Do continuity errors/contradictions in TrekLit bother you?

[seigezunt]

I might read Voayger novels if they promised to kill off Janeway in each book, like Kenny on South Park.

 

[Freman]

Yes. If I read a Trek book, and then a later movie or episode contradicts the story I've read (or has contradicted the book before I've read it) the story is ruined for me. That's why I found it hard to take the fiction seriously when the shows were still running. It's just the way my brain works.

Sorry, I just find that strange. By the same token, shouldn't all of Star Trek be "ruined" for you because it contradicts real life? I mean, the Eugenics Wars never happened in the 1990s. There was no book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties published in 1992. There's no Earth-Saturn probe commanded by Shaun Geoffrey Christopher slated to arrive at Saturn this year. There are no DY-class sleeper ships shuttling between Earth and Mars. And on a more fundamental level, physics and biology simply do not work the way they're portrayed in Trek. If contradictions ruin a story for you, then you should've given up on all of Trek by now. Conversely, if you're able to keep enjoying it as a work of fiction despite its irreconcilable contradictions with the world you actually live in, then why can't you enjoy a work of Trek fiction that's inconsistent with another work of Trek fiction? Why can't you just treat it as an imaginary tale to be enjoyed rather than a work of "history" that has to get the "facts" right?

 

[ClayinCA]

That's telling him!

 

[JimmyTeeKirk]

I'm not sure I'd say they bother me, per se. I suppose it's semantics, but the word "bother" implies that I'm actively annoyed by it, or that it gets to me to the point where I'd give up reading novels because of it. Instead, it's more a personal preference where I'd prefer that all stories are intertwined, and events from one novel are acknowledged as having taken place in subsequent novels.

Despite it's numerous flaws, that's one of the things I enjoy most about the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Minor discrepancies aside, each novel builds upon the events, or at the very least does not contradict, of other novels in the universe. I find that more interesting when that happens, rather than each book being itself a self-contained "universe" where it may or may not (at its own whim) touch upon anything established in a previous story.

To be honest, that's one of the things that has drawn me back into Star Trek literature -- or should I say, finally drawn me into it (I was previously just a TV watcher): the news that they were making a conscious effort to follow a sort of continuity between novels released after the so-called "re-launch".

I just find it more immersive and enjoyable when I read multiple novels set within the same supposed universe, and they compliment each other's story, rather than contradict them.

 

[Freman]

I'm not sure I'd say they bother me, per se. I suppose it's semantics, but the word "bother" implies that I'm actively annoyed by it, or that it gets to me to the point where I'd give up reading novels because of it. Instead, it's more a personal preference where I'd prefer that all stories are intertwined, and events from one novel are acknowledged as having taken place in subsequent novels.

Despite it's numerous flaws, that's one of the things I enjoy most about the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Minor discrepancies aside, each novel builds upon the events, or at the very least does not contradict, of other novels in the universe. I find that more interesting when that happens, rather than each book being itself a self-contained "universe" where it may or may not (at its own whim) touch upon anything established in a previous story.

To be honest, that's one of the things that has drawn me back into Star Trek literature -- or should I say, finally drawn me into it (I was previously just a TV watcher): the news that they were making a conscious effort to follow a sort of continuity between novels released after the so-called "re-launch".

I just find it more immersive and enjoyable when I read multiple novels set within the same supposed universe, and they compliment each other's story, rather than contradict them.

I agree wholeheartedly with everything in this post.