Christopher, is there currently an edict from the publisher that all the books must at least not contradict each other? I'm not talking about continuity between books by the same author, a la Vanguard, but cross all of Trek Lit.
Certainly not. There's no "edict" beyond staying consistent with onscreen Trek. The internovel continuity was the choice of the editors and authors. We do it because it's fun and creatively useful. But those of us who have stories to tell that are incompatible with the novel continuity have also been free to do so. In addition to the Shatner novels (the latest of which contradicted previous ones) and
Crucible, there was the recent
The Children of Kings, which was implicitly an alternate-timeline tale of sorts that didn't quite fit in either the canonical or new-movie continuity; and there was
Troublesome Minds, which doesn't conflict with the main novel continuity but doesn't reference it either.
Margaret Clark wasn't around as sole editor long enough to say for sure, but I had the impression that she was trying to move away from the continuity-heavy approach to the books and go back to a stronger emphasis on standalones, or at least achieve more of a balance between the two approaches. So it's a matter of the editors' preference, not some corporate dictate.
For example, is the Typhon Pact something that ALL Trek authors must acknowledge and are constrained by? Is it "book canon" that Riker and Troy are on the Titan, Ezri on the Destiny, etc and anyone wanting to use those characters must use them in that context?
Well, it's
film canon that Riker and Troi are on
Titan, so the books wouldn't be able to ignore that, though there'd be nothing in theory to prevent a book that postulated a different interpretation of the starship
Titan or its crew or that claimed Riker and Troi had moved on to another assignment after the film. The Shatnerverse novels used the books'
Titan crew but offered an incompatible version of that ship's service record.
But there's no such thing as "book canon." There is the main novel continuity that's emerged over the past decade, and naturally any book set in that continuity will be as consistent as it can with the rest (although occasional inconsistencies do occur despite everyone's best intentions). However, not every book has to be set in that continuity.
)
