I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TNG.

[Christopher]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

BrentMc said:
I hear Picard's voice when I read his dialog. Does that make me crazy? LOL
I have heard that speed-reading courses teach you to not "hear" inside your head when you read, and I just don't think I can. it's getting late and I am rambling sorry...

I think that if you're reading fiction, you want to hear the characters' voices, to visualize their faces, etc. I do it, and I've heard other people say they do as well. I don't see any reason why anyone would want to use speed-reading for fiction. That's like watching a whole DVD on fast-forward. What's the point?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

BrentMc said:
A downfall of the Federation in the future would kind of ruin all other Star trek for me...I guess I would have a feeling like "too bad Picard works so hard for peace in this story, and he doesn't know it is all going to go down the tubes..."

Do you read historical novels about Julius Caesar (or watch Rome), only to feel that the characters' actions are pointless because in a few short centuries Rome will be sacked and western Europe will be plunged into the Dark Ages? Do you read stories of King Arthur, only to know that Arthur's realm disintegrates upon his death, and in a few decades the island is overrun by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, rendering everything he had done moot? I've always found fiction, in which the characters are caught in the tragic sweep of history, unable to avert the encroaching darkness and destruction and their actions are turned to ashes, to be quite compelling.

 

[Christopher]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

^^I look at it another way. History on the whole is neither idealistic nor tragic; it's a series of cycles, of rises and falls and transitions. Every institution falls eventually, but another will eventually rise to take its place. There's no way the Federation can endure forever, but hopefully it will leave a legacy that will provide hope and guidance during the interregnum and facilitate the creation of a similar institution to succeed it. After all, there's no way the "dark age" can endure forever either.

Just because states and polities are impermanent doesn't mean there's no point in the struggle for peace and prosperity. On the contrary, that's exactly the point. The universe is governed by entropy, the tendency toward decay. The only way to counter that is to keep striving for constructive, positive goals on a continuing basis. Peace or prosperity is not a state that you can achieve and then stop trying once you get there; it's something you have to keep working to create and preserve at all times, because it goes away if you stop striving.

So the fact that the struggle for peace and stability is bound to have setbacks doesn't mean the efforts of people like Picard are meaningless. In fact, it's the very thing that gives those efforts their meaning, that makes it so necessary to keep on striving.


It's also worth noting that the perception of history as having "dark ages" is somewhat insular and ignores the breadth of different cultures that exist. Eurocentric history teaches about the "Dark Ages" as though they were a global phenomenon, but in fact they were pretty much limited to Western Europe; the majority of the world at that time was going through a period of great dynamism, prosperity, and growth. You had the heyday of the Byzantine Empire, the rise of Islamic civilization, the renaissance of Chinese civilization and the development of Neo-Confucianism, the spread of Bantu civilization and ironworking, Shankara's unification and reinvigoration of the Hindu faith, the growth of a Central Asian trading empire along the Silk Road, the growth of agrarian societies and widespread trade networks in North America and the Andes.

And the galaxy is far bigger and more diverse. Even if the Federation fell, who's to say there wouldn't be other civilizations in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants that were just as enlightened and prosperous and benevolent as the UFP? It's not so much that civilization would go away, just that its locus would shift for a while, as it inevitably does over the course of history.

 

[Lindley]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

Steve Mollmann said:
Star Wars is doing a comic series set 125 years after Return of the Jedi. Of course, in Star Wars the advancement of technology isn't a problem, since the technology never goes anywhere at all, as evidenced by Knights of the Old Republic.

Star Wars also stopped being directly "based on the movies" a long time ago, though. For the better part of a decade the Star Wars novels have been built as much on previous novels' storylines as on the movies.

This approach is still relatively new to the Star Trek lines.

 

[BrentMc]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

Christopher said:

BrentMc said:
I hear Picard's voice when I read his dialog. Does that make me crazy? LOL
I have heard that speed-reading courses teach you to not "hear" inside your head when you read, and I just don't think I can. it's getting late and I am rambling sorry...

I think that if you're reading fiction, you want to hear the characters' voices, to visualize their faces, etc. I do it, and I've heard other people say they do as well. I don't see any reason why anyone would want to use speed-reading for fiction. That's like watching a whole DVD on fast-forward. What's the point?

Most speed reading courses I have heard of involve skimming and not reading every word. That is a deal breaker for me. I only want to learn to read faster, not skip things. My main problem is getting distracted in though. I think I need to learn some Vulcan concentration techniques.

