Beginning Chapter One

[David Strickhouser]

My favorite TOS log entry was from the "The Doomsday Machine", the one Decker delivered before the attack:
Captain's log, stardate 4202.1. Exceptionally heavy subspace interference still prevents our contacting Starfleet to inform them of the destroyed solar systems we have encountered. We are now entering system L-374. Science Officer Masada reports the fourth planet seems to be breaking up. We are going to investigate."
Very crisp, detailed, commanding ... unlike the broken man sitting in auxiliary control at that moment.
Kudos to William Windom's delivery as well.

 

[David Strickhouser]

My favorite TOS log entry is from "The Doomsday Machine" the one Decker recorded before the attack:
"Captain's log, stardate 4202.1. Exceptionally heavy subspace interference still prevents our contacting Starfleet to inform them of the destroyed solar systems we have encountered. We are now entering system L-374. Science Officer Masada reports the fourth planet seems to be breaking up. We are going to investigate."
Crisp, commanding ... unlike the broken man found in the Constellation's Auxiliary Control room.
Kudos to William Windom's delivery also.

 

[David Strickhouser]

Oops, sorry. Sent twice.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Log entries as exposition are about as Star Trek as it gets.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Plus, you can see a little more of the log than an episode might show. I like putting logs in my fanfiction - they're fun to write.

The 2013 video game made extensive usage of logs to show us the characters' inner thoughts and motivations. Yeah, they were objects you were encouraged to "pick up" - though if you're fighting off attacking Gorn and have a time limit before you get stuck in an unknown area of space thanks to a wormhole device, reading your crew's diaries is probably the last thing on your mind.

 

[Christopher]

I think probably the most excessive use of captain's logs in Trek Lit was in the very early Pocket novel The Abode of Life by Lee Correy (pseudonym for the late science writer G. Harry Stine). Pretty much every chapter opened with an extended log entry that was generally 1-2 pages long and mostly recapped or commented on stuff we'd already seen in previous chapters. After a few re-readings (since there were so few novels then that I re-read them a lot), I just started skipping over the log entries, because they were mostly unnecessary.

 

[DimesDan]

So I'm curious, is it actually an order sent from on high to remove the logs from the start of novels or misinformation and personal preference against them from certain writers.

 

[Dayton Ward]

There is no mandate, one way or the other. Use 'em, don't use 'em. Whatever.

 

[Greg Cox]

There is no mandate, one way or the other. Use 'em, don't use 'em. Whatever.

Exactly. There has been no directive from on high.

Now it may well be that some editor at some point expressed some opinion regarding log entries, but there's no general preference or editorial policy as far as I know. As noted, nobody has ever said anything to me about them.

And they'll have to pry my log entries out of my cold, dead hands.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The hardcovers had prologues like that, right? I guess they were aimed at people only reading the hardcovers, so they'd know what happened in the intervening paperbacks.

The first "Star Trek" hardcovers were designed to sit alongside other science fiction hardcovers on a bookshop "New Releases" shelf. "Spock's World" and "The Lost Years" hardcovers don't even have "Star Trek" on their dustjackets' spines!

 

[Christopher]

"Spock's World" and "The Lost Years" hardcovers don't even have "Star Trek" on their dustjackets' spines!

Although none of the paperbacks did either until Chain of Attack, just a couple of years earlier. They'd just have the title, and on the front cover they'd have "The [optional adjective] new STAR TREK novel" in a smaller, non-title font. This was true of the Bantam novels as well. I remember back in 1981 when my father took me to the bookstore and I saw David Gerrold's The Galactic Whirlpool for the first time. When I showed it to my father in a "Buy me this buy me this" frenzy and explained who the author was, he said, "Just because he wrote for Star Trek, that doesn't mean you'll like his other things." I had to clarify that it was a Star Trek novel, because that wasn't immediately apparent unless you looked closely enough to see the series title in small (but blue-highlighted) print or the tiny Enterprise in the cover painting.

 

[Desert Kris]

Although none of the paperbacks did either until Chain of Attack, just a couple of years earlier. They'd just have the title, and on the front cover they'd have "The [optional adjective] new STAR TREK novel" in a smaller, non-title font. This was true of the Bantam novels as well...that wasn't immediately apparent unless you looked closely enough to see the series title in small (but blue-highlighted) print or the tiny Enterprise in the cover painting.

