Digging around in my attic, found some old novels

[USS Dragon]

Was happy to find (after much digging) some old novels I have not read since 1996.

It's the "Invasion" storyline that covered, TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY. Crammed through part one and will start pt 2 today.

Also found an old hard cover of "Imzadi".

It is such great fun to find "old treasures"

Anyone else uncover any old novels they forgot they had?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Anyone else uncover any old novels they forgot they had?

In 1980, my then-fledgling ST collecting took me from second hand bookshop to second hand bookshop and I eventually saw a heavily-priced copy of "Mission to Horatius". I suddenly realised that we had that Whitman kids' book at home, in a toybox from my childhood. I'd owned "I Spy" and my younger brother owned the "Star Trek" one. So I raced home and retrieved it to stand on the shelf with my other ST acquisitions. A free collectible I'd seen at a huge price... and I didn't have to be tempted about buying!

 

[donners22]

I bought quite a few on eBay, and there's some I've not actually read yet. It's always something of a surprise to see them on the shelves.

Unfortunately, the worst example of this was when I bought Where No One Has Gone Before. I brought it home and was just putting it into my bookcase when I saw a copy of it already sitting there.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Anyone else uncover any old novels they forgot they had?

In 1980, my then-fledgling ST collecting took me from second hand bookshop to second hand bookshop and I eventually saw a heavily-priced copy of "Mission to Horatius". I suddenly realised that we had that Whitman kids' book at home, in a toybox from my childhood. I'd owned "I Spy" and my younger brother owned the "Star Trek" one. So I raced home and retrieved it to stand on the shelf with my other ST acquisitions. A free collectible I'd seen at a huge price... and I didn't have to be tempted about buying!

That's a cute story!

 

[Stevil2001]

Invasion!'s not old; it just came out--

Thirteen years ago! Jesus! Those were the first Star Trek books I made a point of buying right as they were coming out; John J. Ordover's crossover gimmick had me hook, line, and sinker. And obviously, I've never looked back since.

Thirteen years ago! That means Invasion! is to people coming into Trek fiction these days as Black Fire and The Wounded Sky were to me. Jesus! That is old.

 

[Therin of Andor]

My Blishes - and most Bantam original novels - are all second hand, but my first mint-on-shelf purchase, after reading and seeing ST:TMP, was... "Devil World".

 

[Brendan Moody]

Invasion!'s not old; it just came out--

Thirteen years ago! Jesus! Those were the first Star Trek books I made a point of buying right as they were coming out; John J. Ordover's crossover gimmick had me hook, line, and sinker. And obviously, I've never looked back since.

The Invasion! books were a turning point for me too. I'd read a couple Trek books before that, but these were the first ones I really wanted, and therefore had to buy (or, actually, persuade my aunt to buy for me, since I didn't get an allowance; I still remember having to beg). I'm ambivalent these days about the Ordover era fondness for crossovers and miniseries, but in those days I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Once I found in a basement box a copy of Jean Lorrah's Metamorphosis that I'd thought was lost; it was a happy moment.

 

[MichaelS]

I had a similar revelation, I remember. The Invasion! omnibus had just come out, and I stumbled across it on a trip to London--in Harrod's, of all places. My father bought it for me, together with the novelisation of "Far Beyond the Stars". From then on, I tried to get most of the books as they came out.

 

[USS Dragon]

All of us have not been reading ST novels as long as some

 

[Deranged Nasat]

All of us have not been reading ST novels as long as some

Indeed. The first Trek book I bought was "The Battle of Betazed". I was 12. I got hooked on Trek lit pretty much from there, and have almost every book from 2002-onwards. Speaking of finding older novels, I've filled in some of the earlier gaps in my collection (pre-2002) by rooting around in second hand book shops.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Speaking of finding older novels, I've filled in some of the earlier gaps in my collection (pre-2002) by rooting around in second hand book shops.

Although I had fewer older-title books to locate in 1980, think about how hard the task was when there was no definitive printed list of how many books there were! Halfway through finding all the James Blish adaptations, some in Bantam (US) and some in Corgi (UK), I accidentally found the Alan Dean Foster TAS adaptations - some in Ballantine (US) and some in Corgi (UK).

