Battling apathy

[Thrawn]

Maybe we just over-indulge on a good thing and stop enjoying it after a while. It happens with every pleasure and I doubt Trek lit is an exception.

That was absolutely the case with my hiatus from TrekLit between 03 and 08. It happens to me all the time. And sometimes it's really hard to tell the difference between that and a drop in quality.

On the plus side, I've been reading a lot of standalone sci-fi novels that've been building up on my shelf for the last couple of years. Recent discoveries: Greg Egan and Michael Flynn.

Both good choices--I like the conjunction of 'hard' science-fiction and a more social sciences outlook. It often seems to me that a lot of scenarios forget to ask how people change. In the same vein, I never pass up an opportunity to recommend Robert J. Sawyer, who writes to similar issues (if not the same sensibility) and has become one of my favourite authors as I've been reading his corpus over the last few years.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

Way ahead of you. Calculating God is one of my favorites. Haven't read WWW though; I'm waiting for the whole trilogy to be published. I find with long waits between books that I forget them.

It sounds like Costas left too.

What? When did this happen?

It might be a bad idea to drag this up again, but there was an incident in another thread where someone jokingly asked Christopher if his editor was still Costas and he couldn't comment on it. Which was an awkward situation for him, and so I hesitate to bring it up, but I think made it pretty clear that something else is going on there. We don't have official word either way, but I have a suspicion that we'll hear before too long that someone else is running the show now.

 

[MNM]

How about some ideas, where would we like trek books to go after Typhon Pact Cold War.

I want the Ascendant arc in DS9. If I get that I will be happy, despite the last 18 monthe or so being filled with too many underwhelming and/or disappointing books (Soul Key and the general mirror universe stuff in DS9, the Enterprise Romulan War book, the Typhon Pact books so far (not to mention last years Titan and Voyage books which I didnt realoly enjoy) etc..)

Destiny/Singular Destiny/Loosing the Peace was a peak of quality which has not been matched since in my opinion, in fact the only Trek book I have read since then that was as good as or better than I exected it to be was Sorrows of Empire.

 

[Defcon]

We don't have official word either way, but I have a suspicion that we'll hear before too long that someone else is running the show now.

FWIW, the German publisher has stated recently that there are delays with the approval process because "the lady responsible" isn't with Pocket anymore and the person (male article) now responsible seems to be still in familiarization phase.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Maybe we just over-indulge on a good thing and stop enjoying it after a while. It happens with every pleasure and I doubt Trek lit is an exception.

I ran a ST club from 1984-1992 and saw, over those years, many diehard fans wax and wane in their enthusiasm for all many of ST, not just those reading tie-ins. Some really dedicated, passionate fans can become angry and hateful about the show they used to love, and the fans who remain faithful. Others can become totally apathetic, overnight, about some aspect.

A sizable group I knew walked away from fandom, blaming the "dumbing down" in ST IV as "The Reason". I saw mad-keen Picard fans start calling him a BOF (boring old fart) in about Season Six of TNG. I know fans who ignored DS9 and VOY altogether, and then were reborn in their geekdom due to ENT.

Cycles of enthusiasm/apathy are quite normal.

 

[JD]

It sounds like Costas left too.

What? When did this happen?

We don't have official word either way, but I have a suspicion that we'll hear before too long that someone else is running the show now.

FWIW, the German publisher has stated recently that there are delays with the approval process because "the lady responsible" isn't with Pocket anymore and the person (male article) now responsible seems to be still in familiarization phase.

I know nobody can confirm or deny this, but I think I remember sometime in the recent past an author mentioning Jaime was on maternity leave. Maybe she never came back.

As for the quality of the line, I was just looking at the releases this year, and so far I've actually only read three books from this year, Seven Deadly Sins, Sorrows of Empire, and I'm about 80ish pages into ZSG. So far I haven't had any real problems with any of them. I will admit that Seven Deadly Sins and ZSG haven't been anything absolutely amazing, but I have still enjoyed them. I think part of the problem is that Destiny and it's followups reached an unmaintainable level of awesomeness, and pretty much anything that comes out after them is gonna be disappointing to people expecting that same quality from every single one of the books.
I will admit I have been surprised just how bad the reviews for some of the books have been. I decided to completely avoid Unspoken Truth, which I was really looking forward to, simply because the reviews for it on here were so negative, same thing goes for Inception, which has been sitting on my shelf unread since it came out.
I just checked and apparently Treason came out this year to, and while I don't remember much of it I do remember being disappointed by it.
While I'm nowhere near ready to give up on TrekLit, I have been rather shocked by the reactions alot of the books I have been getting this year.
So I'm gonna just hope that next year's books are better.
And for those wondering about where the franchise is headed now, it looks like we'll be getting more standalones. I just checked and here's how thing line up
Ongoing: 9 (2 Typhon Pact, 3 Starfleet Academy, 1 Voyager, 2 Vanguard, and 1 Ent)
Standalone: 4
Reprint: 1

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

We don't have official word either way, but I have a suspicion that we'll hear before too long that someone else is running the show now.

FWIW, the German publisher has stated recently that there are delays with the approval process because "the lady responsible" isn't with Pocket anymore and the person (male article) now responsible seems to be still in familiarization phase.

Wow, if true (signs point to yes?). Maybe Richard Arnold will become the new editor?

 

[JD]

I just noticed something I find rather funny. Everyone is talking about how disappointed they were by ZSG, but when I checked the review thread a coupel minuets ago it is almost all average and above. So obviously it must not be quite as disappointing as everyone is making it out to be.

