Former Trek authors you'd like to see write a new adventure
- Thread starter ace2k
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What I’d like is to have a few more Star Trek books a year again. That would make it easier to get a good mix of new writers, frequent contributors, and folks who haven’t had a chance to contribute in some time. I also miss the days of Pocket editors like John Ordover and Marco Palmieri communicating with fans and giving us an idea of what goes on in the Pocket Star Trek office.
Fully agree. I saw a Star Trek shelf at my local B&N and it was just sad. Four books, one of which was an actual novel. Star Wars had two whole shelves below it. CBS & Pocket need to up the game a bit, maybe put out a legacy line like Disney did with the Legends titles.
Number one: Diane Duane. Full stop. She wrote books that are still being sought out, over four decades later, and the last I heard, she was still alive and writing.
I'd love to have a third John M. Ford ST novel, but for that, we'd need a seance. So many of our finest are no longer with us: Janet Kagan, Margaret Wander Bonanno, Vonda McIntyre . . . .
I likewise wouldn't mind seeing another "Piper" novel from Diane Carey, especially since "Lower Deckers" are now a thing.
I'd love to have a third John M. Ford ST novel, but for that, we'd need a seance. So many of our finest are no longer with us: Janet Kagan, Margaret Wander Bonanno, Vonda McIntyre . . . .
I likewise wouldn't mind seeing another "Piper" novel from Diane Carey, especially since "Lower Deckers" are now a thing.
Four?!? The one I went in last week had one Star Trek novel.
The new SNW novel, Spock's autobiography, and two of the Robb Pearlman picture books. That was it.
Certainly more books a year. I would bring back Christopher to pen new TOS/Movie era stories.
The fact that KRAD has been shut out of writing new Star Trek novels is borderline criminal. (Well, not literally, but you know what I mean.)
Totally agree with this one, too.
They recently rebranded my local Chapters to an Indigo. I stopped in there recently to try to get Ring of Fire (couldn’t… the computer said they had two, but they couldn’t find them) and there were a grand total of four Trek novels on the shelf. Star Wars got a whole shelf, but even that seemed to be less than it used to have. Overall, the entire SF&F section seemed smaller. It was sad.
Totally agree with this one, too.
They recently rebranded my local Chapters to an Indigo. I stopped in there recently to try to get Ring of Fire (couldn’t… the computer said they had two, but they couldn’t find them) and there were a grand total of four Trek novels on the shelf. Star Wars got a whole shelf, but even that seemed to be less than it used to have. Overall, the entire SF&F section seemed smaller. It was sad.
News to me.
And I forgot to mention that an early DD masterpiece, The Wounded Sky, was openly acknowledged inspiration for TNG: "Where No One Has Gone Before," an episode on which she is a credited writer.
Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano, Jr., solely so that the book can be titled "Michael Burnham, Messiah." ;-)
In all seriousness, though, Dafydd ab Hugh; Voyager: Final Fury really stood out to me for its humor, imagination, and character-writing. I remember enjoying Balance of Power as well- probably the best Wesley story before the Coda series came out. So, I'd love to see him have another crack at it.
In all seriousness, though, Dafydd ab Hugh; Voyager: Final Fury really stood out to me for its humor, imagination, and character-writing. I remember enjoying Balance of Power as well- probably the best Wesley story before the Coda series came out. So, I'd love to see him have another crack at it.
Possibly it got misshelved under "M" for Mack? Instead of in Trek section where it belonged?
I ran into this once with a Trek novel by Christopher Bennett. The computer at a downtown B&N insisted they had a copy, but neither I nor a helpful employee could find it in the Star Trek section.
Finally, it occurred to me to look under "B" in the SF section. Sure enough, there it was!
His last story for Pocket Books was 15 years ago, in the Seven Deadly Sins anthology, according to MA, and his last novel with them was 16 years ago (A Singular Destiny).
Since then, he has also written The Klingon Art of War for becker & mayer!, and some short stories for Explorer, but no novels.
The employee who was assisting me was quite helpful, and did try looking there. And all the end caps. And the new release tables. And the SF&F highlight table. And the back. The fact that I didn’t end up with a copy certainly wasn’t due to her lack of trying.
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A screenwriter credit is not merely an acknowledgment of inspiration, it's an acknowledgment that the credited person actually wrote or co-wrote the script. Duane got credit because she and Michael Reaves sold the idea to TNG and wrote the first draft of the script.
Although what happened, according to Duane, was that Michael Reaves had an idea for a TNG pitch that he realized might have been unconsciously inspired by The Wounded Sky, so he invited her to collaborate on it. I believe that what they turned in was much closer to The Wounded Sky, but due to the season 1 writing staff upheavals, it got taken away from them and rewritten so completely that barely any of Duane & Reaves's work remained in the final episode.
I wasn't a fan, but the bridges she burned with her Enterprise novel may be forgotten by now. Still, seems unlikely we'd get a TOS novel focusing on a character who only appeared in two books about forty years ago.
Judging by wikipedia, he hasn't had any novels of any kind published in the current millennium. He gave up on his right wing blogging several years ago, no idea what he's up to now.
Yeah, they just opened a new Barnes and Noble near me (one of their new, compact Ikea-maze layouts) and I was disappointed that there were no Trek books at all... until I realized they were shelved by author. IIRC, all the franchises aside from Star Wars were shelved by author, rather than by overarching title or in a big lump after the end of the alphabet like I was used to.
That was my own impression, refamiliarizing myself with what Memory Alpha had to say about the genesis of the episode. Even with the screen credit and the early draft, there wasn't much left but inspiration. The way I read it, she and Reaves might have even been within their rights to demand that they be credited as something to the general effect of "Alan and Alma Smithee." And as good as the episode was, it doesn't hold a candle to The Wounded Sky.
I still don't think that's the right word, because Duane didn't "inspire" the story, she actually wrote and sold it. Yes, it was heavily rewritten, but the roots of it are still what Duane and Reaves personally conceived and wrote under contract, and it does that earned professional work a disservice to reduce it to mere "inspiration," implying no direct involvement. Inspiration is indirect; this was direct and active on Duane's part.
Rewriting is normal in television and film, and credits are more about how much people get paid than about how much of their work is in the finished product. If everyone took their name off a script just because it was heavily rewritten, there'd be a hundred times more pseudonymous scripts than there are.
Besides, even with the changes, it's clear how the story is derived from The Wounded Sky. It has a similar broad story structure -- an alien propulsion expert soups up the Enterprise's engines, it jumps to the far reaches of the universe where thought creates reality, and it has to find its way back. There's enough of her ideas left that it makes sense for her to get credit. Heck, DS9: "It's Only a Paper Moon" has virtually nothing in common with the idea David Mack & John Ordover sold them, but they still got a story credit because it evolved from the outline they sold.
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