Spoilers Coda: Book 3: Oblivion's Gate by David Mack Review Thread
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I'm a third of a way through and, oddly, I'm not surprised by the revelation of who and what caused the incident that lead to time unraveling; it's something that's been argued for years, and now to have proof, well, a certain group of fans are going to say 'I told you so.'
Nagas and Devidians and Borg. <Sulu>Oh, my.</Sulu>
It felt very DTI, didn't it?
Hmm. After 39 chapters of "the old ultra-violence" (and once again, I find myself alluding to a movie I've never actually seen), Chapter 40 is something completely different (and yes, I have seen a fair amount of Monty Python) . . . and a perfect payoff to the whole trilogy.
I’ve known the word since high school, but only because I became obsessed with Elvis Costello’s music and he featured the word in a favorite song of mine “Tokyo Storm Warning”:
Oh, the sky fell over cheap Korean monster-movie scenery
And spilled into the mezzanine of the crushed capsule hotel
Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery
I knew I was in trouble but I thought I was in hell
Of course, we're still left with events that occur in both the Prime Universe and the First Splinter. Like Insurrection (which IMHO really doesn't deserve to be a butt-monkey) and Nemesis, and the [Hobus? Eisn? let's just call it the] Romulan Supernova. So we can still have novels about events that occur in both. And with three volumes of "Myriad Universes" shorts and novellas, we also have a precedent for fiction about events explicitly taking place out-of-continuity with canon.
Of course, this also raises the existential question: given the events of the past six years, are we living in a doomed splinter reality? While I don't recall any details, I think that question did dominate my dreams last night.
Of course, this also raises the existential question: given the events of the past six years, are we living in a doomed splinter reality? While I don't recall any details, I think that question did dominate my dreams last night.
Unfortunately I have to wait until Tuesday...
The two movies follow First Contact; the events in the movies seem to have happened in the litverse universe, but there may be small differences.
I think that the Romulus supernova did not occur in the litverse. Picard did establish that the first signs of the impending supernova of the Romulan homeworld's star occurred not long after Nemesis, in 2380. I think it very unlikely that this was missed or passed over in the litverse, especially since both Federation and Romulan scientists detected the mysterious instability and this was producing a measurable effect on the climate of Romulus. Certainly the liberalizing regime of Gell Kamemor strikes me as unlikely to have pretended nothing was happening.
All this leaves me with the inference that, whatever the trigger for the Romulan supernova, it involved something that happened in the Prime universe after the litverse split off. In the litverse Eisn was fine; in the Prime timeline, something happened.
Well here we are. I have to say 10.5 years is a long time to hold one's exit open waiting for a boot
Not yet out. You show me where you can get the eBook before November 30th.
I just received Oblivion's Gate today, so I've not had a chance to read it yet, but I will say that I'm very much of the opinion that the Romulan supernova didn't happen in the litverse as well and have been for several years. The framing device of The Good That Men Do, in which future Jake and Nog talk about Romulan history, is, in retrospect, the dog that did not bark in the nighttime. Yes, Mangels and Martin didn't know that, two years later, Abrams would blow up the Romulan star when they wrote the book, so they couldn't account for it there. But you take what's said at face value and not attempt to retcon it, you can make the argument that there's no Romulan supernova in the literary continuity.
Ann Crispin's Time for Yesterday shows that temporal distortions can cause stars to go supernova. Perhaps temporally collapsing a timeline -- or many -- to save the rest could reverberate in a way through the multiverse that causes the supernova. Ultimately, the cause of the supernova may be something that readers have to decide for themselves.
i'm holding it in my hand from Barnes & Noble. it's out
The description of the supernova that we are given in Picard, with years of advance warning and enough time for the imminent disaster to destabilize astropolitics, is inconsistent with what we know of the litverse. This warning seems to have occurred before 2381: The star-death should surely be complicating the post-Shinzon collapse of the Star Empire and the exodus of the Remans, would almost certainly play a role in the later Romulan reunification, and would definitely complicate Romulan interstellar relations. If the Star Empire under Tal'Aura was willing to turn to the Typhon Pact for food, surely it would look to the Pact for help in evacuating Romulans? If Gell Kamemor was sincere in hoping for détente with the Federation, surely she would do whatever it took to get Federation assistance?
This does leave space open for a different supernova, the quick supernova surprise of a distant star weaponized by hostile aliens described in Star Trek Online. All that I can say is that the STO timeline is fundamentally different from the Prime universe, the two having very different sequences of events.
The Charles Stross hard SF novel Iron Sunrise actually does feature temporal manipulation as the cause of a supernova of a Sol-like star, with accelerated aging of a star's core leading to an unorthodox core-collapse supernova.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sunrise
The hints we have been given in The Last Best Hope and The Dark Veil point not only to Federation and Romulan scientists suspecting that the supernova was artificially induced, but to a sect of elite and uninhibited Romulan scientists that by either doing something or not doing something seem to have led to the star-death. I have to think that these hints, by two separate authors in two separate books, are intentional.
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I will say, as a fan of alternate history, that making not the 2379 of post-Nemesis the point of divergence for the litverse but rather 2373 gives the two timelines more time to breathe and diverge. Back when we thought that the point of divergence was sometime in 2379, that left only months for the events that led to the imminent supernova of Romulus' star to occur in the Prime timeline but be somehow avoided in the litverse timeline. A half-dozen years provides more time for things to diverge, though as far as we know key points in the two timelines like Insurrection in 2375, the return of Voyager in the years up to 2378, and Nemesis in 2379 seem to have been the same.
(What diverged is something I will leave to others to speculate on. I want to stay far away from story ideas.)
(What diverged is something I will leave to others to speculate on. I want to stay far away from story ideas.)
I finished the book today. I read about 150-200 pages on and off throughout the day around yard work, etc. I'm rating it above average. The book is extremely well written in my view and ties up pretty much everything I wanted. Despite the dark tone, there are so many nice moments between characters that it's hard to put down once you get in the second half. The only reason I'm not giving it the higher score is that there are moments where it's such a gut punch in despair and sadness that i had to stop reading for a bit and step away. The last 20-25 pages are really cool as well and does a great job of bookending the last part of this continuity.
I would rank them: Book 2, Book 3, Book 1 in order of excellence. I just loved Book 2 because I was a such a big DS9 fan and loved how that book concluded.
Great job to all the writers involved and for fighting to get us a conclusion to something that meant so much to me for most of my life. Looking forward to the future of Trek lit!
I would rank them: Book 2, Book 3, Book 1 in order of excellence. I just loved Book 2 because I was a such a big DS9 fan and loved how that book concluded.
Great job to all the writers involved and for fighting to get us a conclusion to something that meant so much to me for most of my life. Looking forward to the future of Trek lit!
When I read this post yesterday, my brain went, "It was Kang the Conqueror, wasn't it?"
When I got to the scene that lays it all out, I was reminded of Peter David's line in Imzadi about time travel giving Geordi headaches and how "this" was a nosebleed.
The Litverse supernova was Hobus, the PU supernova was Eisn?
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