Author "trademarks": Recurring elements in TrekLit author's works
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At least two characters in James Rollins' "Sigma Force" novels are described as having salt-and-pepper hair. I think it's just a fairly common expression these days, like "craggy features" or whatever.
I Just noticed in Mr. Mack's Kill/Heal the phrase "cold equations" pops up 2 or 3 times, as well as one occurrence of its awesome sister phrase "the icy calculus." Clearly an term with significance to Mack, what with the name of his upcoming trilogy!
As well, a term I see him often use in his works is sonorous. It's a good word, and nice to see it used in light of the generic "noisy."
As well, a term I see him often use in his works is sonorous. It's a good word, and nice to see it used in light of the generic "noisy."
Hm, I just ran a word search in the original manuscripts, and I found only one occurrence of each phrase, both in A Time to Kill. If you have page references for them in A Time to Heal, let me know, and I'll check it out. Maybe I echoed the phrases during copy editing.
Either way, that's very interesting; I hadn't even realized I'd used the expression "cold equations" before selecting it as the title for the new trilogy. Go figure.
Peter David likes to link Trek actors with other characters they've played: i.e. giving Captain Bateman distinctly "Frasier" qualities, both having been played by Kelsey Grammar, or merging the many incarnations of Majel Barrett. It's a cute wink and nod, but--for me at least--it breaks the fourth wall and intrudes into the moment.
I have noticed that the authors tend to use a lot of words... and punctuation. 
Mike
Mike
But that can also be very effective. If Kelsey Grammer played Bateson again, would we see Frasier elements? Probably. If Majel Barrett had played Morgan Primus onscreen, would she have reminded us of Number One, only not as cold/serious - so with a tinge of the motherly Lwaxana.
It's been a while, but Morgan Primus is Number One, no? Or was the Primus=One just another wink and nod?
It's a trend that also extends to his movie novelizations, as well. In the novelization for the first Spider-Man movie, Mary Jane Watson (played by Kristen Dunst in the movie) says that the little girl vampire from Interview With A Vampire (also played by Dunst) gave her the creeps. The Spider-Man 2 novelization has Peter Parker (or some other character, I forgot) say that a pre-accident Dr. Octavius isn't Snidely Whiplash (who Alfred Molina played the live-action Dudley Do-Right movie).
AFAIK, Morgan claimed to have served on the Enterprise under Pike's command. So she *said* she's Number One, but that hasn't been conclusively proven.
This kind of thing drives me crazy. Another thing he likes to do is a lot of tongue and cheek meta references which take me completely out of the book. To take another example from the Spider-man novelizations, J Jonah Jameson goes on a rant about how alliterative names (like Peter Parker) are too comic booky and unrealistic or something then there is an entire paragraph naming basically every Marvel character ("Sir, Reed Richards is on the phone. Oh yeah, Bruce Banner disapeared. And your wife called, Stephen Strange is unavailable" something like that). It was so ridiculous and frustrating I stopped reading the book.
I respect Peter David as a writer, I grew up reading his Hulk comics and I love some of his Star Trek novels to death, but I can't stand that kind of humor. It's low hanging fruit, like those terrible reference movies (Scary Movie, Disaster Movie, etc etc) or Jay Leno jokes; they aren't clever and always take me out of what usually is a very good book. I remember really loving New Frontier and then all of the sudden hitting this period where I was groaning every other paragraph.
Then again, the guy is a multiple time NY Times bestselling author, so what do I know? Someone must like it.
I agree about some of Peter David's writing. Another example of the sort of things Peter David does that pull me right out of the narrative comes from the latest New Frontier novel, Blind Man's Bluff. In it, he has Seven of Nine give Q's speech from "Q Who?" almost verbatim to a young girl. You know, "It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." Of course, while reading it, I could only hear John deLancie's voice. Really pulled me out of the book and had a poor impact on the reading experience.
Huh. So, I searched my kindle and it confirms what Mr. Mack has said. Well there's egg on my face! I could have sworn I saw "cold equations" pop up in Heal. Oh well. Still a nice little bit of kismet, though!
Dafydd Ab Hugh seems to have a tendency to be a little more graphic in his "death scenes."
In Plagues of Night/Raise the Dawn, DRGIII kept saying "padded over" instead of "walked over." It brings to mind walking barefoot on soft carpet when I hear that, which led to some pretty weird mental imagery.
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