Authors perception of the Pocket Universe

[Christopher]

1. Have any of you actually read every single book in the Star Trek pocket universe?

There was a time when I could've said yes, but that ended quite a few years ago. There are some I never managed to get hold of, like most of the young-adult Academy books from the '90s; and these days there are some I haven't gotten around to, since I often have to keep my reading more targeted. To be honest, it's hard sometimes to read Trek lit recreationally because it's my work.

2. Do any of you have a favorite author from the earlier days that you wish was still writing.

I'd like it if Howie Weinstein and Mike Barr were still getting to contribute. It'd be nice to see Diane Duane return, if she did something more in the cosmic/heavy sci-fi vein of The Wounded Sky; honestly the later Rihannsu stuff was too much about war and politics for my taste, and didn't draw on my favorite parts of her skill set.

3. Any criticism or pet peeves that you have regarding your peers novels?

Not gonna touch that one...

4. When writing part of a series with other authors do you ever get frustrated at the direction the story takes when it reaches another writer's hands.

It can be hard to let go of characters and situations you established and entrust them to others. But sometimes it works out. When I read Bill Leisner's first draft of Losing the Peace, I thought he'd misunderstood something about T'Ryssa Chen's character and I told him so, but he actually convinced me that his approach made more sense.

 

[Jim Gamma]

Now programmers use a variety of means to interact with these tools and exchange diffs, but the one I had in mind for the purpose of this discussion is the website-based incarnation. Imagine a website that lets you sign in, pour over a book's text, add notes to specific lines or paragraphs, comment on other notes, propose a change, apply a proposed change, and so on. In software we couldn't do without because the nature of the work is a prolonged, perhaps infinite series of revisions. Novels undergo only a limited period of revision, but maybe it would still be more elegant than basic email?

This is where Microsoft Word's "Track Changes" feature presumably comes in handy. It allows you to make edits to a document, to compare versions of documents, and to add notes to documents - so basically everything you've just said. All you need to do is send the track changes version to those who need to see/edit it. (We do this at work ALL the time with process and code documentation, and even just letters etc.)

 

[Use of Time]

I feel like I should have worded that third question differently as I fully understand that it could probably be considered a personal question to the writers out there. I'm not really asking for an "I hate when (insert author's name) does this." I'm more interested in general issues you have come across in the pocket universe. Is there a literary technique or type of cliche that get's on your nerves when you come across it? Are there certain liberties you think a ST writer should avoid taking with the Star Trek universe in general?

 

[Lonemagpie]

This thread is more of an open forum but I was curious about some of our members/authors opinions about a few things.

1. Have any of you actually read every single book in the Star Trek pocket universe?

No - most of them, but not all. I went through a patch of skipping them in the late 90s/early 00s when they had a period of all being trilogies...

2. Do any of you have a favorite author from the earlier days that you wish was still writing.

Diane Duane and Ann Crispin for starters... John M Ford too, but obviously that's never going to happen, since he's no longer with us.

3. Any criticism or pet peeves that you have regarding your peers novels?

Of course, just like any other authors I read.

4. When writing part of a series with other authors do you ever get frustrated at the direction the story takes when it reaches another writer's hands.

That was more of a thing when I was doing Dr Who, especially since I wasn't online until 97, which is really why I preferred doing past Doctors - no need to worry about being super-up-to-date. And, in any case, making those sort of things hang together is really the series editor's side of things.

 

[Use of Time]

Okay, is there a story you guys are dying to do in the Star Trek universe but haven't had the opportunity to do yet? I understand if this is a question you may not want to answer here.

 

[Christopher]

^There are a couple, yeah. But I've already gotten to do a number of ideas I was dying to do.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Okay, is there a story you guys are dying to do in the Star Trek universe but haven't had the opportunity to do yet?

Yes.

 

[Therin of Andor]

plenty of post-it notes.

I recently had a certain thrill receiving two (rejected-but-keep-working-on-them) picture book manuscripts from a professional manuscript evaluation and they had many "virtual Post-it notes" on them.

 

[Technobuilder]

3 & 4. Geordi's treatment in Plagues of Night, which basically undid all his growth in Indistinguishable From Magic.

"Gee whiz, I was sure dumb to think I could ever be more than an engineer."

This...

And what recently happened with White-Blue on Titan.

It barely lasted any time at all before Geordi was demoted for lackluster reasoning.

Captain is a rank and a Job.
Holding the rank of Captain doesn't mean you have to BE the Captain.

Sigh.