Spoilers DS9: Revenant by Alex White - review thread
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Greater representation is indeed welcome, but there has been at least some since the early days! Off the top of my head, David Gerrold and Andy Mangels are both openly gay, and I'm sure there are others I don't know of as well.
Excellent! I knew David Gerrold was out, but I didn’t know about Andy Mangels. Wonderful.
Just started reading this novel. After the much more somber and headier Coda trilogy it's nice to read a standalone novel without end of the universe implications 
. This also looks like it'll be the last new novel for a while sadly. But I still have a few older novels to catch up on so I guess that's a good thing.
. This also looks like it'll be the last new novel for a while sadly. But I still have a few older novels to catch up on so I guess that's a good thing.
For anyone who enjoyed this and is interested in checking out White’s other work, their novel A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe is $2.99 in the US Kindle store today.
Finally finished this novel. Due to some, um, personal issues I was going through a few months back I stopped reading it for about 2 months. So anyway, I gave this novel an above average rating.
I like a good mystery and there is also some controversy and intrigue. I think the plot is pretty well covered in previous posts so I won't get too in depth with that.
The only thing I didn't care for early on in the novel was how White treated Bashir at the beginning, almost like a lovestruck schoolboy who almost seemed a nuisance to Dax. But White seemed to course correct about halfway through the novel and Bashir became more crucial to Dax and she even noted appreciation for his friendship so that was good.
I did like how White started hinting at the beginnings of the attraction between Worf and Jadzia. It is interesting to see a story written at a time when they barely knew each other yet. I also noticed hints to Bashir's genetic status, which obviously was not known yet at this point. I noted a few times when Dax would notice his unusually fast reflexes for instance. But White was careful to stay with the continuity and avoid speculation as to why that might be. It was just noted and filed away basically, and we as fans of the show know the reason for that.
I also liked the look back at Joran in particular. It was nice to have his story fleshed out a bit more.
And it was just nice after the cataclysmic events of Coda to just read a standalone novel that did not have universe changing consequences. So a first good outing for Alex White I thought.
I like a good mystery and there is also some controversy and intrigue. I think the plot is pretty well covered in previous posts so I won't get too in depth with that.
The only thing I didn't care for early on in the novel was how White treated Bashir at the beginning, almost like a lovestruck schoolboy who almost seemed a nuisance to Dax. But White seemed to course correct about halfway through the novel and Bashir became more crucial to Dax and she even noted appreciation for his friendship so that was good.
I did like how White started hinting at the beginnings of the attraction between Worf and Jadzia. It is interesting to see a story written at a time when they barely knew each other yet. I also noticed hints to Bashir's genetic status, which obviously was not known yet at this point. I noted a few times when Dax would notice his unusually fast reflexes for instance. But White was careful to stay with the continuity and avoid speculation as to why that might be. It was just noted and filed away basically, and we as fans of the show know the reason for that.
I also liked the look back at Joran in particular. It was nice to have his story fleshed out a bit more.
And it was just nice after the cataclysmic events of Coda to just read a standalone novel that did not have universe changing consequences. So a first good outing for Alex White I thought.
i might have noted that earlier in the threads, but yes, glad we are finally shedding off the conceit of the false continuity of the so-called "relaunch/litverse" epoch and just reading a story that was competent to its own devices. hurrah to the authorship of finally having a story not beholden to overarc-ing-ness
I just finished REVENANT by Alex White and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I regretted the loss of the old Novelverse by Star Trek. It was messy, contradictory, and full of issues but it was important to me. However, I think this is one of my favorite Nu Trek books and bodes well for the revival of the classic series in literary form as well. In particular, this case is a Jadzia book set before her relationship with Worf.
