Frustrations with Trek lit...
- Thread starter Overgeeked
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I've thought for awhile that Treklit needs a single "easy read" catchup book, from which everything else spins off of, the writers assuming full knowledge of characters from that point. It'd hugely cut down on the "everything since Nemesis" infodumps.
A Who's Who of Treklit guide could serve the same purpose (and be fantastically awesome besides)
A Who's Who of Treklit guide could serve the same purpose (and be fantastically awesome besides)
When I said ongoing series, I meant a series where the books continually build off each other, so I wouldn't really call those an ongoing series then, just whole bunch of stand alones.
Depends on the series. Sure, some book and TV series like "Game of Thrones" are very serialized and you really need to read them in order, but some are more procedural like, say, CSI or MONK . . . or TOS. And some are a little bit of both, like X-FILES or ALIAS. You have ongoing arc plots but you also have the case-of-the-week stories that don't require you to have read every single CSI or ALIAS or MONK novel . .. .. (Trust me, I stayed well clear of the complicated conspiracy stuff when writing ALIAS and X-FILES tie-ins.)
And, honestly, that used to be the standard. You didn't need to read the Doc Savage or Conan the Barbarian and Sherlock Holmes books in order; you could just pick up the latest book at random. And even though DARK SHADOWS was a serialized soap opera, the DARK SHADOWS tie-in novels (which I devoured as a kid) were all standalones. Ditto for the GET SMART novels, the MAN FROM THE UNCLE novels, and even the STAR TREK novels.
And this approach does have its advantages when it comes to accessibility. As long as you had seen the TV show, you could read any one of the novels without feeling lost . ....
Maybe that's old-fashioned, but that's still the goal I aspire to when writing tie-in books.
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Understood. But, just to belabor the point, it's perhaps not unreasonable for some readers to expect TV tie-in books to read like TV series . . .
And there were something like seventy-two DARK SHADOWS novels back in the day, coming out on a regular basis, and 181 "Doc Savage" novels. Heck, more recently, it wasn't too long ago that Tor was publishing a new CONAN novel every three months. To my mind, that's an ongoing series, even if though the books weren't serialized and didn't need to be read in any particular order.
My approach to the balance is that when I do need to recap a past episode or novel, I try to present it from a fresh angle or put it in a larger context, so that even people who are familiar with those past events will get something new out of it. Like, for a hypothetical example, if I needed to recap "Operation -- Annihilate!", I might tell the story of what a Denevan citizen experienced of the events on the planet during the episode, including their secondhand knowledge of what the Enterprise crew did to deal with the crisis. Or I might tell it from the perspective of a scientist trying to backtrack the flying parasites to their origins and considering the Deneva incident as just part of the overall data they're evaluating. So I'm not just dragging the story to a halt to recap the plot of the episode; I'm presenting the relevant information from the episode in a way that the episode didn't, so that there's new information there.
Also, I've realized that not every episode reference needs to be explained. I did this a lot in The Face of the Unknown -- I'd give a character a line or action that was informed by their experience in a past episode, and I'd think about putting in a passage spelling out how that experience connected, but then I'd realize, "Wait, that doesn't actually advance the story I'm telling now." So I'd just leave it implicit. Fans already familiar with TOS would probably recognize the subtext/Easter egg, and for everyone else, the explanation would just be an interruption. For instance, I have Sulu mention that time Chekov's old girlfriend came onboard, but I had no need to specify that she came onboard as a space hippie under the thrall of a cult leader who used his electronics expertise to hijack the ship and use it to violate the Neutral Zone and find a mythical planet where he died, because all that actually mattered in the context of the scene was that Chekov had an old girlfriend that he'd seen somewhat recently. The rest would've been gratuitous continuity porn. So just because you mention something from a past episode, that doesn't mean you have to explain what it's referring to. It's just part of the characters' backstory, like any detail from your story notes. It doesn't all have to go on the page.
Heck, Star Trek had several hundred standalone novels before the modern continuity started to develop.
This would be so great...plus add in maps. Star Charts. Maybe even sketches of ships and original characters. Info about new civilizations...we see this sort of thing with Tolkien and other 'universes'. I know we have memory beta and the various reading charts which are helpful but it's not the same.
You do have a point there, I guess it would be better to just refer to stuff like the current 24th Century series as serialized instead of ongoing.Understood. But, just to belabor the point, it's perhaps not unreasonable for some readers to expect TV tie-in books to read like TV series . . .
