Cool article. Lots of interesting thoughts and insights offered.
Whilst Allyn knows about the lack of success of other reprint projects, he thinks it might have been a good idea in this case nonetheless. ... “The screenwriters, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, cited several novels in interviews. I would have repackaged those novels, with photo covers of the actors from the film, reprinted them in trade paperback rather than mass-market, with a blurb on the cover that said something along the lines of ‘Read the inspiration behind the hit film!’ Best Destiny with Chris Pine on the cover, Spock's World with Zach Quinto, that sort of thing.”
I would've liked to see that happen -- since one of the books they cited was
Ex Machina.
Though I don't see the cover change idea working there, given how closely linked it is to TMP.
The four novels in the new timeline, which isn’t yet as clearly established as TOS, will be written by four different authors, begging the question of whether this is a better decision than having one author tackle it alone for now. Steve prefers the choice made by Pocket Books in that regard. “Better choice,” he says, firmly. “Much better. While a single author might arguably have better continuity in plot and character in his or her series than a group of authors might - prime example being the regular personality transplants for the new characters in the Next Generation novels leading up to Destiny - a single author series is going to alienate potential readers who don't like that single author...."
Since these are standalone adventures, continuity isn't a major concern. We're trying to avoid outright contradictions, but that's as far as it goes. I'm surprised at the very suggestion of a single-author approach for something like this. For one thing, it's brand new; we don't know yet what authors might mesh best with the Abramsverse, so it's good to try different voices. For another, as the article points out, lots of folks are interested in tackling the challenge of writing in the Abramsverse, and it's only fair to give multiple authors a shot. Also, as Keith mentions, you need multiple authors if you want to get multiple books out faster. A single-author approach is slower going; either we would've had to settle for one or two Abramsverse books a year, or we would've had to wait considerably longer for the first one to come out. (
Destiny came out in three consecutive months, but after Dave had spent a year and a half working on it.)
And for another thing, I was the first author hired for this, before Pocket wisely decided that Alan Dean Foster would be a better choice to launch the original Abramsverse line, and I don't think I could've handled the workload of doing a bunch of these in a row.
Allyn agrees and emphasizes the fact that “one of Star Trek's strengths has been the multiplicity of voices behind it, and having four different authors bring their unique voices to the new movie and its milieu hearkens back both to the original series and to the novels as they were ten or fifteen years ago. We might get a science-heavy strange new worlds piece from Christopher Bennett, then an action piece from David Mack. Different authors have different tones and different strengths.”
Actually you're getting a moderately science-heavy strange new worlds action piece from me.
“The secrecy around the film, such as Foster not even getting a copy of the script to write his novelisation, worked against development of books until the film was out.
I believe Foster did manage to get a copy of a draft of the script.
Steve isn’t sure if it wouldn’t have been possibly to have novels ready for the DVD release at least. “Before the movie came out, and, I think, even after, some writers argued that it wouldn't be necessary to make a lot of changes to an old Trek novel to make it compatible with the new continuity. The characters rarely spend a lot of time discussing exactly what happened before and during their time at Starfleet Academy, after all. Would it have been difficult to work up a variety of relatively straightforward TOS stories that wouldn't step on anything the movie establishes, and allow for whatever minor tweaks the new timeline would require?
Before his layoff, Marco asked me to develop a TOS pitch that was a basic enough standalone tale that it could be fit into either timeline; the idea was that I'd outline it as a classic TOS story, but if he later decided he needed an Abramsverse novel quickly, he might then have me rework it to fit the movie continuity. So he was keeping his options open, given how much uncertainty there was at the time. The idea made sense in those circumstances, but I'm glad Margaret decided to go a different route and have me start from scratch with a proposal designed specifically for the Abramsverse. That let me do a story that was much less generic. Even though it's a standalone adventure, the character and thematic elements are firmly rooted in the film's universe in ways a revamped TOS piece never could've been.
Of course, maybe Steve has a point that it would've been possible to do both -- start with the more generic stuff to get it out there sooner, then do more organically Abramsy stuff later on. But I think that would've been a weaker start to the Abramsverse line.
