I'd also like to see more books set during the TV or movie eras.
Has Treklit moved too far from it's roots?
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Personally, I'm loving the direction of the current TNG era series, especially Voyager. The fact that Pocket was willing to move the story along is what got me back into trek fiction on a full time basis a few years ago. At the time I was only reading New Frontier, which had characters that could be killed off or transfered whenever PAD felt like it because it wasn't tied to a particular tv show. Bravo Pocket 
. Here's hoping for more of the same 
. Here's hoping for more of the same This. Maybe include a rough timeline showing where major changes happened (End of the Dominion War. . . Shinzon's Coup on Romulus. . . Bajor enters the Federation, Sisko returns and retires. . . Borg Supercube Crisis. . . Destiny. . .). Best to standardize it though; you don't want this backstory taking over too much of the pagecount.
Maybe just the bare dramatis personae, a one-page timeline, and a note about Memory Beta (or maybe a similar, easier-to-browse, less spoilery site) for those interested in filling in more backstory.
Pretty good suggestions IMO, Cybersnark
So where will Captain Tryla Scott (TNG's "Conspiracy") come from if that doesn't happen?
Yes, and not only that but they put a female back in command (not Janeway, but still the "female command" touch was an important part of the formula imho), and sent them back to the Delta Quadrant. And this time to explore, not to try to leave, and with adequate backup to actually be able to complete this mission.
If anything, these new Voyager books feel much more like Voyager the TV show to me. Or, Voyager as it should have been, but wasn't, because they don't have to make excuses to explore the Delta Quadrant. ("Oh no, another shuttle crashed on that planet of the week over there. Lets go get conned into exploring while we rescue our people.")
And its much better than "TNG-type missions in the Alpha Quadrant, but this time with Chakotay in command" direction they had gone before.
... now if only the TNG books can get back to exploring "the great unknown" - which was promised in the pilot but somehow we ended up puttering around known space, which we're still doing ...
At least we have Titan and Voyager for that!
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To me, the answer is yes. I used to be an avid reader of Trek fiction, but I dislike the interconnectedness-serialization of the TNG-DS9-VOY books now. I've tried on a couple of occasions to get into DS9 relaunch but couldn't get interested.
I like the idea of finding a self-contained Trek book with a good story and reading it, without needing the background from ten other books to do so.
Couldn't they have two separate Trek literature "tracks?" The relaunch stuff and new stand-alones?
I like the idea of finding a self-contained Trek book with a good story and reading it, without needing the background from ten other books to do so.
Couldn't they have two separate Trek literature "tracks?" The relaunch stuff and new stand-alones?
There have always been standalones alongside the more continuity-heavy stuff. There has never, ever been any effort to exclude standalones. In 2005-9, we had standalones including Hollow Men, the String Theory and Crucible trilogies (if you count a trilogy as a standalone work), Rosetta, Burning Dreams, Troublesome Minds, and The Never Ending Sacrifice (nominally part of the DS9 post-finale series, but only tenuously linked to it), not to mention the standalone stories in the various anthologies.
Indeed, with the exception of the Typhon Pact books (which are only loosely connected to one another), every new novel that was published or planned for publication in 2010 was a standalone: Inception, Unspoken Truth, The Children of Kings, The Needs of the Many, each of the installments of the Seven Deadly Sins anthology, and the Abramsverse books (both the YA ones that were published and the others that weren't). And there are a variety of more or less standalone novels on the 2011 slate, some clearly tied to the main novel continuity (like DTI: Watching the Clock), others maybe not so much.
I don't like the direction the books have taken. A lot of it is embarrassing fanboy wank that I have no interest in reading. Borg Borg Borg! Federation in ruins! The Borg stopped being cool in 1993.
I was really excited for the DS9 relaunch when it first started but I lost interest and now have no interest in reading any Star Trek book. Ezri on command track was a mistake. Ezri as captain of the most powerful ship ever is hilarious and destroys credibility.
Making it a small universe, where all the main crews are always interacting, has also killed any desire to read it. I didn't like Voyager or Enterprise and have no desire to read their stories or any elements relating to them. I have been alienated and thus am no longer a customer.
I was really excited for the DS9 relaunch when it first started but I lost interest and now have no interest in reading any Star Trek book. Ezri on command track was a mistake. Ezri as captain of the most powerful ship ever is hilarious and destroys credibility.