I really liked this book for handling a lot of issues regarding the Trill and Trill joining. It's a thoroughly unfair system that prioritizes elitism and stigmatizes anyone who isn't Joined. So much so that the achievements of non-Joined Trill are marginalized. I remember this briefly came up in STAR TREK: RESURGENCE and was something that I never thought of before but the previous person is effectively dead the same way that "Tuvix" is. A Trill would have probably argued that both were still alive in their new form but another might say that Jadzia died when she became Jadzia Dax.
Indeed, I kind of wish we'd gotten more insight into Nemi because the idea of Trill who feel like they are unvalued by their society (and their accomplishments are meaningless) because they can't be part of the 1% elite. Star Trek should be a much more inclusive place, especially within the Federation. It implies that Trill is a place with a majority population who feel like second class citizens. It adds to the tragedy of the book, however. We also get a re-evaluation of Curzon Dax's horndog ways from the 1990s and what, in the 21st century (let alone 24th), was that he was an enormous creep who abused his position.
Mind you, I don't entirely buy the presentation of the Trill symbiotes in this book. The premise is that a surgery can turn one of them into a Gould-like parasite that takes over the body without merging. However, I'm not sure that works with the trill because they're made of a bunch of previous hosts who wouldn't see Trill symbiosis as a bad thing in the first place. The book gets around it in a clever way by making it so that there's not THAT many corrupted Trill symbiotes but I feel like it's still a bit of a stretch.
Overall, though, I think it's a great adventure.
I really liked this book for handling a lot of issues regarding the Trill and Trill joining. It's a thoroughly unfair system that prioritizes elitism and stigmatizes anyone who isn't Joined. So much so that the achievements of non-Joined Trill are marginalized. I remember this briefly came up in STAR TREK: RESURGENCE and was something that I never thought of before but the previous person is effectively dead the same way that "Tuvix" is. A Trill would have probably argued that both were still alive in their new form but another might say that Jadzia died when she became Jadzia Dax.
Indeed, I kind of wish we'd gotten more insight into Nemi because the idea of Trill who feel like they are unvalued by their society (and their accomplishments are meaningless) because they can't be part of the 1% elite. Star Trek should be a much more inclusive place, especially within the Federation. It implies that Trill is a place with a majority population who feel like second class citizens. It adds to the tragedy of the book, however. We also get a re-evaluation of Curzon Dax's horndog ways from the 1990s and what, in the 21st century (let alone 24th), was that he was an enormous creep who abused his position.
Mind you, I don't entirely buy the presentation of the Trill symbiotes in this book. The premise is that a surgery can turn one of them into a Gould-like parasite that takes over the body without merging. However, I'm not sure that works with the trill because they're made of a bunch of previous hosts who wouldn't see Trill symbiosis as a bad thing in the first place. The book gets around it in a clever way by making it so that there's not THAT many corrupted Trill symbiotes but I feel like it's still a bit of a stretch.
Overall, though, I think it's a great adventure.
I'm not a fan of tendency to claim that Neelix and Tuvok were "dead" when they were combined into Tuvix. I think that's a facile analogy and a refusal to accept the uniqueness of the Tuvix situation, whose whole point is that it cannot be mapped onto any conventional definition of life and death. That ambiguity is the very thing that makes the episode such an intractable dilemma in the first place. A merger is not death, simply transformation. If you make a banana-strawberry smoothie, the banana and the strawberry haven't ceased to exist. They're both still in there. Their individual essences can still be discerned within the whole. The combination would be nothing without the included parts, so it's nonsensical to claim they no longer exist. They're just combined in an irreversible way.
I guess that's why people try to reduce it to death, because it's irreversible. But death is not the only irreversible transformation. A child becoming an adult is irreversible too. The child's mind is transformed by physical and hormonal changes and the accretion of new experiences and life roles, to the extent that the person ceases to be who they were as a child. But the child's identity and memory are still part of the adult. There's no going back, no, but that's not death. It's only death if you can't go forward either.
