Federation: First 150 Years - David Goodman Interview

[FrontierTrek]

Hi all,

Here's Part 1 of the David Goodman interview we ran for Federation: The First 150 Years.

Enjoy!

http://www.trekcore.com/merchandise/150yrs_goodmanint1.html

 

[F. King Daniel]

it was so important to me as a fan that if I was reading this book, I wouldn’t read something that would bug me because it so blatantly contradicted something that I remembered from an episode. I was very much driven to write something that obeyed everything

Sounds good!

I don’t really accept the Temporal Cold War as definitive history.

Dislike.

 

[CaptainDonovin]

it was so important to me as a fan that if I was reading this book, I wouldn’t read something that would bug me because it so blatantly contradicted something that I remembered from an episode. I was very much driven to write something that obeyed everything

Sounds good!

I don’t really accept the Temporal Cold War as definitive history.

Dislike.

Not a fan of that one either. Too each his/her/hir/s/he's own but seems to me the TCW & the Xindi attack were key moments in the 10 years leading up to the formation of the Federation, mostly for Earth but a key moment none the less.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Exactly. If I'm gonna buy an official Trek history, I expect it to be true to that history. The minute you start saying, "Well that bit of Trek doesn't count" (in this case, the entire first three seasons and first 2 episodes of the fourth season of Enterprise!), you're very much NOT being true to canon Trek. It's a variation of the old "Enterprise is an alternate universe blah blah" thing.

The novels do a masterful job of making it seem as though everything in TV/film Trek "happened" They tie it all together and for the most part hide the seams really well. If this project can't do the same, I might as well read these fan manuals instead, which essentially are the same but ignore the entirety of Enterprise and use a mishmash pre-TOS history from the old Spaceflight Chronology and old Treknical fanzines instead.

Of course, I may be overreacting somewhat. Hopefully he just meant that the TCW wouldn't have been common knowledge, or known to the books' in-universe writer, or something.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I can see how there could be two schools of thought. Some fans believe that ENT is kind of like ST'09, in that it's a history created when time travellers from the Prime universe came back and interfered in events. Others, myself included, believe that ENT was always intended to represent the origins of the Prime timeline itself, to set up the events of TOS and the later series -- so that the "unaltered" future Daniels came back from was not, in fact, the Prime future of the Federation, but some slightly different version thereof. (Slightly different in that Archer managed to keep the temporal meddling from diverting the course of history too much.)

And the cool thing about Trek tie-ins is that they've never been required to limit themselves to a single uniform continuity, but have been free to tell different versions of the same historical event like Kirk's first mission as Enterprise captain or the origin of the Borg or what-have-you. Different fans are always going to have different beliefs and expectations about certain major events, and any given version is bound to satisfy some fans and displease others. Which is the value of having more than one version available.

And that's why I haven't felt any need to coordinate my Rise of the Federation novel -- which is part of the extant Pocket novel continuity -- with what Goodman has done in his book. I (along with my fellow novelists) am offering one conjectural version of the Federation's early history, and he's offering another, and the differences should be interesting and should offer fans a wider perspective than a single unified version.

 

[Gotham Central]

Well, I can see how there could be two schools of thought. Some fans believe that ENT is kind of like ST'09, in that it's a history created when time travellers from the Prime universe came back and interfered in events. Others, myself included, believe that ENT was always intended to represent the origins of the Prime timeline itself, to set up the events of TOS and the later series -- so that the "unaltered" future Daniels came back from was not, in fact, the Prime future of the Federation, but some slightly different version thereof. (Slightly different in that Archer managed to keep the temporal meddling from diverting the course of history too much.)

And the cool thing about Trek tie-ins is that they've never been required to limit themselves to a single uniform continuity, but have been free to tell different versions of the same historical event like Kirk's first mission as Enterprise captain or the origin of the Borg or what-have-you. Different fans are always going to have different beliefs and expectations about certain major events, and any given version is bound to satisfy some fans and displease others. Which is the value of having more than one version available.

And that's why I haven't felt any need to coordinate my Rise of the Federation novel -- which is part of the extant Pocket novel continuity -- with what Goodman has done in his book. I (along with my fellow novelists) am offering one conjectural version of the Federation's early history, and he's offering another, and the differences should be interesting and should offer fans a wider perspective than a single unified version.

