Best of 2015 - Trek Lit - Non-Fiction

[JD]

Since we'll a couples into 2016, I thought it might be fun to do pick some best of Trek Lit categories for last year. I haven't read anything from last year myself, so I won't be voting. This thread is for individual books. I'm going off of the list on Memory Beta, so I believe this will be using the publication date. I'll be official in universe and real world non-fiction. I'll be doing other threads for comics, novels and e-novellas, series, and writer. You can pick only 1 option, and the poll will close in 2 Weeks. Which ever book has the most votes at the end will be the unofficial best non-fiction book of 2015. I know there were only two, but since I included the authors in the writers thread, I wanted to regocnize the books themselves.
Non-Fiction
The Autobiography of James T. Kirk: The Story of Starfleet's Greatest Captain
Costumes: Five Decades of Fashion From the Final Frontier

 

[Avro Arrow]

How is The Autobiography of James T. Kirk non-fiction?

At any rate, one of them I don't have (yet?), and the other one I have but haven't yet read, so no help here...

 

[Idran]

Like JD said, he's counting works presented as in-universe non-fiction as non-fiction. Since The Autobiography of James T. Kirk isn't a fictional narrative but a fictional autobiography written as such, he's counting it in this category. Which makes sense; for example, Okrand's Klingon Language books are written from an in-universe perspective describing fictional stuff just like this one is, but they're usually not categorized as fiction either.

This one probably just seems like more of a grey area because it's describing narratives even if it isn't one itself.

 

[Avro Arrow]

^ I'm guessing you're referring to this?

I'll be official in universe and real world non-fiction.

If so, then my apologies. I guess I just had difficulty parsing that sentence.

I suppose it makes sense to group them... if you had separate categories for in-universe non-fiction and real-world non-fiction, then you'd only have one entry in each category!

 

[JD]

Yeah, Idran has it right. I put together anything that wasn't just a single straight narrative, and since TAJTK presents just as an autobiography without any kind of framing story or anything, I decided to put it here.
If you vote, could you please post something so we can keep the thread active while the poll is open.

 

[Christopher]

I know it'd be pointless to have a poll with only one category, but I'm not sure being presented as an autobiography makes something nonfiction. After all, a lot of novels over the centuries have been written in the form of memoirs or first-person accounts -- Gulliver's Travels, Frankenstein, Dracula, A Princess of Mars, Catcher in the Rye, etc.

 

[JD]

I guess, but the presentation for those is pretty much as novels. From everything I've seen TAoJTK does a lot to create the illusion that it is a real autobiprophy, but it just happens to be about a fictional character from 23rd century. I was think more along the lines of presentation than actual content.

 

[Christopher]

Gulliver's Travels was going to be passed off as nonfiction with Gulliver himself as the credited author. I think Swift's authorship was actually meant to be secret and the book published as a hoax, or something like that, but the truth got out just before publication (proving that spoilers were a problem even then).

 

[JD]

I did not know that.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I think Swift's authorship was actually meant to be secret and the book published as a hoax, or something like that, but the truth got out just before publication (proving that spoilers were a problem even then).

Stupid Twitter.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

The Autobiography of James T. Kirk was such a great treat that I have to give it my vote.

 

[JD]

The poll is closed, and we finished with a tie, with both books getting 4 votes.