I have seen, throughout various Trek novels, especially the Vulcan Soul trilogy and the ENT novels, many references to the Rihannsu novels of Diane Duane(Romulan colony world featured in one of the books, style of names and language of the Romulans, idea that they have honour blades, though we never saw these in any Trek series, and I think S'Task (sp?) is mentioned in the Third Vulcan Soul book, which seems to reference to early Romulan history from "The Romulan Way" and "Spock's World", if I recall correctly. Are these references simply tipping of the hats to Duane's excellent expansions on the Romulan culture, or are these authors including the events of The Rihannsu novels into the main novel continuity (if there is one?), or are those events considered part of an alternate reality, like Star Trek '09?
Empty Chair & Novel Comtinuity
- Thread starter Cadet49
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Technically, Duane's novels no longer fit, and so they're cute namedrops and references. Remus is a lush, green farming world. The first Romulan war lasted 25 years. There was a second Romulan war post-TMP. The details of the Romulan senate and leadership are different.
But as far as I'm concerned, something like the events in those books happened, just like something like "Balance of Terror" happened, despite Star Trek: Enterprise retconning elements of that episode into oblivion. Something like "True Q" happened even though "The Q and the Grey" is fundamentally incompatible with it. Something like STV and "Megas Tu" and "That Which Survives" happened even though the speeds used would make Voyager's galaxy-crossing journey a four-week one, tops. Something like Final Frontier, The Final Reflection, Enterprise: The First Adventure, Collision Course, Children of Kings all happened in the massive Trek universe, even if the details seldom add up. IMO.
But as far as I'm concerned, something like the events in those books happened, just like something like "Balance of Terror" happened, despite Star Trek: Enterprise retconning elements of that episode into oblivion. Something like "True Q" happened even though "The Q and the Grey" is fundamentally incompatible with it. Something like STV and "Megas Tu" and "That Which Survives" happened even though the speeds used would make Voyager's galaxy-crossing journey a four-week one, tops. Something like Final Frontier, The Final Reflection, Enterprise: The First Adventure, Collision Course, Children of Kings all happened in the massive Trek universe, even if the details seldom add up. IMO.
The mainstream novels like to acknowledge Duane by referencing aspects of her books, so a lot of the Vulcan/Romulan culture and history she established has filtered down into the current line's interpretation of Vulcanoids. So we have Romulans exclaiming "Elements", Artaleih shows up several times, the Romulan language is called Rihannsu, words and phrases are lifted from the original Rihannsu, etc. S'task and T'Rehu have been mentioned. Where it fits, it's used, but more in the manner of tipping the hat than suggesting a continuity. Sometimes, like in Vulcans Soul: Exiles, the original Duane interpretation is reworked slightly to fit the canonical picture.
That leaves the Rihannsu novels and Spock's World relevant to the current continuity, as a source to be mined, and I like to assume, as KingDaniel does, that the basic history of Vulcan and Romulus unfolded as they suggest, only clearly not quite like that. So I suppose they're a little blurry - they're not part of the current continuity, but enough details are lifted from them that they still nudge against it frequently.
That leaves the Rihannsu novels and Spock's World relevant to the current continuity, as a source to be mined, and I like to assume, as KingDaniel does, that the basic history of Vulcan and Romulus unfolded as they suggest, only clearly not quite like that. So I suppose they're a little blurry - they're not part of the current continuity, but enough details are lifted from them that they still nudge against it frequently.
Duane herself seems to have reworked the universe a bit to come into closer alignment with canon, her Rihannsu novels of the 2000s assuming a substantially larger Romulan Empire than her Rihannsu novels of the 1980s.
And in his Myriad Universes novella, William Leisner
has a Romulan ambassador mention Empress Ael's upset at the Federation's use of a Genesis Device against Praxis. Since the only timeline divergence in that case is the death of Spock, that suggests potentially a greater degree of fidelity to the Rihannsu-verse than what Deranged Nasat suggests. Potentially.
Part of the extended canon, perhaps?
The events of most of the Rihannsu novels--the forced telepathy, Project Sunseed, the sunkiller weapons, the chasing across the Neutral Zone--could fit into canon with only a certain amount of tweaking.
The major plot item that might not is the Romulan Civil War/Second Romulan War. A fit may be possible, since from what we see in The Empty Chair that conflict might be described as predominantly a Romulan civil war with Federation involvement in certain clashes (at the Mascrar city-ship, at Augo). Conceivably, Federation historians could have come to redefine that war as a civil war.
What say you all?
I prefer to look on Duane's novel continuity (which also includes The Wounded Sky, the best book of the whole bunch and one that unfortunately gets overlooked in the focus on the Rihannsu stuff) as its own distinct entity, or as part of the broader '80s novel continuity that has been discussed before in this forum. I like that it has its own distinct character. Homaging it in the modern novel continuity is one thing, but I don't see any need to try to shoehorn it in wholesale. Let it have its own identity. Star Trek is a mythos rich enough to inspire multiple interpretations and variants, and I think we should respect that diversity rather than trying to homogenize it all.
For me, the majority of the Rihannsu stories work within the current novel continuity, except for the events of The Empty Chair
. I prefer to look at the Rihannsu books up until The Empty Chair as part of the main continuity (with some tweaking of the history in The Romulan Way), and the Empty Chair as a Myriad Universe tale ... a "What If" ... but that's personal choice :-)
Did I read somewhere that the character of T'Cel in the graphic novel Debt of Honor, written by Chris Claremont, was in an early draft going to be Ael from the Rihannsu stories?
, particularly when the Enterprise ended up spearheading an invasion of Romulus ... that just doesn't seem to fit into other Trek stories
Did I read somewhere that the character of T'Cel in the graphic novel Debt of Honor, written by Chris Claremont, was in an early draft going to be Ael from the Rihannsu stories?
These are my thoughts on the subject as well. Several canonical episodes don't mesh with the rest of canon. Several books that are firmly in the Lit-verse don't fit with the rest of it. The famous Genesis Wave issue is one example. The gender of that character (whom I forget) from the DS9 Relaunch is another. Small issues have to be ignored if you want any of it to fit together, even the canon. So just because some details of Romulan history are wrong, or the climate of Remus...whatever. It's clear from the amount of references in the rest of the Lit-verse that the Rihannsu series fits.
I'd say this interpretation is very likely. I don't see any reason why the events of the series couldn't have happened, and their brief nature led future historians to basically relegate them to a footnote in the history books.
What about that event doesn't fit with other Trek stories? Many amazing things have happened throughout Trek history, only to be seemingly forgotten and never brought up again. What's the problem with this one occurance?
