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Has anyone purchased the leather bound ST book at Barnes + Noble?

VOODOOXI

Commander
Red Shirt
Just wondering if anyone has picked up the leather bound "classic episodes" book that Barnes + Noble is selling for Star Trek's 50th Anniversary.

It's a good looking book if anything else...I've never read any of James Blish's translations of the screenplays that are contained in this book. Just wondering if they are worth it.
 
For this type of volume, I would say it's definitely worth the price.

However, I prefer to have vintage copies of the individual paperback volumes with their great cover paintings (and those can be obtained pretty cheaply on the used book market).

Just be aware that the prose does not always exactly match what was depicted in the episodes. Blish added certain details of his own.

Kor
 
Added details, yeah, but also he often was working from an earlier draft than what ended up getting filmed. A lot of the differences are deleted scenes or details changed in the final draft.
 
I would've probably considered it if it were a complete collection but, seeing as it's only a selection, I really wouldn't be interested. What I'd be more interested in seeing is ebook versions of the old Blish novelizations, the old Log series, and the original Bantam novels.
 
I have a copy, because I collect. It's quite nice. I hope they sell lots of copies, so we get a Volume II...
 
I doubt there'd be a Volume II, since the majority of the episode adaptations (45) are in this volume, and they are the generally recognized "fan favorites" (i.e., "Spock's Brain" is not here). That said, maybe they'd publish a Volume II that included the rest of the Blish ones, J.A. Lawrence's Mudd adaptations and original story, and Alan Dean Foster's TAS logs. But my gut tells me not to hold my breath. I'm just glad I have this sharp-looking volume to look cool on my bookshelf!
 
I've never read any of James Blish's translations of the screenplays that are contained in this book. Just wondering if they are worth it.

Many of them are excellent, and sometimes quite different.

The other thread is here:
http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/new-blish-episode-novelization-book-for-50th-anniversary.280423/

The list of episode adaptations contained in the new hardcover volume (Thanks Dayton Ward):

The Menagerie

Where No Man Has Gone Before
Charlie's Law (Charlie X)
The Naked Time
The Enemy Within
What Are Little Girls Made Of?
Dagger of the Mind
The Conscience of the King
Balance of Terror
The Galileo Seven
Arena
Tomorrow Is Yesterday
Court Martial
The Return of the Archons
Space Seed
A Taste of Armageddon
This Side of Paradise
The Devil in the Dark
Errand of Mercy
The City on the Edge of Forever
Operation Annihilate

Amok Time
Who Mourns for Adonais?
The Changeling
Mirror, Mirror
The Apple
The Doomsday Machine
Metamorphosis
Journey to Babel
The Deadly Years
The Trouble With Tribbles
A Piece of the Action
The Immunity Syndrome
By Any Other Name
The Ultmate Computer
Assignment: Earth

The Enterprise Incident
The Day of the Dove
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
The Tholian Web
Wink of an Eye
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
The Cloudminders
All Our Yesterdays.
 
That said, maybe they'd publish a Volume II that included the rest of the Blish ones, J.A. Lawrence's Mudd adaptations and original story, and Alan Dean Foster's TAS logs.

The Foster Logs would need their own separate collection. While Blish streamlined the stories to fit 6 or 7 into a rather slim volume, Foster expanded them so that 3 would fill a significantly thicker volume -- and in the last four cases, to expand just one episode to novel length. So trying to cram them and the remaining 34 TOS installments into a single tome would make it cumbersomely huge.
 
The Foster Logs would need their own separate collection. While Blish streamlined the stories to fit 6 or 7 into a rather slim volume, Foster expanded them so that 3 would fill a significantly thicker volume -- and in the last four cases, to expand just one episode to novel length. So trying to cram them and the remaining 34 TOS installments into a single tome would make it cumbersomely huge.
That's true, Christopher. So maybe we get a leatherbound B&N "trilogy" ;)
 
The Foster Logs would need their own separate collection.

