First TrekLit Read?

[Smellincoffee]

Where did you start off in your Trek literature travels?

I believe the first Star Trek book I read featured a young Jean-Luc Picard coping after his failure to getting into Starfleet academy, called Starfall. I think my first "proper" novel was Dafydd ab Hugh's Vengeance, which I bought in Wal-Mart. DS9 was the only Trek show I was able to watch on television, and that only sporadically. The book seemed like an actual episode, and it established in my mind the idea that Chief O'Brien never attended the Academy. ("Who the HELL is Kobayashi Maru?!")

Later I followed the Stargazer series and the DS9 relaunch, which is how I became a regular Treklit reader.

 

[Nate]

The novelization of Encounter at Farpoint was my first Trek book. I remember saving up my allowance to be able to buy the TNG books when they first started coming out.

 

[Greg Cox]

Probably one of the James Blish books way back when. Can't remember which one.

I think I picked it up at my local library.

 

[Defcon]

Coincidentally Enterprise: The first Adventure by Vonda McIntyre.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The old YA TNG Geordi novel Atlantis Station was my first Trek read, back when I was about 8 or 9. It was followed by Capture the Flag and then the first two Cadet Worf books. All were enjoyable.

My proper Treklit got off to two bad starts. The Price of the Phoenix was my first TOS novel and Grounded was my first TNG one. After those I went back to the YA novels for a while.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Some of the old James Blish novelisations.

First original Trek novel, I *think* would have been The Galactic Whirlpool

 

[Smellincoffee]

It was followed by Capture the Flag and then the first two Cadet Worf books. All were enjoyable.

I remember that CTF book fondly, too. I read it right after Starfall.

 

[D Man]

Mine was probably PAD's Q-Squared, which is about as awesome an intro to TrekLit a teenager could have had back then.

 

[Bishop76]

Star Trek: Voyage to Adventure, the choose your own adventure book. I wore that damn thing out. Also, I cheated a lot.

 

[Thrawn]

I honestly can't remember. I was really, really young. Something in the 20s or 30s of the TNG numbered books, probably.

After I stopped reading around 2001/2002, my first book back was The Buried Age, which set of a 2-year binge of over 200 Trek novels for me. So that was pretty noteworthy at least

 

[Peak]

My first two (after seeing just the first 13 episodes of Star Trek: TNG and a few TOS episodes) was "Spock's World" and "Final Frontier".

Neither of the two was really a good match for a Star Trek newbie like I was back then. I did mention to Diane Duane at a convention here in Sweden that her book was one of the two I bought first, though..

 

[Bishop76]

After I stopped reading around 2001/2002, my first book back was The Buried Age, which set of a 2-year binge of over 200 Trek novels for me. So that was pretty noteworthy at least

I actually had a similar experience - stopped reading around 95 or 96 and came back recently. Started with Kobayashi Maru. I almost stopped right there again. Fortunately, someone on here recommended Vanguard to me and got me back on the right track.

 

[diankra]

The Entropy Effect, thanks to a good review in Blake's 7 Monthly (they also recommended Teh Stainless Steel Rat, so not bad...).

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

Q-in-Law for me.

 

[sulfur]

The old TAS adaptions. Not realizing that they were novelizations of a TV show until many years later.

After that, I read a random smattering of TOS books, TNG not even existing at the time.

 

[DeVario]

My first foray into TrekLit was The Lost Years by JM Dillard. I bought it at the old local Pay Less store in 1991. Later that year, I got the TUC novelization for Christmas. And that was the extent of my TrekLit reading until DS9R.

 

[tmclough]

My first ST book was Encounter at Farpoint, which I received as a Christmas present in 1987, the year it came out. I had watched the episode when it when it first came out; then, when it was repeated in December as two, one-hour episodes, I got to watch the first half twice (normal for TNG and that channel), but because campus was closed the next week, and I was home with my parents, and they didn't get TNG on any channel, I didn't get to watch the second half again. As I was reading the novelization, I realized that this was based on that pilot episode, which meant for the first half I could picture the scenes fresh in my memory; but the second half was totally forgotten since September, and I was basically lost.

That said, after that I bought a few more TNG novels, but I couldn't remember any of the episodes that they were based on. It wasn't until many years later that realized that E@F was the exception and not the rule Re: novelizations of episodes.

I stopped reading ST novels altogether after I moved back in with my parents (much to their chagrin), because I no longer had regular ST access (and hence wouldn't recognize any episodes that they were (supposedly) based on).

In 2007, when I got back into ST in general, including ST Lit, my first book was Spock's World, which I recently reread, now that I have realized that all those "highly illogical" statements about Vulcans were considered canon. (I also reread E@F back in 2008--fastest novel (ST or otherwise) I've ever (re)read (about 1 week)).

 

[ryan123450]

I resisted reading any Treklit for about all through my teen years, when I was really, really into Trek. I'd been contaminated by the Star Trek Encyclopedia's insistance that non-canonical works weren't "real Star Trek." I felt like a heretic when I thumbed through a copy of The Captain's Daughter my mom had. Then I really did wrong when I listened to the audio book of The Return. It wasn't until the DS9 relaunch really got going and I wanted to continue following that series that I gave in and started with those.

So my first book was A Stitch in Time. Then I realized other stuff connnected to that, and now I have read and will read hundreds of Trek books, mostly all those that connect to the modern continuity.

 

[Christopher]

My first Trek fiction book was Star Trek Log Three by Alan Dean Foster. It was a used copy with the cover stripped. It came from a used-book store that used to stand on the same block that now houses the office building where my doctor works.

My father bought that one for me. The first Trek books I bought myself were from a book sale at my school at the end of first grade. One was The Making of Star Trek, which I didn't get around to reading all the way through until I was a few years older. I think the other was the Star Trek Action Toy Book.

 

[Misfit Toy]

Star Trek Log One, in 1974.