Diane Duane and the Rihannsu saga

[Veeza]

Actually, that does beg the question - does a character appearance make the novel a part on an overall arc or series, or does that novel have to include a plot point or a theme to be considered that?

Intersting thought.

I remember some early novels that were loosly tied together by the inclusion of the security chief 'Thomson'

J.M. Dillard invented the character for Mindshadow with following use in Demons/Bloodthirst/The Lost Years.
The character was also used by Gene DeWeese in 'Chain of Attack'

I think Duane may have used Thomson in some of her novels? Which would pull all above novels into the 'Duaneverse' Sort of.

 

[F. King Daniel]

There was a thread a while ago with a gigantic continuity chain that started a little like that. Almost every one of the damn books was in it by the end!

 

[diankra]

Actually, that does beg the question - does a character appearance make the novel a part on an overall arc or series, or does that novel have to include a plot point or a theme to be considered that?

Intersting thought.

I remember some early novels that were loosly tied together by the inclusion of the security chief 'Thomson'

J.M. Dillard invented the character for Mindshadow with following use in Demons/Bloodthirst/The Lost Years.
The character was also used by Gene DeWeese in 'Chain of Attack'

I think Duane may have used Thomson in some of her novels? Which would pull all above novels into the 'Duaneverse' Sort of.

Ingrit Thomson, ISTR. One of the common themes in the early 1980s novels is that the writers realised the Enterprise should have had a security chief as part of the main team, so they either used some of the one-offs we saw in the series (leading to continuity problems), or created their own.
It made sense for the writers to just choose one character to keep on and share her between them (until that chap banned the idea).

 

[Therin of Andor]

Ingrit Thomson, ISTR.

She was known as both Ingrid and Ingrit, and Tomson and Thompson, depending on the author.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Ingrit_Tomson

 

[Christopher]

I remember some early novels that were loosly tied together by the inclusion of the security chief 'Thomson'

J.M. Dillard invented the character for Mindshadow with following use in Demons/Bloodthirst/The Lost Years.

Tomson was far from the only recurring character in those books. Dillard had a whole recurring cast, including Lisa Nguyen, an Andorian that I think was named Lamia, and a couple of others. They provided her books with a unifying arc as their storylines advanced.

 

[Therin of Andor]

They provided her books with a unifying arc as their storylines advanced.

Especially the shock when she killed one off after surviving the first book.

 

[Stevil2001]

I remember some early novels that were loosly tied together by the inclusion of the security chief 'Thomson'

J.M. Dillard invented the character for Mindshadow with following use in Demons/Bloodthirst/The Lost Years.

Tomson was far from the only recurring character in those books. Dillard had a whole recurring cast, including Lisa Nguyen, an Andorian that I think was named Lamia, and a couple of others. They provided her books with a unifying arc as their storylines advanced.

Lamia! I loved Lamia. Also, there was Ensign (formerly Lieutenant) Stanger.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'd love a 24th century book in the current continuity to tell us (or at least hint at) the ultimate fates of Lamia, Stanger, T(h)ompson, Tanzer, Nahrat, Lia and the rest. Someone let me know if we've already found out somewhere along the way!

IMO they were the predecessors of Kadohata, Choudhury, Keru and the others currently spliced with the TV crews.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'd love a 24th century book in the current continuity to tell us (or at least hint at) the ultimate fates of Lamia, Stanger, T(h)ompson, Tanzer, Nahrat, Lia and the rest. Someone let me know if we've already found out somewhere along the way!

Well, we know that Harb Tanzer was nearing retirement age. He was the Boothby of his era, and had he been a live-action character in a "Phase II" series I could see him playing a similar role.

Nahrat the horta certainly made a few appearances beyond Diane Duane's books.

JM Dillard's Lamia may well have been the Andorian woman glimpsed on the bridge in the "Debt of Honor" graphic novel (or convenient coincidence), although when Chris Claremont tried to squeeze Arex, M'Ress and Naraht into a later reunion scene, Richard Arnold quashed the idea.

