Frustrations with Trek lit...
- Thread starter Overgeeked
- Start date
We'll agree to disagree on taste thenI was a Star Wars fan in the 1990s too, and some of the books (Thrawn, X-wings) were very good reads. But even if the story went on, it is true that a lot of the books were boring (Traviss's commandos, the swamp story with Mace Windu) and also, the Star Wars stories themselseves became limited because it always came back to Good-Evil type stories.
In 2008 Destiny went out, and this made me let Star Wars down for star Trek.
I liked Star Trek before and had read some books, but this trilogy made me want to read the rest, and since then I make sure to get all the books when they are published.
Star Trek has something more, in this universe, everything is possible and not only good-evil stories. The stories can be Political (Articles of the Federation), Hard-SF (Watching the clock or Live by the code), Fantasy (Dragon's honor), Fun (Doctor's Orders or The Kobayashi Maru (the part with checkov was hilarious)), Space Opera (Rising son), you name it. For me Star Trek lit is IDIC-lit
That is why I never stopped reading it since 2008.
The eBook versions are available.
Plus they're usually available in used book stores or thrift shops.
Still, it would be awesome to have a new TNG book set during the series.
That's not his point, JWolf. Jarrod's saying that the newer releases are the ones new readers are most likely to get because they're the ones that are out there and visible, not that they don't have any way of getting to older books. Even if you jump onto an online ebook vendor, you're not going to see older numbered books unless you go out of your way to look for them, so that isn't a solution to the accessibility problem he's describing for attracting new readers out of the gate.
Used books stores solve that to a degree, but even ebook vendors with full out-of-print collections still have one constant flaw shared by most online vendors where no one's yet developed a platform that mimics the "random browsing/flipping" use case. The online equivalent of just flicking your eye down a shelf of works that's essentially (from your perspective) randomly chosen out of the global library, or watching a random episode of either a specific series or genre or whatever with no decision making process (the equivalent of "because it's on"). For whatever reason, no storefront has yet pushed out a "Random" button within a given category. Something like "Amazon, show me 10 truly randomly selected entries from the 'TNG books' category", or "Netflix, show me a random episode of Deep Space 9". Giving suggestions based on personal preference is good, sure, but it's like simulated annealing without random mutations; gives a good chance of getting stuck in local maxima.
Maybe there's a third-party front-end that does it (in fact, without having looked, I bet there is for Netflix at least somewhere), but that's just a patch for functionality that should be integrated into the base platform.
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A random number generator could do that. Or a dice. Though you will end up watching a lot of first six episodes of the first six seasons
Quoted for truth.
And I don't know where you are, but here in Florida Used Book Stores are a dying breed.
Are there still Pocket Editors here?
You all make this sound as if there is more than one "Pocket" editor responsible for Star Trek.
There's Schlesinger the only one who actually is at Pocket and has the responsibility for the ST line (and never was on this forum AFAIK, at least not active), and freelancer Margaret Clark who does the hands on editing stuff (also not openly active on this forum).
There's Schlesinger the only one who actually is at Pocket and has the responsibility for the ST line (and never was on this forum AFAIK, at least not active), and freelancer Margaret Clark who does the hands on editing stuff (also not openly active on this forum).
Well, and there's that quote from one of the Trek authors that someone had as their signature for a long time - "don't mistake a few fans bitching on the internet for any kind of trend".
When Margaret took over, the line had contained all of the things we've talked about here in the recent past. She made the decision to prioritize 24th century ongoing and TOS standalone books. I don't want to speak for her, or assume things I shouldn't, but it seems like a reasonable inference to me that those were the books that sold well, so she decided to do more of that. If standalone 24th century during-show novels sold well, she'd probably have bought more of them.
When Margaret took over, the line had contained all of the things we've talked about here in the recent past. She made the decision to prioritize 24th century ongoing and TOS standalone books. I don't want to speak for her, or assume things I shouldn't, but it seems like a reasonable inference to me that those were the books that sold well, so she decided to do more of that. If standalone 24th century during-show novels sold well, she'd probably have bought more of them.
Although with 24th century novel continuity quickly reaching the 2387 glass ceiling, I suspect more TV series-era novels for the 24th century shows could end up becoming a very viable alternative.
Well, some of the recent 24th Century books have made it on the bestseller lists, so they must be doing pretty well.
That's the to keep in mind here, they publish what sells, if the current series weren't selling then we would probably would be getting standalones, and at the same time if the 24th century standalones sold well we'd be getting them.
That's the to keep in mind here, they publish what sells, if the current series weren't selling then we would probably would be getting standalones, and at the same time if the 24th century standalones sold well we'd be getting them.
It's easy to do this, you can either just look at a specific genre, which would be the equivalent to wandering through that genre's shelves at the book store, or if you didn't want something in a specific genre you can just look through the recommended books, or bestsellers, or one of the themed sections they tend to have on the first page or two. I do this stuff all the time.That's not his point, JWolf. Jarrod's saying that the newer releases are the ones new readers are most likely to get because they're the ones that are out there and visible, not that they don't have any way of getting to older books. Even if you jump onto an online ebook vendor, you're not going to see older numbered books unless you go out of your way to look for them, so that isn't a solution to the accessibility problem he's describing for attracting new readers out of the gate.
Used books stores solve that to a degree, but even ebook vendors with full out-of-print collections still have one constant flaw shared by most online vendors where no one's yet developed a platform that mimics the "random browsing/flipping" use case. The online equivalent of just flicking your eye down a shelf of works that's essentially (from your perspective) randomly chosen out of the global library, or watching a random episode of either a specific series or genre or whatever with no decision making process (the equivalent of "because it's on"). For whatever reason, no storefront has yet pushed out a "Random" button within a given category. Something like "Amazon, show me 10 truly randomly selected entries from the 'TNG books' category", or "Netflix, show me a random episode of Deep Space 9". Giving suggestions based on personal preference is good, sure, but it's like simulated annealing without random mutations; gives a good chance of getting stuck in local maxima.
Maybe there's a third-party front-end that does it (in fact, without having looked, I bet there is for Netflix at least somewhere), but that's just a patch for functionality that should be integrated into the base platform.
They can go past 2387, they just can't reference Romulus or Spock.
So when the surviving TOS gang have their 125th anniversary reunion in 2391.
"Has anyone seen Spock?"
"Ahem! You know that topic's forbidden."
^ Spock can be glossed over. Romulus can't.
But if you have Titan or Enterprise doing some science stuff somewhere in the middle of Knowhere mentioning Romulus isn't necesarry for the story and can thus be avoided.
"We should avoid the Neutral Zone."
"Neutral Zone? Wasn't that disbanded after Romulus was-"
"LA-LA-LA! Not listening!"
"We're approaching the Neutral Zone. Raise shields and arm all weapons."
"The Neutral Zone? What is it?"
"The large area separating Federation space from hostile powers. But that's not important right now."
"The Neutral Zone? What is it?"
"The large area separating Federation space from hostile powers. But that's not important right now."
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