Best of the Bantams?

[seigezunt]

Comment in Marshak and Culbreath thread got me thinking, I've not read several of the Bantam novels.

I've read Spock Messiah (pretty good, but Scotty with red hair? wtf?), Planet of Judgement (good, but seemed like the ST elements were pasted on), Price of the Phoenix (whuuuh?), and Galactic Whirlpool (excellent).

Are any of the others any good? I like this period, when continuity was wide open...

 

[Christopher]

The Galactic Whirlpool is top of the heap, and Planet of Judgment is second-best. Nothing else from Bantam is really on the same level. Spock Must Die! is imaginative but weird; as the first ever (non-YA) Trek novel, it's pretty far off in some respects. Trek to Madworld is an entertaining comedy. World Without End and The Starless World are decent, if mediocre. The two New Voyages anthologies are a mixed bag, like most anthologies, but they have some interesting stories, notably "Mind-sifter" in the first.

And, really, of all the screwy things about Spock: Messiah!, it was Scotty's hair color that got to you?

 

[Lonemagpie]

Galactic Whirlpool's excellent, Spock Must Die is OK, Trek To Madworld is OK, and I don't remember the others well enough to comment, really.

 

[HIj'Qa]

I liked the first anthology. I read the Bantam books when they were orginally published in the '70s. Re-reading them later you see there has been a shift is peoples' take on Trek. Someone reading them for the first time 30 - 40 years later, i don't know what might be considered best.

There is Curt Danhauser's nice Guide to the Early Novels, if you want to chek it out.

 

[Steve Roby]

Yeah, as with Mack Reynolds's novel Mission to Horatius, you have to take into account when these books were written and what their historical context was. Things were a lot different back when we didn't have any movies or spinoff TV series.

Even within that historical context, though, some of the Bantam books were really not all that great.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm a big fan of Death's Angel. Weirdest aliens in Trek history, all at once. And lots of death. Murder mystery.

But I love Spock Must Die! it's one of my favourites, and has a DIRAC transmitter.

 

[Christopher]

I'm a big fan of Death's Angel. Weirdest aliens in Trek history, all at once.

I'd hardly say that. A giant cat, a giant alligator, a giant koala, a giant lamprey, a vampire, and a mermaid? Those aren't weird, and they certainly aren't alien. They're just familiar animals increased in size and given voices, along with a couple of very familiar fantasy creatures.

 

[Steve Roby]

I'm a big unfan of Death's Angel. The aliens are part of the reason why -- everything resembles something from Earth and has a name that pounds it home.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm a big fan of Death's Angel. Weirdest aliens in Trek history, all at once.

I'd hardly say that. A giant cat, a giant alligator, a giant koala, a giant lamprey, a vampire, and a mermaid? Those aren't weird, and they certainly aren't alien. They're just familiar animals increased in size and given voices, along with a couple of very familiar fantasy creatures.

...and you don't find anything weird about giant versions of earth animals that can talk? I'd be fairly freaked out.

And that shape-shifting pyramid guy. Great.

 

[Christopher]

...and you don't find anything weird about giant versions of earth animals that can talk?

Compared to aliens that actually have some imagination behind them and bear no resemblance to anything on Earth? Something like Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers or Clement's Mesklinites? No.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I love Spock, Messiah! It's lovingly trashy.

 

[PaulSimpson]

Planet of Judgement was one of my early favourite Trek novels - and probably one of the few I've reread in the last 5 years (apart from ones I've needed to go in to for work reasons... yes, folks, that means I've got to reread the Phoenix books!)

 

[ClayinCA]

I liked Vulcan!...yeah, I said it.

 

[Daddy Todd]

...yes, folks, that means I've got to reread the Phoenix books!)

I feel your pain!

 

[seigezunt]

The Galactic Whirlpool is top of the heap, and Planet of Judgment is second-best. Nothing else from Bantam is really on the same level. Spock Must Die! is imaginative but weird; as the first ever (non-YA) Trek novel, it's pretty far off in some respects. Trek to Madworld is an entertaining comedy. World Without End and The Starless World are decent, if mediocre. The two New Voyages anthologies are a mixed bag, like most anthologies, but they have some interesting stories, notably "Mind-sifter" in the first.

And, really, of all the screwy things about Spock: Messiah!, it was Scotty's hair color that got to you?

It's been a few years since I read it. It was the one glaring error that stuck with me. I'd love to hear some others.

