When I consider my own understanding of what is meant here by fiction that is fanboy-ish, I think of some of the earlier Doctor Who novels, and more recently the DC Star Trek Volume 1 comic series.
The first Doctor Who book I read was about one of my favorite villains from the show, and it had a lot of references to TV stories which had featured this particular race, and the references I only understood from fact checking DW reference material. I enjoyed it well enough when I read it, but subsequent exposure to the original TV adventures revealed to me how saturated the book was with details from those stories. The second DW book I read clicked with me because I owned and had watched the TV adventure it extrapolated from, and had luckily enough read exactly the right novelizations of the other stories that were referenced in the new story. The thing is, there are decades of story details in DW's long history, and it's taken years to accumulate all the details.
With the Star Trek DC Volume 1 series, I was lucky again to have invested a renewed interest in the old series around the time of it's anniversary. The season box sets dropped in price, so I went for them, and rediscovered the old show. I watched through all the greats that I knew and loved, then watched through the acclaimed ones that I wasn't as familiar with. Then I got to the ones I remembered liking as a kid, but had become wary of because of their reputation. Eventually, I watched through the remaining ones as well. I had a great time with it. Later on, I came across mention of the Star Trek comics CD on this forum, and felt that was a great opportunity.
I've read about some of the opinions and writing restrictions on the early Star Trek comics, and the letters column of ST DC Vol. 1 indicated a lot of enthusiasm for being able to develop characters and stories from the original series, which was prohibited prior to the start of this series. Most of the letters are full of excitment for seeing the reintroduction of characters and situations from episode of the TV series, but I did come across one dissenting voice who complained that there was a bit of overkill going on. I've gone through the first eight issues so far, and I can see what he means. The Klingons, Excalbians and the Organians are all mixed into the first four-part story. Then issue six has a character from "A Taste of Armageddon" and another character who exhibits abilites that are explicitly tied to the origin of Garth's abilities from "Whom Gods Destroy". Then the two-part adventure focusing on Savaak deals with Pon Farr, features a character called Xon (I suspect the writers named him that after the vulcan character who was intended to replace Spock during the development of ST Phase II/ST:The Motion Picture), and also dealt with a secret Romulan mission to exploit a discovery made by Kirk and company about the Great Barrier at the edge of the galaxy in "Where No Man Has Gone Before". That's a lot of elements to cannibalize from episodes to mix into new combinations, and admittedly the stories were original enough. But with issues six, seven and eight, I began to wonder about the heavy reliance on continuity. If I had tried to follow the series when it was actually coming out (I was very young at that point) I would have had a great deal of difficulty.
I'm not sure if there is any point I am trying to make in particular. When I consider ST novels, I know there came a point in time where I found the prospect of following them daunting. The danger signs where there when they started coming out with interlocking series, Invasion wasn't too big a deal, but I felt dispair at the sight of the Double Helix books, with characters from the different shows appearing with each other on each of the covers, and then the Gateway series...I just didn't know what to make of it. I stopped following DS9 at a certain point, and Voyager as well. I felt like there was an oversaturation of ST, and then eventually I came to realize that I felt left behind. I wouldn't be able to get into the books for those shows, and the interlocking stories seemed problematic. Crossovers are fun, but only in small doses. ST fiction seemed to get to a point where there appeared to be so much crossover between series. I seem to recall there was even a novel called crossover. That was the point I felt where ST fiction started to take away from the idea of the TNG crew as being their own generation, without the shadow of the old crew. The movie ST: Generations didn't help the situation, creating a situation where the audience is expected to believe that the new crew (not that new by that point) required intervention from a member of the old crew in order to win the day. I hated that perceived vibe.
New Frontier seemed interesting, but then I saw that it was joined up with Double Helix and Gateways and the Captains Table, so I stayed away from it for a while. All that being said, I did recently take the plunge and start collecting New Frontier. And I will only read the New Frontier books of DH, GW, and CT (Except that I might give Janeway's Captain's Table book a try, I like the author well enough and the back cover blurb seems interesting enough). I'll be going into those books blind, and hopefully they will be self contained enough to get through without being confused. I don't care about the other segments of DH, GW and CT, because I'm wary of oversaturation.
The idea of the TNG relaunch is something that drew me in, and so I've collected from resistance through to ST Destiny, A Singular Destiny, and Losing the Peace (I'm also throwing in the first book of the Titan series, because Riker and Troi are a part of TNG). I've had to draw a limit for myself, because I haven't even been able to find the time to get started with these books, but I want to reasonable sampling of Post-Nemesis TNG. I've only skipped Death in Winter because I find Michael Jan Friedman books are difficult for me to get through, so hopefully I'll get a good idea for what Picard and Beverly are all about in the subsequent books. I'm just hoping that knowledge of the A Time To... series isn't required, but then, I've heard complaints that they aren't, so I guess I will see.
I kind of feel like the older, numbered series are a safe haven, to a certain extend. Even if they are continuity heavy, they can only be heavy with continuity from the three seasons of the original series. I was lucky again to have had interest in securing TOS novels of interest before the new movie came out, as they've become much more sparsely supplied in used bookstores of late (that's probably no surprise).
What's really exciting is the new books based on the 2009 movie. They are supposed to be user friendly, and targeted for an audience that liked the new movie. I like that there is a certain amount of simplicity in this. We get to go back to that iconic crew, and explore their characters from a new perspective, and we only need to have seen that one movie. And there's no need to be too aware of or remember details of the original crews five year mission, since that's 6-8 years forward from the time of the movie, roughly speaking. I will probably get the four books based on the movie.
The process of writing all of this has helped clarify for me where the fanboyishness, or the perceived level fanboyishness of a novel impacts on my spending habits. I've haven't followed all ST shows, and when you factor in the novels, I guess there is only so much detail my mind can hold.
), which I take to mean the simple pleasure of seeing X meet Y from disparate episodes or shows, apart from a gripping story or character development, etc. Don't really see the pejorative aspect of this at all, myself. Of course I only like "well written continuity porn" - for example I enjoyed seeing Mr. Spock, Seven of Nine, and the Planet Killer go up against the new Borg threat in Before Dishonor, or as in another of my favorite TNG novels, Immortal Coil, seeing the interactions of M5 and other AIs from various Treks and Data.... Or as in the Myriad Universes story seeing the alternate Bashir have to contend with a Botany Bay filled with Rain Robinson, Janeway's ancestor, etc, and in Greater Than the Sum, picking up with the Liberated/Hugh-group of Borg after so much other Borg mythology had come and gone, and a new Borg threat was imminent. I could go on but I cannot really think of a Trek book (not that I've read nearly as many as some here on these boards) that had referenced Trek history/continuity in what seemed like anything other than an enjoyable way. 
