I loved this book. Most of the books never laugh at themselves the way the original episodes did, took themselves way too seriously. Did any other book ever do anything with the tiny little dilithium hunting ship with the psychotic computer?
How Much For Just The Planet
- Thread starter David F. Weisma
- Start date
Last time this book was up for discussion, we explored the tunes that the author parodied:
http://therinofandor.blogspot.com.au/p/how-much-for-just-planet-search-for.html
When Mr Ford was in Sydney, Australia, for a SF convention, some friends, who were really into musical comedy and theatre shows at the time, had been trying to guess all the famous/obscure song snippets lifted/parodied/inspired by. He was surprised and thrilled at how many they had identified; it seems not many are whole songs. (I rarely see these people today, so my plans to get them to remember all the songs was a dismal failure.)
Ford's original plan had been to include sheet music with the manuscript, but he was overruled by the Pocket and/or Paramount lawyers.
Most of my friends bought it on its day of Australian release fully expecting "The Final Reflection II". It totally took us by surprise. Some loved that it was so different, but still with Klingons; others loathed it.
I've only read it twice, decades ago, but riffled it often. I really need to reread it properly again one day. Wonderful!
I think it was the first of the Pocket original novels - published in the UK by Titan in those days - that I read, so I guess it hooked me...
(oddly, in the UK, it came out before Final Reflection- HMFJTP was book #5, and TFR was book #10)
(oddly, in the UK, it came out before Final Reflection- HMFJTP was book #5, and TFR was book #10)
Yep. When Titan took over ST novels in the UK (Futura had done ST:TMP and I think Orbit did "The Entropy Effect"), the US Pocket line was coming out bimonthly, so Titan made a monthly schedule for the UK: one new title, simultaneous with Pocket one month, and one previously-released-in-US the alternate month - and renumbering everything.
JM Dillard's first few novels came out in random order, too, which made it interesting for the UK because she had killed off one of her regular originals!
I wonder what fans would think if something like "How Much for Just the Planet" or "Trek to Madworld" were to come out today?
Some novels are grim, some are fun. But we haven't had any batshit crazy for a long time.
Some novels are grim, some are fun. But we haven't had any batshit crazy for a long time.
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But The Final Reflection isn't 'batshit crazy'; it's rational, semi-nihilistic and very typical seventies/eighties science fiction (and it is, of course, great). It is stylistically similar to other eighties writers, like the early Banks (indeed including his novel about living games, The Player of Games, which really reminds me of TFR).
I haven't read many of the older novels, but I've read this one, and I'm glad I did. 
Yeah, The Final Reflection was a pretty serious book. Although the federation transporter showcase scene still cracks me up.
Amazon has a summary & an excerpt:
http://www.amazon.com/Trek-Madworld-Star-Novel/dp/0553246763
Whoops! I got my Ford books mixed up. I meant "How Much For Just the Planet"
At first blush, The Final Reflection and How Much for Just the Planet? do feel like immensely different books. But they do have something in common. They're both extremely unconventional and unlike any previous Star Trek novel. TFR isn't even a Trek novel per se; it's a work of historical fiction written within the Trek universe, a novel being read by the characters in the novels we read -- albeit one that alleges to reveal formerly hidden truths about historical events.
So if you think about it, it's not really that surprising that the novelist whose first Trek novel was unlike any previous one would follow it up with a novel that was completely unlike his first. It's in that sense that they are alike: that determination to do something entirely new.
So if you think about it, it's not really that surprising that the novelist whose first Trek novel was unlike any previous one would follow it up with a novel that was completely unlike his first. It's in that sense that they are alike: that determination to do something entirely new.
Exactly. And that was Ford's stated approach. When the two books were reprinted, a few years later, they were given a linking title to make then a duology: "Worlds Apart".
I don't know about anybody else, but I would love that kind of a Trek book. I could easily see Trek doing something like the Hitchhiker's Guide books.
Let's visit the Guardian of Forever and go back in time to when The Final Reflection was first published. Someone more knowledgeable may correct me, but this was before the hapless Whorf got knocked out every week, mostly before Trekkies spoke Klingonase and wore Klimgon costumes to cons. I think empathizing with Klingons and even hinting at Federation corruption was very edgy back than, as much as the later hints of dilithium miners playing both sides.
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