Charting the Novel-verse
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
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Yes, The Left Hand of Destiny is in the same continuity as most modern Trek novels. It is, after all, part of the DS9 post-finale series, albeit a peripheral part. (Although there is an unintentional contradiction between the way LHoD and the Christie Golden Voyager novels depict the Klingon planet Boreth. LHoD portrays it as a frozen waste with no indigenous life, but the VGR novels depict a jungle where the Klingons conduct hunting rituals. I think those can be reconciled if one assumes the jungle is a terraformed enclave; if all the life was brought in artificially, then it can be reconciled with the lack of indigenous life asserted in LHoD.)
We're implicitly directed to gloss over the contradictory appearances of Boreth in Spirit Walk Book One, which while building directly on The Farther Shore also references the events of The Left Hand of Destiny. So the later Christie Golden books explicitly acknowledge that LHoD happened. No explanation is given for the climate portrayals; we're supposedly just meant to shrug it off as one of those things that happens. But I like Christopher's suggestion.
"This is our most sacred planet! I want to go hunting there!"
"But, Chancellor, there aren't any lifeforms on Boreth"
"Yes, I desire to hunt in the jungles of sacred Boreth".
"But Chancellor!"
*Chancellor gives meaningful look*
"Sigh. Yes, Chancellor. As you command".
"This is our most sacred planet! I want to go hunting there!"
"But, Chancellor, there aren't any lifeforms on Boreth"
"Yes, I desire to hunt in the jungles of sacred Boreth".
"But Chancellor!"
*Chancellor gives meaningful look*
"Sigh. Yes, Chancellor. As you command".
When obsessing over continuity, it's important to remember that the Star Trek tv/film continuity is massively broken. There are numerous insurmountable continuity issues (for example, the TOS Enterprise could have made Voyager's journey in a month at warp 8.4 according to "That Which Survives", but Voyager would take 75 years at warp 9.975 according to "Caretaker" - and then the techical manuals try and say TNG era warp speeds are faster than TOS ones!
). The only way to make it fit together as a cohesive whole is to treat it all like this. It's all the same story, even if the details don't match. That way, all the novels, comics, episodes and movies fit into one big happy vague history.
In other words, if the climate of Boreth spoils it for you, you're reading it wrong.
). The only way to make it fit together as a cohesive whole is to treat it all like this. It's all the same story, even if the details don't match. That way, all the novels, comics, episodes and movies fit into one big happy vague history.In other words, if the climate of Boreth spoils it for you, you're reading it wrong.
^ Well said. 
(dropping the continuity-mad persona for a moment 
). That's even what Spirit Walk did with Boreth - it referenced the events of The Left Hand of Destiny without feeling the need to attempt any sort of climatic reconciliation. I like it when books do offer explanations for continuity issues (in the novels or canonical), but that's just my preference. Overall, we mustn't become too mired in continuity that we forget to enjoy Trek or neglect the desire to have good stories. My deranged Nasat is even a self-deprecating exaggeration of my desire for tight continuity, a bit of a self-reminder.
(dropping the continuity-mad persona for a moment ). That's even what Spirit Walk did with Boreth - it referenced the events of The Left Hand of Destiny without feeling the need to attempt any sort of climatic reconciliation. I like it when books do offer explanations for continuity issues (in the novels or canonical), but that's just my preference. Overall, we mustn't become too mired in continuity that we forget to enjoy Trek or neglect the desire to have good stories. My deranged Nasat is even a self-deprecating exaggeration of my desire for tight continuity, a bit of a self-reminder.
With regard to the "That Which Survives" issue and others, I generally find it's best to treat all numbers in Star Trek as suggestions or placeholders rather than strictly accurate information, whether it's stardates or warp factors or distances or whatever. I pay a little more attention to stardates in the 24th-century novels, because many of us are working from a common theory based on this stardate calculator (or at least using the same calendrical assumptions), so there's some consistency going in. But otherwise I pay little attention to stardates and other problematical numbers. (I tried to come up with some way to systematize TOS/TMP-era stardates for Forgotten History, but it was impossible. Even the multiple stardate references within TMP itself are profoundly contradictory, with time intervals between log entries suggesting anywhere from 3.75 hours to over 32 hours per stardate unit.)
They all feature the alien characters from their respective series. So far other than Rise Like Lions, which seems to be a crossover type of thing, they've pretty much kept the stories based around the Prime Universe series. There is a IKS Gorkonish story in Shards and Shadows though.
Massively broken is a bit overstating it, a little bent and crooked in places, is all.
Some alien technology in That Which Survives was used to move the Enterprise 990 some light years, the Enterprise, probably unknowingly, simply returned back through it. A corridor that persisted for a time, maybe how the Kalandans moved their own ships. Akin loosely to the soliton wave perhaps (imho).
No worst a concept than simply going with continuity is all screwed up.
")
^Or just do what I do and ignore the precise numbers. Like, maybe they actually said 90 light-years and we "misheard" it.
The MU versions of Klag and Macet, and several other Klingons and Cardassians.
No. The only things that aren't novels that fit in with any of the novel are a small handful of comics.
You might want to check out Memory Beta, most of the questions you've been asking can be answered on there.
Why don't you read it and find out.
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