"Hundreds of forgettable novels"

[Timewalker]

Isn't "forgettable" literally true, though? I mean, can anyone name all the novels? I think the early stand-alone novels are particularly forgettable, and there are hundreds of them.

How many Trek novels has this guy read? If he read any at all, he must have chosen all the bad ones (whichever those might be).

Actually, it is the earlier novels I remember best. Even the bad ones, like those Marshak/Culbreath wrote.

Mainstream critics and journalists (and others) will often throw out comments like that without having any basis for them...

I read a review of a Doctor Who novel on a site which usually doesn't review tie-ins, and the reviewer made a dismissive remark about their lack of quality right at the beginning. I asked the reviewer in the comments about how he arrived at that opinion and got no response from him; none of the commenters who did respond had even read a single tie-in novel in the past decade.

Attacks on shared-universe fiction frequently happen from within the industry, as well as from without.

Harlan Ellison once had some harsh words for shared-universe books. Then he turned around and got involved in one himself (Medea: Harlan's World).

 

[Stevil2001]

Not to mention how many teachers will consider Trek novels to be in some sort of way "not-true-fiction", or not on the same level as "Moon----" (I forget the rest of the book title; it was first printed in the 17 or 18 hundreds, featured a teenage boy getting mixed up with some rum smugglers in the 16 or 17 hundreds. It's one of only a couple of stories known to exist by the author, due to his other stories being stolen) or "Catcher In The Rye".

I really want to know what book you are referring to.

 

[James Swallow]

Not to mention how many teachers will consider Trek novels to be in some sort of way "not-true-fiction", or not on the same level as "Moon----" (I forget the rest of the book title; it was first printed in the 17 or 18 hundreds, featured a teenage boy getting mixed up with some rum smugglers in the 16 or 17 hundreds. It's one of only a couple of stories known to exist by the author, due to his other stories being stolen) or "Catcher In The Rye".

I really want to know what book you are referring to.

It sounds like Tom's referring to Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner...

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonfleet

 

[Stevil2001]

Ah, thanks! I've not heard of it, even though it's right in my period (not surprising with genre fiction, though). Not sure I'd lump it in with Catcher in the Rye in the category of Great Literature Forced Upon You By English Teachers.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Wait. There are Star Trek novels?

 

[Elias Vaughn]

What's a star trek?

 

[nureintier]

Forgettable is fair comment. I've been reading Treklit for over thirty five years and a great deal of it is forgettable or worse.

There's also a lot of good novels, particularly since the relaunch...

I don't know if it's the best choice of words, but I agree, pretty much. Even though I own a bunch (also true of Star Wars novels). It's not like it's important to read any of it to enjoy the shows/films. But still, I think the word choice is poor.

Personally, what I usually hope to get out of them is entertainment. I tend to be more entertained when I'm engaged, and there's a spectrum of valid types of engagement, and Trek novels manage to successfully occupy some of the parts of that spectrum pleasingly often. That's not a small thing; it is, obviously, a worthy enough cause to build respectable careers on.

This. I've read and enjoyed Trek novels. It also gives you the chance to pick and choose which characters/etc. to read about, and for the authors to go into more detail about certain places and species (again, same goes for Star Wars; when I was a teenager I decided I really wanted to read more about Twi'leks and got every book that mentioned them). I like that. But on the other hand, it's not important to the series in the same way as major events in the shows/movies, so I kind of understand the "forgettable" comment.

 

[tomswift2002]

Not to mention how many teachers will consider Trek novels to be in some sort of way "not-true-fiction", or not on the same level as "Moon----" (I forget the rest of the book title; it was first printed in the 17 or 18 hundreds, featured a teenage boy getting mixed up with some rum smugglers in the 16 or 17 hundreds. It's one of only a couple of stories known to exist by the author, due to his other stories being stolen) or "Catcher In The Rye".

I really want to know what book you are referring to.

It sounds like Tom's referring to Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner...

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonfleet

That's the one. I still remember having to read "Moonfleet" in high school and, while it was probably the best of all the books that the teachers had us read (save for Shakespeare), I keep getting the title mixed up with "Moonstalker" by Victor Appleton.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I still remember having to read "Moonfleet" in high school

We had to read Fred Hoyle's "The Black Cloud" - and I loved it! My introduction to literary SF.

 

[Commishsleer]

This quote is coming from a reporter who should also be able to frankly admit that he has written hundreds (if not thousands?) of forgettable columns and articles.

I understand that what he is saying might be true, but using the word 'forgettable' comes off as a 'dig' when such a seemingly dismissive comment was not called for, IMHO.

Great point.

And the Star Trek novels are as forgettable/memorable to me as any other novel

 

[Thrawn]

The thing about tie-in fiction, or long multi-work fiction in general, is that it earns a lot of its storytelling power from the weight of history. I wouldn't expect anyone who wasn't a Trek fan to pick up my personal favorite Trek novel - Children of the Storm - and get nearly as much out of it as I did. So much of why that novel resonated with me and what it meant came from its context in TrekLit at the time, its place in the philosophical conversation Trek has been carrying on in itself since the 1960s. Without the context, it's a solid adventure novel, but I found it to be deeply profound.

Like Serenity, possibly my favorite film. Literally had me shaking with emotion when I left the theater the first time. Non-Firefly fans, or even recent Firefly fans that hadn't participated in the fanbase and the struggle to get that movie made at all, liked it but not to the same depth.

I even experienced it myself; my first exposure to Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the episode Hush, which is genius. But if that's the first one you see, it seems campy and a little cutesy, and doesn't really make sense - I thought for sure I wasn't going to like that show. Came back to it later, and by the time I hit Hush I adored it.