Ballantine/Del Rey last republished Alan Dean Foster's "Log" adaptations of "Star Trek: The Animated Series" for the 40th anniversary. There were five volumes in these new trade paperbacks, two "ST Logs" in each book. A then-new and different one-page introduction from the author prefaced each volume:

In "Logs One and Two", ADF discusses getting the job, his excitement about writing for ST, and the trepidation of possibly padding out 20-page scripts into 60,000 words.

In "Logs Three and Four", he mentions how some authors consider novelization assignments to be hack work, and demonstrates how "Fire photon torpedoes, Mr Sulu!" can become two paragraphs of exposition.

In "Logs Five and Six", ADF discusses Filmation's approach to animation and mentions how he recognized a friend's artwork style in a cel from TAS used on the original release of "ST Log 5".

In "Logs Seven and Eight", he talks about the day Judy-Lynn del Rey told him to start padding out each remaining script into one per book. ADF's additional Kumara the Klingon adventure in "ST Log 7" is mentioned as being ADF's rejected two-parter script pitch for the third season of TOS. He was told to resubmit for Season Four. Sigh. (I did correspond with ADF about this anecdote; he cannot remember the name of his unfilmed episodes, sadly, and no longer has the scripts in his files.)

In "Logs Nine and Ten", ADF discusses how he deliberately kept the two strongest SF storylines to last, then worried how Larry Niven (creator of the kzinti) would react to someone else novelizing a Known Space story.

Keep in mind that each new introduction is only one page long. But irresistable to me. Had all five pages been repeated in each volume, I'd have probably only have bought the one volume, because I already have these adaptations as single volumes (Ballantine) and in the Pocket International three-volume set.
 
I don't think there'd be an additional volume, because it seems like the series in which B&N released this isn't one where they do multiple volumes. This was released as part of their Collectible Editions series, and it looks like everything else in that series is a done-in-one, even when there would be opportunity for additional volumes; Foundation, Wizard of Oz, Tarzan, Hemingway.
 
I have the reprinted trek tv novelizations that came out in the 1990s and the animated trek books I got from the used book stores.
 
I don't think there'd be an additional volume, because it seems like the series in which B&N released this isn't one where they do multiple volumes. This was released as part of their Collectible Editions series, and it looks like everything else in that series is a done-in-one, even when there would be opportunity for additional volumes; Foundation, Wizard of Oz, Tarzan, Hemingway.
In leather, I think you're right. I know I've seen multiple Oz volumes, however. But, no, I don't expect Trek would be a candidate in either format.
 
In leather, I think you're right. I know I've seen multiple Oz volumes, however. But, no, I don't expect Trek would be a candidate in either format.

Oh, you're right about Oz, I missed that when looking through the list. My mistake there.
 
No, you weren't wrong, I think there is only one leatherbound B&N Oz. Back in the day, Borders had a 2-volume leatherbound Oz set, though. But B&N has multiple hardbound with dust jacket Oz volumes - I think they're up to 3? Each one has 5, which means Vol 3 actually includes the first Oz book to be published under Ruth Plumly Thompson's name...

But now I am really digressing from Trek! ;)
 
PLUS, for some insane reason (money-grabbing), the Star Wars novelizations gets not one, not two, but three leatherbound treatments! I mean, nothing against Star Wars, but c'mon!
 
Ballantine/Del Rey last republished Alan Dean Foster's "Log" adaptations of "Star Trek: The Animated Series" for the 40th anniversary. There were five volumes in these new trade paperbacks, two "ST Logs" in each book.

I couldn't justify it at the time, but I still regret not getting those back when they were new... :(
 

I was kinda hoping they'd reprint new ones again for the 50th... their license allows them to reprint in perpetuity, doesn't it?

(I was also hoping there would be a 50th Anniversary reissue of FJ's Technical Manual too, because I sorta regret not getting the 40th Anniversary reissue, too...)
 
Maybe if the leatherbound Trek volume sells well, the powers that be will think there's enough demand for reprints of the ADF logs to justify it. Vote with your quatloos!
 
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