I was curious about this myself. Since this is covering similar ground are you going to use any of this as reference? One of the things that i've liked about your books thus far is that they've managed to weave in interesting details from a broad ranger of Trek sources over the years including other novels.

 

[Christopher]

I was curious about this myself. Since this is covering similar ground are you going to use any of this as reference? One of the things that i've liked about your books thus far is that they've managed to weave in interesting details from a broad ranger of Trek sources over the years including other novels.

As I said, no, at least not in this book. The previews we've gotten already show that Goodman is interpreting the Romulan War differently than the prior novels did, and my book is in the same continuity as those novels. So they're distinct approaches going in. My point in my previous post is that there's nothing wrong with that. Continuity among tie-ins is nice, but I think fans today have lost sight of how worthwhile it can also be to have multiple different versions of a given event. As I said, that way, fans who aren't crazy about one version might enjoy another one better. My version is meant to fit into the ongoing novelverse, while Goodman's is meant to stand on its own and be accessible to those who've only seen the shows and films.

Also, the timing simply hasn't worked out. I haven't had the opportunity to read Goodman's book yet (it's from a different publisher, remember), and I'm two and a half weeks from my deadline.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I did not have a problem with his answer on the Temporal Cold War. You would expect that Starfleet would have kept its knowledge of it classified. This is an in universe history. Makes sense it would be the type of history told in a class room.

 

[FrontierTrek]

Part 2 of my interview with David is up!
http://www.trekcore.com/merchandise/150yrs_goodmanint2.html

 

[DavidAGoodman]

Exactly. If I'm gonna buy an official Trek history, I expect it to be true to that history. The minute you start saying, "Well that bit of Trek doesn't count" (in this case, the entire first three seasons and first 2 episodes of the fourth season of Enterprise!), you're very much NOT being true to canon Trek. It's a variation of the old "Enterprise is an alternate universe blah blah" thing.

The novels do a masterful job of making it seem as though everything in TV/film Trek "happened" They tie it all together and for the most part hide the seams really well. If this project can't do the same, I might as well read these fan manuals instead, which essentially are the same but ignore the entirety of Enterprise and use a mishmash pre-TOS history from the old Spaceflight Chronology and old Treknical fanzines instead.

Of course, I may be overreacting somewhat. Hopefully he just meant that the TCW wouldn't have been common knowledge, or known to the books' in-universe writer, or something.

I agree with you, I didn't cherry pick what I liked and what I didn't so I didn't disregard the TCW - it's in the book, but given the fact that when the book is supposed to have been written (2311) we wouldn't have the full accounting of it because it won't be until the 31st Century that we would know what it is really about. Looking at my quote, what I meant to say (and didn't) was that there's no definitive answer on what it is, so I didn't spend a lot of time on it.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Even though I really don't have the money for this right now, I really want to buy it anyways. Everything about this sounds fantastic.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Exactly. If I'm gonna buy an official Trek history, I expect it to be true to that history. The minute you start saying, "Well that bit of Trek doesn't count" (in this case, the entire first three seasons and first 2 episodes of the fourth season of Enterprise!), you're very much NOT being true to canon Trek. It's a variation of the old "Enterprise is an alternate universe blah blah" thing.

The novels do a masterful job of making it seem as though everything in TV/film Trek "happened" They tie it all together and for the most part hide the seams really well. If this project can't do the same, I might as well read these fan manuals instead, which essentially are the same but ignore the entirety of Enterprise and use a mishmash pre-TOS history from the old Spaceflight Chronology and old Treknical fanzines instead.

Of course, I may be overreacting somewhat. Hopefully he just meant that the TCW wouldn't have been common knowledge, or known to the books' in-universe writer, or something.

I agree with you, I didn't cherry pick what I liked and what I didn't so I didn't disregard the TCW - it's in the book, but given the fact that when the book is supposed to have been written (2311) we wouldn't have the full accounting of it because it won't be until the 31st Century that we would know what it is really about. Looking at my quote, what I meant to say (and didn't) was that there's no definitive answer on what it is, so I didn't spend a lot of time on it.

Excellent! I'm very glad to hear that. Thank you for replying and clarifying!

 

[Therin of Andor]

there's no definitive answer on what it is, so I didn't spend a lot of time on it.

Sounds good to me. Since the TCW suggests multiple possibilities anyway, seems fine to me that the mystery remains partly mysterious.