I quite like that minimized presentation of the books as a tie-in; in some sense emphasizing them as an original novel first, and a ST novel second. I imagine it would be easy to be cynical and make assumptions that it was to make it more marketable for general readership, or so that a person doesn't have to feel self conscious about being seen around town reading such a book.

As a comparative example, It reminds me of some earlier Star Wars books that don't emphasize the universe they are set in by having Star Wars in the title or even on the book cover, which I liked because it meant those stories didn't come with the requirement of having a war in the backdrop, they could just be adventure stories set in the galaxy of the SW story. I've seen fans complain about SW books with not enough War in them, and it's reinforced my conviction that logo-emphasis can sometimes limit a story, or place a burden of expectation on a story that makes it less free. That's the mentality I see more, deemphasizing that name is more freeing, in a way. It the same rational that made me feel like Deep Space 9 didn't need ST as part of it's title, and was fine with Enterprise the way it was originally presented as well.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I had to clarify that it was a Star Trek novel, because that wasn't immediately apparent unless you looked closely enough to see the series title in small (but blue-highlighted) print or the tiny Enterprise in the cover painting.

Oh, I know, but the "Star Trek" title was totally absent from the spines of the "Spock's World" and "The Lost Years" hardcovers.

In Australia until the mid 80s, we had some rule about the importation of US books when a UK alternative was available, and shops had to be vigilant to never leave the US or UK prices visible on the front or back covers. Many of my second hand Bantams, Ballantines and Corgis have black marker pen blurring out the original prices, although they often totally forgot the prices printed on the paperbacks' spines (in the same tiny font as "Star Trek").

 

[Stevil2001]

The first "Star Trek" hardcovers were designed to sit alongside other science fiction hardcovers on a bookshop "New Releases" shelf. "Spock's World" and "The Lost Years" hardcovers don't even have "Star Trek" on their dustjackets' spines!

This was sort of a random comment to make in reply to a post about recaps in Star Wars: The New Jedi Order hardcovers. Is the only relation "hardcovers"?

 

[Therin of Andor]

This was sort of a random comment to make in reply to a post about recaps in Star Wars: The New Jedi Order hardcovers. Is the only relation "hardcovers"?

Pardon me for being random. Sometimes it's still interesting.

I was essentially addressing your point that tie-in books are "aimed at people" in different readership demographics. Some readers read only tie-ins; some read general science fiction and might be tempted to pick up a Trek hardcover if it doesn't say Trek on the spine. Some read "Star Wars" books but need recaps.

And the OP question was "Start on the Enterprise first, or start the 'mystery' of the story first?" Identification of books with tie-in titles is part of how people start with their chosen novel: impressions from the cover.

Well it made sense to me...

 

[Christopher]

Oh, I know, but the "Star Trek" title was totally absent from the spines of the "Spock's World" and "The Lost Years" hardcovers.

And it wasn't on the spines of the early Pocket MMPBs either -- only in descriptive text on the front cover, the words "STAR TREK" but not the actual title logo. The spines just had, from top to bottom, the Pocket logo, the tiny text "POCKET SCIENCE FICTION," the book title, the author's name, "TIMESCAPE," and the price information and catalog number. The last Timescape-branded book was The Wounded Sky. The next two books, The Trellisane Confrontation and Corona, were blank between the author's name and price info, and starting with The Final Reflection, we got a tiny "STAR TREK" followed by the book number, still down at the bottom of the spine. (Although the preceding two novels, , had neither.) It wasn't until Chain of Attack that they added the logo to both the front cover and the spine.

As for Bantam's Trek novels, the early spines had, from top to bottom, the logo, a tiny "SCIENCE FICTION," the price, the title, the author, and the catalog number. Later ones, including reissues, replaced "SCIENCE FICTION" with "STAR TREK," still tiny.

 

[JD]

I find it kind of ironic that the early Trek books put so little emphasis on the Star Trek, while now it tends to be the biggest text on the cover.

 

[Christopher]

I find it kind of ironic that the early Trek books put so little emphasis on the Star Trek, while now it tends to be the biggest text on the cover.

Well, before TNG's success, Star Trek was always considered kind of a cult show. And the science fiction community looked down on SF film and television with the same kind of elitist scorn with which the mainstream literary community looked down on science fiction. So the fact that a book was based on -- gasp! -- a mere television show was something to be downplayed.

 

[JD]

I always forget that TV and movies were looked down on like that.

 

[Destructor]

I always forget that TV and movies were looked down on like that.

I'm a 'Game of Thrones' reader, and I love the TV show in equal but different ways. But there are a LOT of book-readers who look down on the show.