Spoilers DTI: Forgotten History by C. L. Bennett Review Thread
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Actually, I wasn't sure I should leave that line in, since the narrative structure of both DTI novels is rather non-linear, with lots of jumping back and forth.
Just finished this. Once again, you amaze with your knowledge of Trek trivia and your eye for historical and technical connecting the dots, Trekwise.
LOVE this series and I hope more is coming, Christopher.
In many ways, these books come across as a mediation on the nature of time, both scientific and a bit metaphysical. Reminds me in some ways of Piers Anthony's book on Chronos, the Incarnation of Time in his Incarnations of Immortality series.
LOVE this series and I hope more is coming, Christopher.
In many ways, these books come across as a mediation on the nature of time, both scientific and a bit metaphysical. Reminds me in some ways of Piers Anthony's book on Chronos, the Incarnation of Time in his Incarnations of Immortality series.
I wonder how many time-travel violations Janeway has accrued? She must be close to Kirk. I bet she kept the DTI busy for a while after Voyager came home.
^Not quite. However, we have no record of Janeway being involved in any temporal incidents post-"Endgame," at least not in the main Pocket continuity. In Janeway's defense, the Delta Quadrant was kind of littered with spatiotemporal anomalies, and many of the temporal incidents she was involved in were instigated by people from other times. (Although, granted, one of those people was her future self.)
Wouldn't DTI include temporal violations by alternate/future versions of someone as part of their file? Not blame them TIC-style, but surely Janeway's file would include "Endgame" Admiral Janeway's actions too?
I'm sure it does, but if you add up all of Voyager's temporal incidents, it only comes out to a dozen, three of which ("Time and Again," "Year of Hell," and "Shattered") were erased or negated and thus never became known to the DTI. So her record does not match Kirk's established record of 17 distinct violations. (Although it's unclear whether those are all separate incidents; it could be that a single incident could encompass multiple violations.)
Out of interest, when this was planned as a TOS novel, were the Lucsly/Dulmur bits in there, or was the 2383 stuff added in when it was changed to a DTI book. The framing parts didn't particularly stand out as not belonging, but in many ways, the novel could have worked as a straightforward TOS story that happened to be about the founding of the DTI.
It was never "changed" to a DTI book. It was conceived from the start as a TOS/DTI crossover, and the first idea I had was the one the final novel is built around -- Lucsly and Dulmur investigating a mystery that reveals the truth about the Enterprise's role in the DTI's origins, providing a frame for TOS-era flashbacks. I was led to expect that it would be labeled and marketed as TOS, so I structured it with the primary emphasis on the TOS-era characters. By the time I got confirmation that it was going to have the DTI logo on the cover, I'd already written it. There were no changes beyond the usual copyedits and textual tweaks.
^ IMO, the novel would've worked just as well as a TOS novel featuring the DTI characters as it does as a DTI novel featuring the TOS characters.
Like I said just above, I think the book works just as well in either case. The DTI characters didn't really need to be involved in the story as much because the book didn't have to accomplish what Watching the Clock did in terms of letting people who might not be familiar with the DTI know who and what they were, giving us backstory and background on Lucsly and Dulmur, introducing new characters, and telling a cohesive and coherent story that weaved in and out of Trek history and the various time travel-related incidents recorded in and by said history.
I wouldn't agree that the future DTI characters weren't needed, since the situation couldn't have been resolved without Lucsly's contribution -- and, in a sense, his sacrifice (of his long-held convictions and assumptions). That was the moment the whole story was designed to build to: Lucsly coming face-to-face with his personal bete noire James Kirk and being forced to reassess his articles of faith.
Perhaps she committed some which didn't happen in the show. Some of Kirk's 17 incidents weren't from TOS.
I'm curious, Christopher, did you ever tally up how many distinct violations each captain committed in the course of their shows? That would make for an interesting comparison.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. The DTI characters were definitely needed, but I don't think they needed to be featured in/involved with the story any more than they were even though the novel is labeled 'DTI'. IOW, you structured the story perfectly so that it would've worked, as mentioned, as either a TOS novel featuring the DTI or as a DTI story featuring TOS characters.
That would be speculation to support an assumption for which there's no basis. As far as we know, Kirk's record surpasses Picard's or Janeway's, even though all three are among the most frequent travellers through time on record.
As I said, it's unclear whether there can be multiple violations assigned to a single incident, so no, I didn't analyze it in those terms. I did, however, include a list of time-travel episodes in my DTI:WTC annotations:
http://home.fuse.net/ChristopherLBennett/DTI_Annot2.html#Refs
^Cool. That sounds like it would be interesting to check out.
I think that Picard gets a pass after the events of "First Contact" in which he intervened at one of the most pivotal events in the history of Earth and the Federation and the only resultant changes to history were that different people rode with Cochrane on the first flight of the Phoenix and that the name of the NX-01 changed from Dauntless to Enterprise. (Whoops, that one is my idea.)
By the way, Publishers Weekly magazine has begun publishing a bestseller list, and in the debut edition last week, Forgotten History was #10 in the Top 10 Science Fiction list -- and apparently was #4 in the unpublished list the week before (I guess they've been tracking the numbers internally). Neat!
This was actually my favourite scene from the whole novel. It was perfectly paced and the character reactions were spot on. It was excellent to see Lucsly finally lose his calm exterior.
