Going forward: Emphasis on canon or original characters?

[Jarvisimo]

I tend to think of as a charcater's life expectancy being contingent upon their healthy behaviour in life. So Vaughn was active at 100-plus because he had been a field agent all that time, and the relatively advanced health service of the Fed meant that his earlier Bond-esque fitness really complemented what Federation science could do for him. The same applied to Picard, whose fitness in youth was mentioned on screen (the marathons, for example), which has resulted in science giving him a better old age.

But other characters like Soong or Joseph Sisko weren't top-of-the-line in youth, they probably ate too much unhealthy food, didn't exercise, drank too much, or whatever ... science couldn't repair them in that manner? Of course the ancient admiral in that early TNG episode doesn't quite fit this pattern.

I know this isn't exactly a watertight argument, but it seemed to fit in my mind how people could age in certain ways and others differently.

The only other thought I could suggest was some kind of post-birth genetic enhancement, to ensure that the natural degredation of human bodies and cells don't occur, and that people can therefore live longer, conceive after menopause, etc. But isn't that contrary to Trek's prohibition on genetic engineering? And we still have problematic people like Joseph Sisko and Soong

 

[Jarvisimo]

I also like how rejuvination is used in fiction by Dan Abnett for Black Library: but there it very much is an economic thing, connected to monetary wealth, which isn't very 24th century Trek, nor is it dependent on the character's youthful fitness.

Hawser found it all rather dreadful. He spent the evening with the elegant little purple box clutched to his chest and a sick smile on his face waiting for the interminable speeches to conclude. Of the many dignitaries and men of influence attending the dinner that midsummer night, no one was paid more deference than Giro Emantine. By then, Emantine was prefect-secretary to one of the Unification Council’s most senior members, and the common understanding was that Emantine would be given the next seat that came vacant. He was an old man, rumoured to be on his third juvenat. He was accompanied by a remarkably young, remarkably beautiful and remarkably silent woman. Hawser couldn’t decide if she was Emantine’s daughter, a vulgar trophy wife, or a nurse.

[...]

Hawser took a sip of his amasec. He felt slightly invigorated, slightly warm. He had become fixated upon Emantine’s hand, which was holding a crystal thimble of some green digestif. The hand was perfect. It was clean and manicured, scented, graceful. The skin was white and unblemished and uncreased, and the flesh plump and supple. There were no signs at all of the consequences of age, no wrinkles, no liver spots, no discolourations. The nails were clean. It wasn’t the gnarled, sunken, prominently-veined claw of a hundred and ninety year-old man, and prefect-secretary Giro Emantine was at least that. It was the hand of a young man. Hawser wondered if the young man was missing it. The thought made him snigger.

Of course, the prefect-secretary had access to the best juvenat refinements Terran science could afford. The treatments were so good, they didn’t even look like juvenat treatments, not like the work Hawser had had done at sixty, plumping his flesh with collagenics, and filling his creases and wrinkles with dermics, and perma-staining his skin a ‘healthy’ tanned colour with nanotic pigments, and cleaning his eyes and his organs, and resculpting his chin, and pinching his cheeks until he looked like a retouched hololith portrait of himself. Emantine probably had gene therapies and skeleto-muscular grafts, implants, underweaves, transfixes, stem-splices…

Maybe it was a young man’s hand. Maybe the skinweaves were why the prefect-secretary’s smile looked so fixed.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^ That's a nice way of thinking about it.

Plus now that I think about it the novels are currently in 2384 or 2383 which means their getting closer to the The Visitor/All Good Things/Endgame future era (though hopefully they use better uniforms) which means the canon characters are going to be getting up their in the age department so eventually they may end up needing to be phased out as it becomes more and more unbelievable that they would be active at their increasingly older ages.

I can't see Trek lit ever moving so far ahead of the TV series' that that becomes an issue. As cool as it would be to see the "Next next generation" come up and take over, phasing out the TV characters would be a big financial risk.

 

[Markonian]

I can't see Trek lit ever moving so far ahead of the TV series' that that becomes an issue. As cool as it would be to see the "Next next generation" come up and take over, phasing out the TV characters would be a big financial risk.

I'm surprised. Now that main timeline TrekLit is independent from TV, they could go on in real time. Ten years from now we should well be into the 2390s.

Well, and I was hoping to see a fleshed-out future, going to the 25th/26th/29th century and the like. I mean, we want to get to know the Enterprise-F/G to J, don't we?