And there were something like seventy-two DARK SHADOWS novels back in the day, coming out on a regular basis, and 181 "Doc Savage" novels. Heck, more recently, it wasn't too long ago that Tor was publishing a new CONAN novel every three months. To my mind, that's an ongoing series, even if though the books weren't serialized and didn't need to be read in any particular order.
That works better.
Which leaves open the question of just how serialized a novel series should be, especially if it's based on a TV show. And whether it's reasonable to expect readers to have read X number of previous books in order to read the latest one.
And the only honest answer is: it depends. You probably ought to read THE LORD OF THE RINGS in sequence. But the original CONAN stories by Robert E. Howard . . . not so much.
It kinda depends on whether you're telling one big story, as in the original DUNE trilogy, or just a series of standalone adventures, as with the original James Bond novels and movies.
And it can even vary within a series sometimes. The first three TARZAN novels form a rough trilogy, but the many later ones are standalones and can be read in pretty much any order. Ditto for Burrough's JOHN CARTER OF MARS novels . ....
And, yes, you can tell in which era my tastes were shaped.
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Think maybe part of the point is that you can't really jump in anymore at all. (I've never left the pool, so I'm all set, but in general). Go grab a new TNG book, say the Prey series. You see the Enterprise, dig in, and then have no idea who they're talking about, as half the crew has wandered off. If you've followed the bouncing ball, you're good, but otherwise you're wondering what the heck is going on.
Who from DS9 is even on the station at this point? O'Brien, Nog, Quark. Some of the others pop up occasionally, but pretty much everyone (plus the station itself) has moved on. Story flows organically, but if you weren't reading before, tough to pop in now.
I get the appeal/nostalgia of being able to pick of a TOS numbered book and immediately know the score. Doesn't matter if you read the last one, or any one in 5 years, you can immediately jump in and follow along. You know the ship, the crew (give or take the wrinkles the writer adds to make the crew their own), you can enjoy the book. You get super-sized episodes, basically, where you go on an adventure, play with the planet or mystery that was brought up, and then put your toys back in the box. It's definitely different than the long term growth dynamic that's going on in the 24th century series, but it's also comfortable and familiar. Long term politics don't matter, just how they play into the adventure or crisis of the moment.
Who from DS9 is even on the station at this point? O'Brien, Nog, Quark. Some of the others pop up occasionally, but pretty much everyone (plus the station itself) has moved on. Story flows organically, but if you weren't reading before, tough to pop in now.
I get the appeal/nostalgia of being able to pick of a TOS numbered book and immediately know the score. Doesn't matter if you read the last one, or any one in 5 years, you can immediately jump in and follow along. You know the ship, the crew (give or take the wrinkles the writer adds to make the crew their own), you can enjoy the book. You get super-sized episodes, basically, where you go on an adventure, play with the planet or mystery that was brought up, and then put your toys back in the box. It's definitely different than the long term growth dynamic that's going on in the 24th century series, but it's also comfortable and familiar. Long term politics don't matter, just how they play into the adventure or crisis of the moment.
I've been working my way through the Dresden Files and Kate Daniels Urban Fantasy series and the way they handle things is kind of a combination of the two, they're actually a bit like a lot of the TV shows on now. Each book has it's own specific story, but there are elements that build up from book to book.That works better.
Which leaves open the question of just how serialized a novel series should be, especially if it's based on a TV show. And whether it's reasonable to expect readers to have read X number of previous books in order to read the latest one.
And the only honest answer is: it depends. You probably ought to read THE LORD OF THE RINGS in sequence. But the original CONAN stories by Robert E. Howard . . . not so much.
It kinda depends on whether you're telling one big story, as in the original DUNE trilogy, or just a series of standalone adventures, as with the original James Bond novels and movies.
And it can even vary within a series sometimes. The first three TARZAN novels form a rough trilogy, but the many later ones are standalones and can be read in pretty much any order. Ditto for Burrough's JOHN CARTER OF MARS novels . ....
And, yes, you can tell in which era my tastes were shaped.
When it comes to Trek Lit, I'm kind of surprised that most of the 24th Century e-books have been parts of the serialized stories. I think they would be the perfect opportunity to do smaller, TV era stand alones. That way people who want those kinds of stories can get them without taking away books from the serialized stories, and the people who don't read them won't feel like they're missing parts of the main arcs.