Hey CLB. If you read this reply I have a question for you. I loved "A Stitch in Time" by AJR and I bought "Prophecy and Change" to read his shorter Garak story in there. When I opened it though I noticed that there was a play performed at conventions that took place in between. I am dying to know what happened. Do you know where I can read at least a summary? I don't mean to go off topic, but I thought you might see this and I wouldn't have to clutter up the forum with a whole thread about it.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

Christopher said: That's like watching a whole DVD on fast-forward. What's the point?

If that DVD happens to be Batman and Robin, then there is a very sensible point to watching it on FF.

 

[Christopher]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

BrentMc said:
I loved "A Stitch in Time" by AJR and I bought "Prophecy and Change" to read his shorter Garak story in there. When I opened it though I noticed that there was a play performed at conventions that took place in between. I am dying to know what happened. Do you know where I can read at least a summary?

I only know what I've heard about it online, which is that it hasn't been published in any form and isn't likely to be, and that the story in P&C fills in what the readers need to know about it.

Captaindemotion said:
If that DVD happens to be Batman and Robin, then there is a very sensible point to watching it on FF.

Except there's little sensible point in watching it at all.

Well, unless you fast-forward through most of it and only watch the parts with Uma, since she's pretty hot in it.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

BrentMc said:
Ooch I hope that is not a goos surprise appearance because I haven't read that one yet.

No, it's essentially the framing story, so you'll meet him in the first few pages.

 

[flandry84]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

"Fall of the federation?" Did someone say "Andromeda" ?
No,probably not.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

flandry84 said:
"Fall of the federation?" Did someone say "Andromeda" ?
No,probably not.

I really should have you executed for that. Andromeda was a travesty of SF from beginning to end. Didn't Majel come up with the idea and just stick Gene's name on it to get it to sell? I heard somewhere she did that with Earth: Final Contact as well.

A "Fall of the Federation" series is more likely to follow the lines of the lighter version of the MU than anything else. And we REALLY don't need anything like that at the moment.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

Xeris said:

flandry84 said:
"Fall of the federation?" Did someone say "Andromeda" ?
No,probably not.

I really should have you executed for that. Andromeda was a travesty of SF from beginning to end. Didn't Majel come up with the idea and just stick Gene's name on it to get it to sell?

It was Robert Wolfe's pitch for a fourth Trek series several years earlier, actually, but Viacom went with Enterprise instead.

 

[Christopher]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

Xeris said:
I really should have you executed for that. Andromeda was a travesty of SF from beginning to end. Didn't Majel come up with the idea and just stick Gene's name on it to get it to sell? I heard somewhere she did that with Earth: Final Contact as well.

Earth: Final Conflict was based on an unsold series proposal and pilot script by Gene Roddenberry. Majel Roddenberry, wanting to bring sophisticated, intelligent science fiction to the airwaves, sold E:FC as a series and hired a strong, imaginative writer, Richard C. Okie, to be its showrunner. Unfortunately, she sold the property to Tribune, a company that only wanted cheap, lowbrow stuff that could be easily syndicated overseas, and so they fired Okie less than halfway through the first season and replaced him with a succession of inferior showrunners who retooled the series into unrecognizability.

The situation with Andromeda was similar. This was loosely based on elements of Roddenberry's pilot movies Genesis 2 and Planet Earth and an unsold proposal called Starship, but Majel and Tribune (and star Kevin Sorbo) hired former Deep Space Nine producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe to assemble the series. He and the excellent staff he hired put together a rich, fresh SF universe that was inspired by much of the prose science fiction of the past few decades, just as the original Star Trek was inspired by the prose SF of its day. It could've been brilliant, but again, the problem was that Tribune was in charge of making it. So the first season and a half had good writing but weak, low-budget execution, and then Robert got fired halfway through the second season and his successors turned the show into a travesty of its former self.

In both cases, Majel ended up being pretty much marginalized. She was in the camp of Okie and Wolfe, the strong, smart showrunners whom she'd handpicked to make the kind of intelligent and thoughtful show that she felt Gene would have wanted, but her wishes were overridden by a production company that wanted both brow and budget to be as low as possible.

Lonemagpie said:
It was Robert Wolfe's pitch for a fourth Trek series several years earlier, actually, but Viacom went with Enterprise instead.