Dillard's TNG novel (with Kathleen O'Malley), "Possession", continues the alien possession arc from her earlier TOS novel, "Demons", but not her regular TOS crew, of course.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It would be difficult to fill us in on the fates of these characters without it being too "fanwanky", but a few subtle (or not-so-subtle) hints would be cool.

I loved "T'Pol's World" in Captain's Peril. It said T'Pol = greatness and didn't hold up the story one iota.

Something similar for the 23rd century 'expanded universe' characters (and that includes the DC comics crew) would be awesome. But don't give them all planets! Same for giving them all namesake ships (FASA already tried that)

 

[Therin of Andor]

I loved "T'Pol's World" in Captain's Peril. It said T'Pol = greatness and didn't hold up the story one iota.

Except if you'd just read other novels with mention of a ship named after Tucker, a monument named after Shran, a Sato namedrop in a Kodos storyline, a throwaway line about beagles being transported, the existence of a graduation hall at the Academy named after Archer, and then a park named after Therin.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I must admit Collision Course went way too far, seemingly naming every SFA building after an NX-01 crewmember (plus one after First Contact's Lily, IIRC). But wouldn't a nod to an obscure character most people have never heard of mean so much more than the usual canon character-references to longtime fans?

So...what do you have to do to get a park around here?

 

[Therin of Andor]

So...what do you have to do to get a park around here?

Sssshhhh! If you talk about it in public forums too often, they send the terrorists to blow it up, then they send the Borg around to finish the job!

 

[milo bloom]

Was the Bloodwing story thing ever reprinted with all five books? I almost picked up the four book one at Half Price Books this weekend until it mentioned the fifth book coming out and I would rather have an all in one book.

 

[ronny]

Was the Bloodwing story thing ever reprinted with all five books?

no

 

[Deranged Nasat]

So...what do you have to do to get a park around here?

Sssshhhh! If you talk about it in public forums too often, they send the terrorists to blow it up, then they send the Borg around to finish the job!

 

[Christopher]

Was the Bloodwing story thing ever reprinted with all five books? I almost picked up the four book one at Half Price Books this weekend until it mentioned the fifth book coming out and I would rather have an all in one book.

The collection of the first three books (it's technically only three, it's just that the third was originally published in two volumes) was put out at the same time the final book came out, in order to get them back into print so the whole series could be read together. So that's the best you're going to get -- one trade and one regular paperback.

 

[rfmcdpei]

^Those are pretty trivial textual differences. Maybe they were typos that slipped in, or maybe Duane misremembered the details and didn't consider it important enough to keep them straight, since back then the idea of a unified book continuity wasn't as prominent as it is today. What continuity there had been in earlier years had been fairly loose and not absolute.

From what I remember of Intellivore, Picard presented the episode with Iruhe as one of the several (many?) folkloric stories telling how the Romulans got to their homeworld. "This one says that the Romulans left Vulcan in a half-dozen generation tarships ..." This neatly allows for its inclusion in the Duaneverse, or in any other sub-verse; the tale's just what was reported to the galactic folklore banks, with no guarantee as to accuracy.

 

[Turtletrekker]

^Indeed, the Romulan history told in The Romulan Way is told from the perspective of a Federation historian and not from the POV of the historical figures. Therefore,YMMV in your own personal interpretations.

 

[Timo]

Really, many things fairly crucial to our own western culture and quite a bit less than 2,000 year old are recorded oly in the form of myth or saga, there having been no written source originally (those pesky barbarians driving the Latin scholars away from all the interesting places). Now erect a few obstacles between the peoples involved in the sagas and the historians recording them, such as the Romulan Neutral Zone...

In fact, whatever trust one places on what S'Task did or didn't do, one would do well to doubt the very existence of Surak. Vulcan may have had written history long before him, but supposedly succumbed badly to "nonculture shock" immediately afterwards...

Although I hope nobody writes a novel where one of our regular Vulcan heroes creates the Surak myth by impersonating the guy in a causality loop!

Timo Saloniemi