Every second hand book you'd find would mention two or three other novels on the page opposite the title page - and one was usually a novel you'd never heard of before! I even tried writing to the "Star Trek Welcommittee" in the USA, and their "List of Lists" was incomplete!

Eventually, I had to go to my city's main public library and search through a decade or so of the annual "Books in Print" to convince myself I had a definitive list.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Invasion!'s not old; it just came out--

Thirteen years ago! Jesus! Those were the first Star Trek books I made a point of buying right as they were coming out; John J. Ordover's crossover gimmick had me hook, line, and sinker. And obviously, I've never looked back since.

Thirteen years ago! That means Invasion! is to people coming into Trek fiction these days as Black Fire and The Wounded Sky were to me. Jesus! That is old.

I know what you mean, when someone says "I found some old books in the attic" it makes me think he found some Blishes or the Pocket Book ones that had "TIMESCAPE" written at the top!

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Speaking of finding older novels, I've filled in some of the earlier gaps in my collection (pre-2002) by rooting around in second hand book shops.

Although I had fewer older-title books to locate in 1980, think about how hard the task was when there was no definitive printed list of how many books there were! Halfway through finding all the James Blish adaptations, some in Bantam (US) and some in Corgi (UK), I accidentally found the Alan Dean Foster TAS adaptations - some in Ballantine (US) and some in Corgi (UK).

Every second hand book you'd find would mention two or three other novels on the page opposite the title page - and one was usually a novel you'd never heard of before! I even tried writing to the "Star Trek Welcommittee" in the USA, and their "List of Lists" was incomplete!

Eventually, I had to go to my city's main public library and search through a decade or so of the annual "Books in Print" to convince myself I had a definitive list.

Were you successful?

 

[Steve Roby]

It was all we had back then. And it wasn't perfect. Some books were announced and never actually published, though the listings were never removed. I remember seeing Jeff Rovin's unpublished Star T*Rek listed in BiP for ages under the title Star Trek.

As much as I appreciate having a lot more tools to track down new Trek-related books, it was fun to walk into a bookstore and find stuff you had no idea was coming. Stuff like the Alan Dean Foster Star Trek Logs and the Fotonovels just popped up in stores as a complete surprise.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Before 1989 or so ( when they started putting the "Coming Next Month!" on the inside back cover) it was kind of nice to walk into the bookstore not knowing what the book would be about or who the author was.
Of course someone would say I could still do that now by staying away from this forum.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Were you successful?

Yep. It took about three years to round up everything I'd missed!

 

[Therin of Andor]

Before 1989 or so ( when they started putting the "Coming Next Month!" on the inside back cover) it was kind of nice to walk into the bookstore not knowing what the book would be about or who the author was.

I came to depend on "Locus" (often riffling a copy at Galaxy Bookshop in Sydney) and the "Booklog" section of "Starlog" magazine. And a now-defunct Melbourne bookshop called "Space Age Books" was pretty good at blocking out what ST was due during the 80s.

"Starlog" ran exciting extracts of "Chekov's Enterprise" and "The Galactic Whirlpool", and reported on the fan furore caused by the announcement of Kirk's death in "The Entropy Effect".

 

[Lindley]

I must have been in 6th or 7th grade when I moved from Star Wars novels into Star Trek. (Which was my first real exposure to Star Trek---I'd seen a little bit on TV, but not enough to really grasp what it was about.) That would have put it.....around 95 or so? I definitely remember when Invasion! first appeared.

After buying and finishing the 40 or so books at my local used bookstore, I began buying everything as it came out or I found it used. Kept that up all the way until recently....I still buy most books, but I'm usually a few months behind. There's other stuff to be read too, after all.

The only Trek book I've started and not finished (that I can recall) is TNG: Imbalance. The Jarada just bored the hell out of me I guess. Oh, and I've yet to finish the String Theory trilogy after reading book 1. Guess that didn't grab me either.

 

[Jolaris]

*Sniff* Ah, Invasion!

The first Star Trek books I ever bought and ever read shortly after they came out. Good memories!