I've never understood the argument that you can't get into a story if you don't already know the characters. People were able to get into "The Man Trap" and "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Emissary" and "Caretaker" and "Broken Bow" well enough. Nobody knew who Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were before May 1977.
Sure, if you're expecting Riker and Troi and Data and instead get Elfiki and Chen and Smrhova, that could take some getting used to. But that doesn't mean the story itself won't tell you all you need to know about the characters it contains. The backstory of how we got from there to here isn't necessarily relevant to the story about to unfold. You don't need a character's whole biography to understand them; you can learn about them from what they say and do in the current story.
Just to play devil's advocate, that's not quite the same thing because those weren't pre-existing properties that came with certain expectations. Nobody was anticipating that STAR WARS was going to be about somebody other than Luke Skywalker.
But if you picked up a LOGAN'S RUN novel, and found yourself reading about some guy you'd never heard of named "Luke Skywalker," you might be understandably confused . . . or even annoyed. You buy a LOGAN'S RUN novel because you want to read about those characters and that world . . ..
(STAR TREK, to be fair, is slightly different in that some readers may be more interested in the overall universe than just "The Adventures of Jean-Luc Picard.")
On a practical level, though, I'm working on my third LIBRARIANS novel now, and I'm absolutely writing about Baird and Stone and Cassanda and Ezekiel and Jenkins because, well, it's a LIBRARIANS novel and anybody who picks up a LIBRARIANS book is going to want read about the characters on the show. And they're going to want the book to feel like an episode of the show, albeit with an unlimited special-effects budget.
A crazy idea, I know.
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A lot of long-running series go through frequent cast changes, though. Doctor Who, M*A*S*H, Law & Order, superhero team books like X-Men and Avengers, it's just a fact of life. And a lot of people don't experience such series in strict order, but jump around and get exposed to different casts at different times. I first saw Doctor Who in reruns of the Fourth Doctor and went up through at least the Sixth before it looped back around to the first three. I've seen episodes from various seasons of Law & Order out of sequence, and I don't think I've ever seen the first season. I discovered the X-Men through the '90s animated series and only later read the '70s comics. And so on. It's possible to follow a series despite jumping over a cast change. Yes, you know you've missed something in between, but like I said, that backstory of how the cast changed doesn't matter to the story you're reading or watching now. It's something you might want to figure out later, but for the moment, you just need to watch the new characters in action and get a handle on them as you go.
Just to play devil's advocate, that's not quite the same thing because those weren't pre-existing properties that came with certain expectations. Nobody was anticipating that STAR WARS was going to be about somebody other than Luke Skywalker.
But if you picked up a LOGAN'S RUN novel, and found yourself reading about some guy you'd never heard of named "Luke Skywalker," you might be understandably confused . . . or even annoyed. You buy a LOGAN'S RUN novel because you want to read about those characters and that world . . ..
(STAR TREK, to be fair, is slightly different in that some readers may be more interested in the overall universe than just "The Adventures of Jean-Luc Picard.")
On a practical level, though, I'm working on my third LIBRARIANS novel now, and I'm absolutely writing about Baird and Stone and Cassanda and Ezekiel and Jenkins because, well, it's a LIBRARIANS novel and anybody who picks up a LIBRARIANS book is going to want read about the characters on the show. And they're going to want the book to feel like an episode of the show, albeit with an unlimited special-effects budget.
A crazy idea, I know.
Yes, this exactly. I have less than zero interest in some grand unfolding meta-plot that's a continuation of the series I love. I want more TOS with the whole crew on the ship, series or movie era. I want more TNG with the whole crew on the ship, series or movie era. I want more DS9 with the whole crew on the station, and the station at the mouth of the wormhole...because apparently it's since moved in the lit universe...
But that's kinda the whole point. There's no jump-on point. It's a continuing serialized story at this point. Either you read recaps of most of the stuff since the relaunch or you're shit out of luck and confused to no end. As the tail of the meta-plot gets longer, the harder it will be for new readers to get on-board.
And no offense to the Trek lit writers, but I'm not interested in most of the side characters that have been promoted to center stage, nor am I that interested in stories centering on one on-screen main cast member surrounded by characters I've never heard of and don't care about. Clearly you're doing something right because people are reading your books, and well done for that. But I just want straight TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT fiction. Something recognizable and familiar. Which is the entire point of reading tie-in novels. To me at least.
I don't think that's the issue, but rather that the characters you know from tv have changed since you saw them last time, 12 in-universe years ago
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