I don't think it's an unreasonable conclusion for any avid reader of non-tie-in fiction to come to, that if they were to pick up a random tie-in novel they'd almost certainly find it forgettable at best. It's kind of missing the point, but I get why it happens.

 

[ProwlAlpha]

I would say that journalist was correct. The majority of SW/ST novels are forgettable. Up until more recent times, both franchise tie-ins followed the same format in their respective novels.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm curious if those saying the novels are forgettable would concede the same about the TV episodes? There are probably almost as many novels as there are episodes now. Do you guys think the novels are more forgettable?

 

[DonIago]

I think there's a good number of episodes from the series that are pretty forgettable.

 

[Christopher]

I think saying "Yeah, sure, a lot of the novels are forgettable" is missing the point, or being disingenuous. Sure, any category of things has a lot of entries that are not particularly memorable, but that's not what the critic meant. If, out of all the words available to describe a whole category, the one word you choose for it is "forgettable," then that is unquestionably intended as a blanket dismissal of the worth of the entire category. Why not call them "diverse," say, or at least "variable in quality?" Saying they're "forgettable" as a class is saying "Never mind about any of them, they're all equally unworthy of attention."

While I agree that writing angry letters to the critic isn't going to change his mind, let's not pretend there isn't a widespread and longstanding contempt toward tie-in novels out there.

 

[Timewalker]

The thing about tie-in fiction, or long multi-work fiction in general, is that it earns a lot of its storytelling power from the weight of history. ... Without the context, it's a solid adventure novel, but I found it to be deeply profound.

Like Serenity, possibly my favorite film. Literally had me shaking with emotion when I left the theater the first time. Non-Firefly fans, or even recent Firefly fans that hadn't participated in the fanbase and the struggle to get that movie made at all, liked it but not to the same depth.

This is an excellent point. I saw the whole Firefly series for the first time within a 2-3 day period last month on Netflix, and loved it. A few days ago I tracked down the Serenity movie elsewhere, and while I found it interesting, it didn't pack any real emotional wallop for me. I was sad about the characters who died, but as you say - you were part of the original fandom for that series, plus you saw the Serenity movie in the theatre.

(btw, I read one of the Firefly threads here, and among the nods to other genre works, the posters there completely missed the Crow reference)

I was quite disappointed when I searched for Firefly/Serenity novels and found there are none, at least in prose form.

 

[trash80]

I agree with Christopher it was a blanket dismissal, a lazy one at that. Unfortunately the media (and life in general if we are to be honest) is plagued with these kinds of lazy blanket dismissals. It gets into the popular imagination, you get told by people "X is rubbish" because someone else told them that and in the end you start to believe it, until you try X for yourself of course then find "they" were wrong.

 

[Snaploud]

I'm pretty sure this qualifies as the journalistic equivalent of trolling.

 

[DonIago]

I think saying "Yeah, sure, a lot of the novels are forgettable" is missing the point, or being disingenuous. Sure, any category of things has a lot of entries that are not particularly memorable, but that's not what the critic meant. If, out of all the words available to describe a whole category, the one word you choose for it is "forgettable," then that is unquestionably intended as a blanket dismissal of the worth of the entire category. Why not call them "diverse," say, or at least "variable in quality?" Saying they're "forgettable" as a class is saying "Never mind about any of them, they're all equally unworthy of attention."

While I agree that writing angry letters to the critic isn't going to change his mind, let's not pretend there isn't a widespread and longstanding contempt toward tie-in novels out there.

While I'm sympathetic to your point of view Christopher, I think it's also fair to say you have a conflict of interest in this scenario.

If I say, "I've eaten hundreds of forgettable apples," I'm not dismissing apples in their entirety, I'm dismissing the subset of hundreds that to my mind didn't have any especially distinguishing characteristics.

But maybe it's a matter of whether we choose to interpret the sentence literally or are fishing for subtext.

 

[Timewalker]

I think saying "Yeah, sure, a lot of the novels are forgettable" is missing the point, or being disingenuous. Sure, any category of things has a lot of entries that are not particularly memorable, but that's not what the critic meant. If, out of all the words available to describe a whole category, the one word you choose for it is "forgettable," then that is unquestionably intended as a blanket dismissal of the worth of the entire category. Why not call them "diverse," say, or at least "variable in quality?" Saying they're "forgettable" as a class is saying "Never mind about any of them, they're all equally unworthy of attention."

While I agree that writing angry letters to the critic isn't going to change his mind, let's not pretend there isn't a widespread and longstanding contempt toward tie-in novels out there.

While I'm sympathetic to your point of view Christopher, I think it's also fair to say you have a conflict of interest in this scenario.

If I say, "I've eaten hundreds of forgettable apples," I'm not dismissing apples in their entirety, I'm dismissing the subset of hundreds that to my mind didn't have any especially distinguishing characteristics.

But maybe it's a matter of whether we choose to interpret the sentence literally or are fishing for subtext.

Some people really are that dismissive, though. Back in the '80s, I was at a science fiction convention, and went to a panel on fanzines. To my surprise, the only people present at the panel were the panelists and myself. And then one of them asked if I had any fanzines.

"Oh, sure," I said. "I've got some Star Trek and Doctor Who..."

"Oh. Media fan," he said in a snide, dismissive tone. And with that one rude, snarky remark, the sum total of the people who were attending their panel dropped to zero, but not before I pointed out that this media fan was the only person in the entire convention other than themselves to show up for the panel.