 

[Jarvisimo]

Beyond its inclusion in an Enterprise episode why do we have to have or think about future Enterprises? Why do these need to be the focus? For the crews, it's like the name is cursed! The benefit of Treklit is getting away from TV-centrism and showing that interesting things happen to other people - a la Vanguard, New Frontier, DTI, Articles & A Singular Destiny.

Otherwise we end up having narrow-focus cheese, like the Shatner books, the use of Sela in every Romulan plot for two decades of writing, and even the Klingon Empire series and its 'every Klingon from tv in one book' set-up, which suggest that only a few score people are important in the entire universe!

 

[craig keith]

Beyond its inclusion in an Enterprise episode why do we have to have or think about future Enterprises? Why do these need to be the focus? For the crews, it's like the name is cursed! The benefit of Treklit is getting away from TV-centrism and showing that interesting things happen to other people - a la Vanguard, New Frontier, DTI, Articles & A Singular Destiny.

Otherwise we end up having narrow-focus cheese, like the Shatner books, the use of Sela in every Romulan plot for two decades of writing, and even the Klingon Empire series and its 'every Klingon from tv in one book' set-up, which suggest that only a few score people are important in the entire universe!

Mentioning Articles i would love a sequel to that KRAD

 

[Jarvisimo]

Or any book by Krad, but it would be good to see another Articles, since it was so good at suggesting the scope of the Federation

 

[Greg Cox]

Beyond its inclusion in an Enterprise episode why do we have to have or think about future Enterprises? Why do these need to be the focus? For the crews, it's like the name is cursed! The benefit of Treklit is getting away from TV-centrism and showing that interesting things happen to other people - a la Vanguard, New Frontier, DTI, Articles & A Singular Destiny.

Otherwise we end up having narrow-focus cheese, like the Shatner books, the use of Sela in every Romulan plot for two decades of writing, and even the Klingon Empire series and its 'every Klingon from tv in one book' set-up, which suggest that only a few score people are important in the entire universe!

I admit that I come at this from a different perspective. If I wanted to write about non-canon characters and ships, I'd write an original novel. The whole point of writing a tie-book is to play with somebody else's toys.

If I'm writing a Green Hornet story, I want to write about Britt Reid and Kato. If I'm writing STAR TREK, I want to write about Kirk and Spock and the Starship Enterprise . . ..

 

[Christopher]

Whereas for me, much of the interest is in taking things only glimpsed or briefly portrayed in canon and finding out more about them.

 

[Relayer1]

So, Greg and Christopher are very different people...must say I saw that coming !

Treklit needs both so it's all good !

 

[Markonian]

Whereas for me, much of the interest is in taking things only glimpsed or briefly portrayed in canon and finding out more about them.

Like the Enterprise-J and the 26th century? They were briefly glimpsed in canon as well...

 

[Greg Cox]

So, Greg and Christopher are very different people...must say I saw that coming !

Treklit needs both so it's all good !

Infinite diversity in infinite Trek novels!

 

[Relayer1]

So, Greg and Christopher are very different people...must say I saw that coming !

Treklit needs both so it's all good !

Infinite diversity in infinite Trek novels!

 

[F. King Daniel]

Whereas for me, much of the interest is in taking things only glimpsed or briefly portrayed in canon and finding out more about them.

Like the Enterprise-J and the 26th century? They were briefly glimpsed in canon as well...

It'd have to be a Myriad Universes or alternate future tale, since the Enterprise NX-01 destroyed the Delphic Expanse 400 years early and rendered the Battle of Procyon V moot. If there ever is an Enterprise-J in Trek Prime, it may be very different from what we saw in "Azati Prime"

 

[NrobbieC]

Whereas for me, much of the interest is in taking things only glimpsed or briefly portrayed in canon and finding out more about them.

Like the Enterprise-J and the 26th century? They were briefly glimpsed in canon as well...

It'd have to be a Myriad Universes or alternate future tale, since the Enterprise NX-01 destroyed the Delphic Expanse 400 years early and rendered the Battle of Procyon V moot. If there ever is an Enterprise-J in Trek Prime, it may be very different from what we saw in "Azati Prime"

However that may be a different Expanse, part of the Sphere Builders' first invasion which the Federation thwarted leading them to go back in time...anything is possible.

 

[Jarvisimo]

Oh, the delights of the Temporal Cold War ...