DS9 Relaunch lit

[Christopher]

The IKG/KE series was kinda jumped forward in A Singular Destiny. Several of the characters play a minor role in the story , and it also gives us some updates on what has happened to other characters who don't actually appear in the story. We don't know if any there will be know if there will be anymore entries in the series, but it does show and tell us what the characters are up to 5 years after the last KE book.

Oh, good point. I think Klag's status as of 2381 was established in Destiny before that, come to think of it. And of course both DES and ASD revealed some things about the status of the Corps of Engineers characters at that point. So that series was "kinda jumped forward" as well, at least to the same limited extent.

I guess, basically, the only 24th-century Lit characters whose status wasn't established in Destiny were the DS9 characters other than those aboard the Aventine. And I guess some of the NF characters, although there was an allusion to Calhoun's ship.

 

[Steve Roby]

Does everyone on this board read / purchase all ST lit that comes out?

I'm pretty sure Therin and Steve Roby buy all of them as well and there are most likely some others, too.

Yep. Haven't actually read all of them, but I've been reading Star Trek books for about 40 years. So why stop now?

I don't like every Trek novel I read, but each of the Trek TV series had episodes I didn't like, too. They're all still part of the great Trek mosaic.

 

[JD]

For the past few years now, I've collected almost everything. I first started off my Trek Lit experience back before I could even read, my mom used to read from the YA Trek books before I went to bed, and then once I was old enough I started reading them myself. My first adult Trek books were the first four NF, then I found out about the DS9 post finale books, and expanded to them. After I liked them, and found out about the connections to other books, I continued to expand my reading until I was reading almost everything. There is the occasional book that I don't read either due to lack of interest or bad reviews.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I first started off my Trek Lit experience back before I could even read, my mom used to read from the YA Trek books before I went to bed.

OT, but I must thank my grandmother for my first ST reading experience, but I had totally forgotten it. I knew only TAS and a few selected TOS episodes (repeated "for the first time in colour") in 1975, when colour TV came to Australia. On my 21st birthday, a friend described attending the gala premiere night of TMP. All week I'd been reading a serialized set visit report, which had been featured in the daily newspaper.

Finding the novelization of TMP in a local supermarket's checkout book stand, I read it in a weekend while waiting for the movie to officially open, and then began discovering the Blish, Foster, Haldeman and Marshak/Culbrealth books. Then, during early 1980, I saw a copy of the Whitman "Mission to Horiatius" YA hardcover on a high shelf of a second hand bookshop. It was $75.00!

I suddenly remembered that I owned the Whitman "I Spy" novel from my childhood, but my younger brother had received "Star Trek: Mission to Horatius". I raced home, dug through a long-neglected childhood toybox, and found both books. I recalled I'd read both books not long after we'd first received them, when I had a bad cold and was confined to bed. Whitman's TV books originally would have sold for a few cents; this one was in much better condition than the one I'd seen in the second hand bookshop - and my brother still doesn't know I "borrowed" it for my ever-growing ST collection.

My favourite early reactions to the DS9 Relaunch: an Andorian regular character (promoted via a cool colour photo of a model in white dreadlocks and blue skin), and the inclusion of Commander Jast, a Bolian female first introduced in the WildStorm comic mini-series, "n-Vector". (It was years later I heard from Marco Palmieri that he'd asked WildStorm to include her in the comic, setting up a huge surprise for "Avatar".)

 

[Janos]

I wonder when we'll get the next DS9 relaunch lit? Typhon Pact books, from what I understand here, aren't really DS9 books or reveal much about them, but 3 books highlight Sisko, Shar, and Dax/Bashir. (Haven't read them yet, so no spoilers please. ) Now, we have Indistinguishable From Magic which includes Nog.

So, with no DS9 book solicited and current TNG books as noted dealing with the DS9 lit cast mainstays, is my worry unjustified about S&S's committment to the DS9 relaunch lit? I sure hope when the books come they will still feature many of the characters from the TV show and the lit as well.

Still not clear on the plan for the Aventine. I guess time will tell.

 

[Christopher]

^All we know is that no DS9 book has been announced yet. There's usually a lag of several months between the commissioning of a new project and its announcement, so you can't assume something isn't in the works just because you don't know about it yet.

