Did Star Trek Books grow up in 2001?

[Greg Cox]

Reading the blurb, I know she is a big part of the story. Sorry - I guess I mean what about having her face on the cover would make you want to have her be the hero, as opposed to what she already was, a big part of the story.

(Incidentally, noticing your location, have you ever thought about including the Amish as a plot point in a book?)

I assume they put Crusher on the cover because, yes, she was already prominently featured in the original outline for that book. (That was probably John Ordover's call, back in the day, since he was the editor.) But getting a sneak peak on the cover just encouraged me to beef up Crusher's part even more, especially at the end.

Meanwhile, I did include some Space Amish in a FIREFLY outline I submitted a long time ago, but, alas, that book never happened.

 

[David cgc]

I remember in the first batch of Babylon 5 novels, the publisher decided to just use the artist's sample for one of the novels rather than, effectively, commissioning five paintings for four novels. The result is that the second novel's cover has Garibaldi, Ivanova, and G'Kar on it, despite G'Kar not actually being involved in the plot.

Interesting, the third novel had the same three characters on its cover, and did feature all three of them, but given the plot involved G'Kar faking his death, I guess they decided to have another painting commissioned where G'Kar was painted as a ghostly figure floating among the stars. I guess to not give away that G'Kar hadn't actually been killed off... in a tie-in novel... set in the middle of the second season.

You know, since we're in a slow period, it might be fun to do a "judge a book by its cover" poll rating the various Trek novel covers. I remember the show forums did a sort of bracket-style where they did a poll for the best episode on each disc of the season sets, then the winner of those polls by season, then the winner of those polls by series, to find the best episodes by popular acclimation.

 

[Greg Cox]

True story: Back when I was writing my X-Men trilogy, I was surprised to see Iceman featured on the cover for Book Two. My conversation with my editor went something like this.

"Gorgeous covers, but why is Iceman on Book Two? He's not in these books."

"He's not?"

"Nope."

"Well, it's too late to have the cover repainted."

"Okay, okay. I'll work him in somewhere."

And THAT'S why Iceman shows up partway through the trilogy.

 

[Avro Arrow]

And THAT'S why Iceman shows up partway through the trilogy.

"And THAT'S why The Iceman Cometh" was *right there*.

 

[Stevil2001]

I saw M. T. Anderson talk about his novel Feed once. He said they had meeting after meeting about the cover: did the back of the guy's head look too much like a penis? what color should the background be?

Only pretty late in the process did someone pause to wonder why the guy on the cover had no hair. So Anderson had to add a line to the book to establish the main character's hair fell out, but the book had already had been typeset, so the line had to go at the end of a chapter so it wouldn't push any other text around, and it wasn't referenced anywhere else in the book.

 

[Greg Cox]

Another true story, about the cover of the first Khan book.

"Hey, Greg, is there going to be a helicopter in the book?"

"Um, why?"

"'Cause there's a helicopter on the cover."

"Fine. I'll work a helicopter in somewhere."

 

[KRAD]

I should mention that the editor of the X-Men/Avengers trilogy was me.

 

[James Swallow]

True story: Back when I was writing my X-Men trilogy, I was surprised to see Iceman featured on the cover for Book Two.

I had something like this happen with one of my Warhammer novels. I was well into writing the last quarter of the book when editorial showed me the finished cover - an epic, heavy metal album-style battle scene on an alien planet.... Which wasn't in the story and didn't show the main character.
So I wrote in a moment at the end of the novel where the main character reflects on their POV of a prophetic recurring dream they keep having...about an epic battle on an alien planet...
And after that, I made sure to open up a line of conversation with the cover artist, and together we made sure that the covers of future novels featured stuff that actually happened in the book...

 

[Christopher]

I think the first time something like that happened to me was on Titan: Orion's Hounds, when I saw that Melora Pazlar was on the cover even though I hadn't given her a central role in the story. I tried to increase the size of her role somewhat to fit.

There were a couple of other cases where I worked details from a cover into the manuscript in progress. In The Buried Age, Stephan Martiniere's depiction of the location where the depicted scene was set really helped me punch up the novel's description of it, which had been very bland in the first draft. And when I saw how dark and ominous and impressive the cover of Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder was, it influenced me to take the tone of portions of the novel in a darker direction than I might have otherwise.

 

[Trek Survivor]

I resist the idea that Star Trek books were not "grown up" or were only "light" and/or "fluffy" before 2001... mind you, I'm not sure light and fluffy are negative things anyway? Not everything has to be grim/lots of death/universe-invasion/end of the galaxy type stuff.



All my favourite Trek novels are pre-2001, so there you go :-)

 

[Greg Cox]

Sometimes wires just get crossed, cover-wise. As an editor, I dropped the ball once by neglecting to tell the art department that the third book in a trilogy took place twenty years after the previous two books. So, of course, the artist painted the hero as the youngish man he was on the first two book covers, not an older version of the same character.

My bad.

(Although, honestly, having the hero look recognizably the same on all three book covers possibly wasn't a bad thing, marketing-wise.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Somebody once described TrekLit from the Bantam era, and the early Pocket era (well before 2001, mind you) as light reading, suitable for reading at the beach. (I'm paraphrasing from memory, and I don't quite understand what it was even supposed to mean, since I have easy access to a number of very well known California beaches, which I all but totally ignore).

TrekLit grew up a great deal just from 1980 to 1990. And from 1990 to 2000. And since 2000. It wasn't really anything abrupt, from where I sit, although the abrupt loss of Richard Arnold's retarding influence certainly allowed the process to accelerate.

Although some of it grew up in not-so-good ways (I could die happy without another S31 story, for example.)

 

[Destructor]

I had something like this happen with one of my Warhammer novels. I was well into writing the last quarter of the book when editorial showed me the finished cover - an epic, heavy metal album-style battle scene on an alien planet.... Which wasn't in the story and didn't show the main character.
So I wrote in a moment at the end of the novel where the main character reflects on their POV of a prophetic recurring dream they keep having...about an epic battle on an alien planet...
And after that, I made sure to open up a line of conversation with the cover artist, and together we made sure that the covers of future novels featured stuff that actually happened in the book...

That's hilarious. I'm a big fan of your Horus Heresy novels!

 

[James Swallow]

That's hilarious. I'm a big fan of your Horus Heresy novels!

Cheers! (The book I'm talking about there was The Flight of the Eisenstein...)

 

[Johnny Luck]

True story: Back when I was writing my X-Men trilogy, I was surprised to see Iceman featured on the cover for Book Two. My conversation with my editor went something like this.

"Gorgeous covers, but why is Iceman on Book Two? He's not in these books."

"He's not?"

"Nope."

"Well, it's too late to have the cover repainted."

"Okay, okay. I'll work him in somewhere."

And THAT'S why Iceman shows up partway through the trilogy.

Wait, are you talking about the Gamma Quest trilogy? I just received the new omnibus edition of it so I can finally finish reading it all. Back then, I had read the first two books but never found the third one. Really enjoyed it but later on, trying to find copies on eBay and such was proving to be a slightly expensive chore so I was thrilled to see it all reissued as an omnibus.

 

[KRAD]

Yes, Greg is referring to the Gamma Quest trilogy. As I believe I said above, I was his editor on that....