Joining doesn't kill a host. They retain their individual identity and all of their memories; they just gain a lot of other people's memories and personality traits on top of it. That's why Jadzia Dax was a very different person from Curzon Dax, and why Ezri Dax was very different from either of them. The host's personality is the primary thread, not something that disappears into the collective. That's the whole point of joining -- that each host adds new and different experiences, skills, and perspectives to the symbiote's life experience.
I'd argue that's what makes it an interesting discussion in the first place and the Trill have already forwarded their position unambiguously but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's not room for argument. The Resurgence reference being to Petty Officer Nili Edsilar, who has the subplot that she joined Starfleet to get away from Trill.
Nili: My sister was the closest person in the world to me. I knew she would be different after joining, but she grew more and more distant, the room we shared growing up was foreign to the both of us. And eventually, she... or whoever she'd become, cut me out entirely. So I left for Starfleet and swore I'd never go back. I couldn't stand the thought of seeing her... someone who looked like my sister.
Now, the game doesn't in any way show her to be right and it's contradicted by a bunch of media that her sister isn't "gone." However, lots of families in RL have relationships changed by profound experiences (converting a religion, marriage, or life and death events). That's far from death but you could easily see something coming off like that to someone who witnesses it from the outside.
To go back to Tuvix, Janeway can also be argued to have had simply a responsibility to her crew that triumphed her responsibility to a new form of life (one that Starfleet ethiciticians would probably debate I'm sure). She chose her particular position on the Trolley Problem in a way that I feel was entirely consistent. FYI - while that is an overused example, I feel like the Kobayashi Maru, the Trolley Problem is misunderstood. It's not about getting the right answer but confronting how the person thinks.
In Nemi's case, I think the book did a good job of making it clear she felt valueless by not pursuing a very specific path for life and that is something I wish we'd gotten more of. Especially with the hints of stuff that Joran would have actually been a WORSE composer when forced to share his mind with multiple other non-composers.
(One thing that I also disagree with about this book is that it kind of goes whole hog on the "Every Trill can join a symbiote" conspiracy that I felt was unnecessary. It also didn't make much sense with the Burn idea that the Trill symbiotes eventually outnumbered the Trill unless we're assuming a genocidal situation for Non-Joined or a massive symbiote population boom)
Argument is only valid when it's based on the evidence. Claiming that Trill hosts "die" when they're joined requires ignoring the objective evidence that every joined host is different from the previous one, that the host personality dominates the gestalt, and that the host personality lives on afterward in a form that can still be separated out as an individual through the zhian'tara. Far from death, joining is effective immortality, at least for the duration of the symbiont's lifespan.
If an argument has no clear solution, like the moral dilemma in "Tuvix," then it can be continued indefinitely. But if one side of an argument can be decisively resolved as correct or incorrect by the facts, then that argument should end once the facts have settled the matter. Denying the facts is just being argumentative, which is not the same thing as engaging in argument.
What you said is "the previous person is effectively dead." That's phrasing it as if it's objectively true, which it clearly is not. I don't care if someone believes something counterfactual. That's not a valid alternative point of view, it's just being wrong. Belief and opinion do not erase objective fact. If this petty officer believes that someone who's changed in a way they don't like is "dead," that's not about the person who's changed, it's just about the petty officer's selfish refusal to accept change. The rest of us are under no obligation to see her personal hang-ups as in any way relevant to the objective truth of the situation.
Yes, which is exactly why it's wrong to reduce it to "Tuvok and Neelix were dead." That makes it unambiguous, and the whole thing that makes it a Trolley Problem is that it's deeply ambiguous, that Tuvok, Neelix, and Tuvix are all alive in their own ways but there's no way all three of them can exist as distinct individuals at the same time.
And you're right. People keep trying to argue over what the "right" answer was in "Tuvix," which is missing the point. The whole thing that made it such a powerful story is that there was no right answer, only an inescapable choice between two evils. As with the Trolley Problem, the goal is not to "solve" it, but to explore the philosophical ramifications of the insoluble.