And it's hardly unprecedented for any given Trek series to have a slow year now and then. It's been a long time since any of the series could be expected to come out on a regular schedule from year to year -- not since the days when the only book series were those based on the TV shows and they took turns. If a given series is absent from the schedule for a given year, it doesn't mean the publisher's "commitment" for the series has waned, it just means that other projects took precedence that year for whatever reason.

 

[Janos]

Fair enough. Its good that we have a breather from DS9 this year.... so I can catch up.

The ST book market isn`t the same as it was 10-15 years ago for sure. Wasn`t there more than 1 ST book coming out almost monthly for a while.... or was it always roughly 1 ST book a month?

 

[JD]

There were two a month years ago. But I think they had already stopped that before Enterprise was even off the air.

 

[Thrawn]

Like 2003, if memory serves.

 

[Christopher]

Back when there was only TOS, Pocket typically released six books a year, one every other month (though it took them a couple of years to get up to that pace; the earliest Pocket novels came out more intermittently). When TNG premiered (or rather, about a year later when TNG books started coming out), it went up to one book per month, alternating between TOS and TNG, plus occasional extra books like hardcovers and their MMPB reprints. It was still generally one MMPB per month when DS9 was added to the mix five years later. But once VGR books started coming out in 1995, the schedule went up to two MMPBs per month (so that each of the four individual series still had a book roughly every other month), and it continued at that pace for another ten years, until 2005, when it fell to one MMPB per month. (And this is not counting other releases like hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and young-adult books, which are independent of the MMPB release schedule.)

 

[Therin of Andor]

Pocket typically released six books a year, one every other month (though it took them a couple of years to get up to that pace; the earliest Pocket novels came out more intermittently).

The most agonizing wait was when Pocket's contract was being renegotiated (after ST II) before "Black Fire" came out. Nine months without a new original novel, IIRC.

 

[Janos]

Quick Q - Beyond Avatar 1 & 2, what's reprinted in Twist of Faith?

I just check on my Avatar books, and unlike other books at the time, the inside portions of the front and back covers are yellowing, yet Millennium 1 to 3 and the DS9 Section 13 novels don't have the same problem. And they were all on the same book shelf. Weird. Was that cover paper stock quality issue?

 

[Defcon]

Twist of Faith includes the Avatar duology, Section 31: Abyss, Gateways: Demons of Air and Darkness and Gateways: Horn and Ivory (novella originally published in Gateways: What lay beyond).

 

[Janos]

Thanks. Did you have discolouring issue with your copies of Avatar 1 & 2?

 

[Defcon]

I shrink-wrap my books after I've read them to protect them from dust, humidity etc., so I can't really say if the inside covers have discoloring issues, sorry.

 

[Janos]

 

[DeVario]

I noticed that too. My copies of Avatar 1 and 2 both have yellowing, but from S31: Abyss onward, is fine. Don't know why that is.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Quick Q - Beyond Avatar 1 & 2, what's reprinted in Twist of Faith?

Memory Beta is an excellent quick resource:
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Twist_of_Faith

 

[Janos]

I noticed that too. My copies of Avatar 1 and 2 both have yellowing, but from S31: Abyss onward, is fine. Don't know why that is.

I know. Very weird.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Very weird.

Yellowing is caused by the acidic content of paper products. Obviously Pocket's printers switched from one brand/batch of paper to another. You can slow it down with acid-free archival-quality plastic sleeves (and archival quality cardboard boxes).

The first few years of ST Pocket novels, each MMPB was painted on all cut edges with a vibrant yellow dye, which dates back to a time when all MMPBs yellowed rather quickly, so adding a yellow dye to the edges of new books kept them looking fresher and mintier for longer - better than white or off-white paper turning yellowish in the shops before you even bought it.

Some MMPB genres used to get different edge treatments, so you could recognize them at a glance. For example, crime/courtroom/mystery novels often were dyed red, which is why Pocket's "The Case of the Colonist's Corpse" was given that look.

I've been surprised at the randomness of cover discolourations. My books are all kept together, but the runs of batches of paper certainly vary in quality, and result in different discolouration speeds.