.)
^ Thanks for the clarification. I was envisioning an entire book about that.. I have a real dislike for the Rain Robinson character, but as long as it isn't a big focus I think I could deal with the books.
That's not technically accurate- Gene Roddenberry always said he envisioned Trek to be the future of OUR world, not some alternate reality. While that spirit can no longer be true as we've moved into the time periods that Star Trek itself referenced, I believe the novels were written with that spirit in mind.
Nah, it's just a throwaway cameo at the end of the second book.
I keep flirting with the idea of writing a Roberta/Rain novel, but I haven't gotten around to it yet . . . .
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