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. 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).
It sounds like Tom's referring to Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner... Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonfleet
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.