Making it a small universe, where all the main crews are always interacting, has also killed any desire to read it. I didn't like Voyager or Enterprise and have no desire to read their stories or any elements relating to them. I have been alienated and thus am no longer a customer.
When I want Trek nostalgia, I just throw in a DVD.
When I read a book, I don't want a light, fluffy in-betweeen-the-episodes story with zero depth and less character development. I want to see the characters and the story move forward. Books set during the any of the series run are far more hampered by what they can or can't do than the post-finale books as they have to start and end with the same status quo. Stuff like that just bores me to tears.
When I read a book, I don't want a light, fluffy in-betweeen-the-episodes story with zero depth and less character development. I want to see the characters and the story move forward. Books set during the any of the series run are far more hampered by what they can or can't do than the post-finale books as they have to start and end with the same status quo. Stuff like that just bores me to tears.
Wasn't that dictated by events in Nemesis -- with Data dead and Troi and Riker reassigned, you really couldn't have more TNG books without introducing new faces. The alternative would be no post-Nemesis TNG books, which I imagine would create an even greater outcry.
For the record, I stopped reading Star Trek novels in the early '90s when I reached a point where six books in a row involved missing landing parties and the Enterprise getting called away by an emergency. I started reading again after coming across a mention of Destiny on TV Tropes, so the new direction is attracting at least some additional readers.
But that's not "the direction the books have taken." The books focused on the Borg for slightly over one year, from September 2007 (Resistance) to December 2008 (the conclusion of Destiny). And that culminated with the final and permanent defeat of the Borg. So the Borg have not been part of the books' direction for the past two years now (except for a brief revisit in one story of Seven Deadly Sins), nor are they ever likely to be again. The books' current direction has nothing to do with the Borg.
Ezri is the ninth host of a symbiont with over three centuries of experience as a politician, engineer, pilot, ambassador, and science officer among other talents. I don't see how it remotely lacks credibility that such a hyper-qualified individual would be capable of command. And her captaincy takes place five years after she was last seen onscreen. It only took Will Riker seven years to get from a wet-behind-the-ears ensign to a seasoned officer getting offered starship commands every other month.
And nobody ever said Aventine was "the most powerful ship ever." It's a testbed for experimental technologies. Which is a logical type of ship for a former test pilot/engineer/science officer to command.
Could argue that the whole Voyager line is still semi-focused on the Borg. Mission is to go back to the DQ and see how things stand since their defeat, right? And in our one story with them out there, it dealt with a culture obsessed with them, old borg ships, and all other things Borg.
Not saying it's as complete as it was during the Destiny run, but the spectre of the Borg is still hanging over a bit of the line.
Then again, there are barely any Trek books coming out these days, so hard to say WHAT the line is doing, really...
I am glad I can make my own Star Trek reality/universe which continous from 2379 
I just don't buy this. As soon as sales need a kick in the rear-end we'll see the return of the Borg. If not by the current editors then sometime down the road.
Thought it was really short-sighted by Pocket to end the Borg in a way that offered no wiggle room for future authors of the line.
^ That's such total nonsense. Even Destiny wasn't commissioned to have ANYTHING to do with the Borg; David Mack decided to include them because he thought it was thematically time for them to be finished. The single one and only time Pocket has ever even possibly used the Borg to "kick sales in the rear-end" was with Resistance and Before Dishonor, which were part of a celebration of TNG's anniversary, an occasion where the Borg were certainly appropriate given how integral to Picard's character they were.
Edited to add: Though I actually agree that the Borg aren't permanently gone, but that's just because they're such a compelling bad guy that someone is going to come up with an irresistible pitch to use them again eventually.
Edited to add: Though I actually agree that the Borg aren't permanently gone, but that's just because they're such a compelling bad guy that someone is going to come up with an irresistible pitch to use them again eventually.
Whereas I've always found the Borg rather dull as a concept. They're not even characters, just a force of nature. It's hard to tell an interesting story about the Borg Collective; the most interesting "Borg stories" out there have been more about how individuals have dealt with being assimilated or liberated, or how survivors of Borg assaults have dealt with their loss. Beyond that, a Borg story is basically either a disaster movie or a zombie flick, and both those approaches have been thoroughly mined by now.
Ugh. Speak for yourself. I have no interest in zombie stories.
