Of course they can. The liscensors at CBS are involved in the production of every book at every level of the process -- they see everything Pocket and its authors are doing throughout the writing process.
Future of Trek at Pocket Books
- Thread starter Jarrod
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Of course they can. The liscensors at CBS are involved in the production of every book at every level of the process -- they see everything Pocket and its authors are doing throughout the writing process.
No. The licensor is by definition a different legal entity than the publisher. The licensor owns the property upon which a novel is being based, and the publisher merely has permission (called a license) from the licensor to publish such novels in exchange for giving the licensor money.
In Star Trek's case, the licensor is CBS, whose main guy for licensing products is John van Critter. Van Citters and/or his subordinates at CBS read every proposal for a Trek novel sent to them by Pocket and either approves or denies it; then they read the outlines and approve or deny; and then they read the manuscript and either approve or deny. They're involved at every step of the way, and their critiques affect the final content of the work. And if they don't like the story or the writing, they can kill the book at any step.
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Wait wait wait - Paula Block is no longer at the helm? End of an era!
^ She departed for greener pastures a few years ago.
Why would she use money as compost?
That's exactly what I've been thinking, as well.
I was honestly starting to become concerned about a potential mental illness.
Which is why back in the 80's and 90's when Richard Arnold was in control of licensing for Paramount none of the novels could have a continuity between them, unless they were by the same author.
But, even more recently CBS stepped in with Before Dishonor and told, as I recall, Marco Palmieri and Peter David to have that epilogue at the end of the book where Lady Q takes Janeway away wherever, just so that if CBS or Paramount were to use Janeway again on screen, then in the books they would have an "escape clause" that would allow them to get Janeway back into the story so that the novels match up with what's going on onscreen (hmmm, I wonder if, and this is a long shot, in the new Star Trek movie set for 2013 release, if there is going to be a scene with Admiral Janeway and others at Starfleet Headquarters in the Prime universe discussing Spock's incident and where he might've gone and how he might've changed the timeline, and that's why the cover for The Eternal Tide has Janeway on it?).
Actually the restrictions on continuity in the novels didn't really kick in until around 1990, and by that point even books by the same author couldn't have any real continuity threads (aside from L. A. Graf managing to sneak in a recurring background crewmember or two). After all, Arnold didn't get the licensing job until '86 or so, and it was a while before he and Roddenberry really started cracking down on the books. There was actually a lot of continuity among the books from about '84-'88, and then it gradually tapered off after that.
That book, and the rest of the post-Nemesis TNG novel series, was edited by Margaret Clark, not Marco.
Nope. I can say with confidence that the creative decisions behind The Eternal Tide were not made in order to tie into the next movie. For one thing, the timing is wrong; when this novel project was initiated a year ago, it was too early in the sequel's writing process for that to have any influence.
Besides, the whole reason for introducing the timeline change was to let the film series start fresh and be accessible to a new audience, not to keep it mired in decades' worth of continuity baggage that only loyal fans are able or willing to follow. Revisiting the Prime universe would defeat that purpose. (And as far as the folks in the Prime universe know, Spock and Nero just fell into a black hole. They probably have no idea there was time travel involved.)
Yep, it seems that Richard was first involved with the vetting of Vonda McIntyre's ST IV novelization. He received the title of "Star Trek Archivist" after ST IV's release, with that movie having made so much $$$$ for Paramount, and with TNG in development. He worked out of Gene's Star Trek Office, but was a Paramount employee. During the hiatus between TNG's Seasons One and Two, all licenses had to be renegotiated (DC Comics, Pocket Books) or dropped (FASA). A memo came out in early 1989 informing new licensees of the changes (eg. no shared original characters, no TAS, concentration on the main actors, etc).
The first publication to break the old restraints was Jeri Taylor's "Unification" novelization (Nov 91), which gave a brief mention to the Phylosians of TAS a few months after GR's death.
Which a different author might not have been able to get away with, since Paramount Licensing did pretty much seem to uphold the no-continuity and no-TAS rules through much of the '90s, until New Frontier came along in '97.
Though at least a couple of authors managed to be sneaky. You remember I mentioned L. A. Graf sneaking a couple of recurring characters into their post-TMP-era novels (starting with Ice Trap in 1992)? One of them, security guard Ensign Michael Howard, actually debuted in Howard Weinstein's The Covenant of the Crown way back in 1981 (and from the name and description, I think he was meant to be an author cameo). I also snuck a passing reference to Ens. Howard into Ex Machina (though at the time I thought he was only an L. A. Graf character, since I hadn't read Covenant in way too long), so he's managed to survive through three different eras of Pocket Trek Lit. (And yet he has no Memory Beta listing yet...)
Yep!
I think the first one I caught was when Kyle popped up in Marvel's run of post-TMP comics. That licensing contract supposedly restricted them to characters who'd been in TMP rather than TOS.
After Richard Arnold's steadfast efforts in stomping out several authors' ideas for callbacks, homages and Tuckerisms in the early 90s, it made a few of them determined to slip character cameos past RA. Peter David was particularly adept at it.
And very cool re Ensign Michael Howard!
Last year, I made a list of all the TOS/TAS elements that got slipped into the Marvel TMP-era comic:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=5204113&postcount=33
It also references the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology in one or two issues.
"And 'The Apple Pie Hubbub' was a significant novel for me, because that's when I first started using VERBS."
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