Oh, I forgot about the New Voyages. I agree, a mixed bag. I loved Mind Sifter at the time, and was reminded of it when I recently read Ishmael for the first time. I wonder if I'd still like it.

 

[PaulSimpson]

It's worth pointing out that for those of us who remember the 1970s, the Bantam books were a godsend. They were the nearest to new Star Trek we thought we were ever going to get (in the same way that the Virgin New Adventures sustained fans after Dr Who went offair in 1989).

OK, some of them didn't stand up to sustained rereading (to be fair, at least one didn't really stand up to an initial reading!) but of all the goodness-knows-how-many Star Trek books I've got (which is all the officially published ones), the Bantam novels are the ones I've reread the most in my lifetime.

Going back into The Price of the Phoenix this afternoon was like revisiting an old friend - you remember the arguments as well as the good bits!

Although I've read all the books, some of the Bantam novels are the ones I recollect most. No, there wasn't anything there of the quality of some of the recent stuff, and yes, some of them were standard SF with the Trek characters shoehorned in, but they were new Star Trek, at a time when we thought 79 live action episodes and 22 animated were all that we'd ever see.

P

 

[seigezunt]

It's worth pointing out that for those of us who remember the 1970s, the Bantam books were a godsend. They were the nearest to new Star Trek we thought we were ever going to get (in the same way that the Virgin New Adventures sustained fans after Dr Who went offair in 1989).

OK, some of them didn't stand up to sustained rereading (to be fair, at least one didn't really stand up to an initial reading!) but of all the goodness-knows-how-many Star Trek books I've got (which is all the officially published ones), the Bantam novels are the ones I've reread the most in my lifetime.

Going back into The Price of the Phoenix this afternoon was like revisiting an old friend - you remember the arguments as well as the good bits!

Although I've read all the books, some of the Bantam novels are the ones I recollect most. No, there wasn't anything there of the quality of some of the recent stuff, and yes, some of them were standard SF with the Trek characters shoehorned in, but they were new Star Trek, at a time when we thought 79 live action episodes and 22 animated were all that we'd ever see.

P

Yes, that's very true. I remember picking up a new Bantam novel (and the Blish novels) at the local drug store, and it was like gold to this kid. A New Adventure!

 

[Steve Roby]

And they often came as a complete surprise, because there weren't nearly as many ways to find out what books were coming (unless you had a library with Books in Print and Forthcoming Books handy, assuming you knew they existed, or a bookstore whose staff would let you look at the publishers' catalogues).

I still remember the excitement of finding the first two Star Trek Logs books, having had no idea the animated series was going to be adapted into book form, or the day I found the first two fotonovels and the long-awaited Star Trek 12, or... well, believe me, I could go on.

 

[PaulSimpson]

I still remember the excitement of finding the first two Star Trek Logs books, having had no idea the animated series was going to be adapted into book form, or the day I found the first two fotonovels and the long-awaited Star Trek 12, or... well, believe me, I could go on.

Finding Star Trek Log 10 was the one that's stuck with me!

 

[Therin of Andor]

And they often came as a complete surprise, because there weren't nearly as many ways to find out what books were coming (unless you had a library with Books in Print...)

Yeah, "Books in Print" saved my sanity when trying to get a definitive list of titles, 'cos ringing Gordon & Gotch, the Aussie distributor of Bantam Books (and the Ballantine stuff), was madness!

"Locus" was a reliable source, but all you got was a title, a month and maybe an author. Since I only started collecting in 1980, it was exhilerating to find pristine copies of "Devil World" on the "new" bookshelf. Knowing "The Galactic Whirlpool" was coming - via a Starlog extract - was wild!

My big second hand find was "World Without End", which I'd never heard of; reading the names of other unknown titles in the "Have you also read..." page of a book; a shop finally getting in Australia's impossible-to-get Fotonovel, "The Devil in the Dark"; finding very cheap first editions of Blish #1 (with no #1 on the spine; and mint condition!) and the red-spined "Spock Must Die!); and Galaxy Bookshop getting in fresh stock of the hard-to-find "Trek to Madworld".

I traveled into the city, picked "Trek to Madworld" up off the shelf - and all power to the block of CBD shops went out! It was Thursday night late trading, so we were all told to return our books to the shelves and leave the shop. Nooooooooo!! (I returned ten minutes before closing and power had been restored, so I was able to get my fix after all!)