 

[Turtletrekker]

^I'm enjoying it so far. It's not spectacular, but its a solid read.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I think the last things I got really excited about reading in the Treklit line were TNES, the Seven Deadly Sins anthology, and Myriad Universes.

The thing about these is that these writers were a bit freer to go off the reservation. Since they were working with things that are not as tightly locked into the continuity the rest of the novels are, the authors really had a chance to shine.

The lockstep stuff, though...it just doesn't anymore. I agree about butchering the Ezri character; the rise to captain so fast just makes NO sense. Same thing with the MU which not only drove an already stupid concept into the ground, but also totally destroyed two of the best DS9 episodes, "Second Skin" and "Ties of Blood and Water." And those are just a few examples.

End result: I have almost totally lost interest in Treklit--which is ironic, because it was one of the better examples of Treklit that brought me here to this board in the first place: the Terok Nor series.

These days, though...for the most part, I prefer to read older Treklit (and the TOS stuff is THE best, back when the writers were truly free), or fanfic because the latitude the authors had, and the passion, is just wonderful. The lockstep stuff rarely does it for me anymore.

I might pop in if something Cardassian-focused is done again, but unless something changes, or Treklit gets a reboot (if the Trek XI stuff ever happens, it might be worth a look--less lockstep...I HOPE...), I am probably finished.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know what you mean by "lockstep." You seem to be suggesting that working in continuity restricts an author's creativity. I've never found that to be the case in my own writing experience. The nature of the modern novel continuity is largely about expanding the universe beyond canonical events and characters and exploring or developing whole new aspects of the Trek universe. A lot of my Trek fiction has been about filling in large, unexplored gaps in the Trek universe in one sense or another, which has allowed me ample room to be creative and go in my own direction. And even in those cases where I've done a story that had to be a bridge between other stories -- Aftermath, The Darkness Drops Again, Greater Than the Sum -- I've still had the opportunity to create new characters and species, introduce new ideas, and so forth. I've never felt I was in "lockstep" with anyone. Collaboration, yes, but a collaboration that didn't limit my own creative freedom.

 

[William Leisner]

The lockstep stuff, though...it just doesn't anymore. I agree about butchering the Ezri character; the rise to captain so fast just makes NO sense. Same thing with the MU which not only drove an already stupid concept into the ground, but also totally destroyed two of the best DS9 episodes, "Second Skin" and "Ties of Blood and Water." And those are just a few examples.

But they aren't examples of "lockstep" anything. All they are are examples of stuff you don't like. If the Destiny trilogy did something you liked with Ezri, and subsequent books followed up that good thing, you wouldn't be complaining about "lockstep stuff", would you?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

With everything being locked into one chronology, if it weren't one thing, it would be something else, some other decision made that all the other writers then had to live with, that would be equally annoying.

 

[JD]

But they don't have to all be in that one continuity, and even when they are, the series are spread out enough that it really wouldn't be that hard to avoid whatever element you don't like. You say you don't like what they did with Ezri... well, she's only appeared in two books since Destiny so it's not like she's hard avoid. Same goes for the Mirror Universe stuff, it's only appeared in the DS9 and MU books, and there is alot of stuff in the MU books that is unrelated to the DS9 storyline.

 

[BillJ]

The current books just lack a general 'fun factor'... for me at least. YMMV.

 

[ronny]

With everything being locked into one chronology, if it weren't one thing, it would be something else, some other decision made that all the other writers then had to live with, that would be equally annoying.

Seems like if that kind of thing annoyed the writers, maybe media tie in work might not be for them.

 

[Idoliside]

I think the last things I got really excited about reading in the Treklit line were TNES, the Seven Deadly Sins anthology, and Myriad Universes.

Actually The Never Ending Sacrifice was a superb read, I was surprised by how good it was. I went and bought more Una after that.

 

[Almost Unique]

I understand getting disillusioned. My enjoyment of Trek was definitely waning around 2006, and I quit Trek altogether in 2007 right up until 2009. Kinda funny, stuff in my personal life kind've coincided with this...I was in a depressed funk until I got married in 2009 and sort of rediscovered myself and my God and joy in life (and joy in my wife).

The trailer for STXI got me watching onscreen Trek again, and I started checking out the comics. Then a few months ago I tried out Destiny book 1 (I hadn't read ANY novel of any kind in about 2 years!) and I fell in love with the Trek-lit world all over again. Reminds me of my junior year of high school, when I read "Double, Double" and fell in love with Trek literature for the first time.
I for one absolutely adore the litverse continuity.

 

[Christopher]

But they don't have to all be in that one continuity, and even when they are, the series are spread out enough that it really wouldn't be that hard to avoid whatever element you don't like.

That's right. It's a big fictional universe, and the degree of interconnectedness in the modern continuity tends to be overstated. Just because Destiny happened recently, some people seem to be assuming that it represents the universal norm for how the novel continuity has always worked and always will, but that's just wrong. It was an exception to the norm. As a rule, each individual series strikes its own course, with only occasional cross-references to other series or elements from them.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I think the last things I got really excited about reading in the Treklit line were TNES, the Seven Deadly Sins anthology, and Myriad Universes.

Actually The Never Ending Sacrifice was a superb read, I was surprised by how good it was. I went and bought more Una after that.

I didn't say it was bad...actually, those are the last works I really enjoyed.

 

[JoeZhang]

I thought that TNES was a really strong work and is maybe the only novel written by a franchise writer that makes me seek out more of their work.