Not really. Robert did base some of his outline for Andromeda on some private musings he'd done years before about a hypothetical "fall of the Federation" series, but he never actually pitched the idea to anyone; it was purely for his own amusement.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

Thanks Christopher, I stand corrected. I think they have learned their lesson about Tribune now, but I would like to see some good SF on the air. Don't get me wrong, I love Heroes, nuBSG and Stargate: Atlantis, but I would really like to see a new type of SF show that is based on some of the best written work around at the moment.

I suppose that if I don't see it, I have only one option, write some myself

I'm looking for a good space-opera style series like B5, early Farscape or even something like a retooled Space Precinct. If anyone can point it out to me, I'll give it a shot.

 

[JD]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

Christopher said:

Xeris said:
I really should have you executed for that. Andromeda was a travesty of SF from beginning to end. Didn't Majel come up with the idea and just stick Gene's name on it to get it to sell? I heard somewhere she did that with Earth: Final Contact as well.

Earth: Final Conflict was based on an unsold series proposal and pilot script by Gene Roddenberry. Majel Roddenberry, wanting to bring sophisticated, intelligent science fiction to the airwaves, sold E:FC as a series and hired a strong, imaginative writer, Richard C. Okie, to be its showrunner. Unfortunately, she sold the property to Tribune, a company that only wanted cheap, lowbrow stuff that could be easily syndicated overseas, and so they fired Okie less than halfway through the first season and replaced him with a succession of inferior showrunners who retooled the series into unrecognizability.

The situation with Andromeda was similar. This was loosely based on elements of Roddenberry's pilot movies Genesis 2 and Planet Earth and an unsold proposal called Starship, but Majel and Tribune (and star Kevin Sorbo) hired former Deep Space Nine producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe to assemble the series. He and the excellent staff he hired put together a rich, fresh SF universe that was inspired by much of the prose science fiction of the past few decades, just as the original Star Trek was inspired by the prose SF of its day. It could've been brilliant, but again, the problem was that Tribune was in charge of making it. So the first season and a half had good writing but weak, low-budget execution, and then Robert got fired halfway through the second season and his successors turned the show into a travesty of its former self.

In both cases, Majel ended up being pretty much marginalized. She was in the camp of Okie and Wolfe, the strong, smart showrunners whom she'd handpicked to make the kind of intelligent and thoughtful show that she felt Gene would have wanted, but her wishes were overridden by a production company that wanted both brow and budget to be as low as possible.

Lonemagpie said:
It was Robert Wolfe's pitch for a fourth Trek series several years earlier, actually, but Viacom went with Enterprise instead.

Not really. Robert did base some of his outline for Andromeda on some private musings he'd done years before about a hypothetical "fall of the Federation" series, but he never actually pitched the idea to anyone; it was purely for his own amusement.

Wow, I didn't realize that they had changed the shows so much (although I never watched E:FC so I don't know how bad it actually was). I wonder what they would have ended up like if Majel's plans had actually come to fruition.

Wow, now I'm kinda embarrased to admit I actually like Andromeda til that ed up last season. I only caught like 2 or 3 episodes of that last season and it seemed to have pretty much gone off the deep end.

 

[Baerbel Haddrell]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

I loved the first season of Andromeda and still liked the second but then it went downhill quickly. I managed to watch the third season, afterwards I only watched the odd episode now and then in the futile hope the series might become good again but eventually I gave up. What a shame! I bought the first two seasons on DVD but I won`t touch the rest even if I get it for free!

I liked the first season of Earth:Final Conflict but never so much that I felt the need to buy it. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that the series got downhill so much afterwards. I don`t think I ever bothered to watch how it actually ended.

US TV tends to frustrate me immensely. Another good example of a series destroyed this way is the Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade. It would have been a wonderful series! Even the parts when JMS had to fight the studio`s input until he finally had enough showed the huge potential. I was a big fan of Jeremiah, too, but I vaguely remember that JMS ended the series with season two because of similar reasons. I am not even sure if the second half of the second season was ever broadcast in the USA. I got downloads from Canada, also because Britain never showed it.

If it is not making money immediately, a US series gets cancelled very quickly indeed. I actually enjoyed the new version of Bionic Woman but I learned it is already cancelled. OK, Journeyman just bored me when I watched the first episode but my husband was intrigued.

At least there is still Heroes and Stargate Atlantis I enjoy. I stopped watching the new BSG with the end of season 2 but intend to come back to it eventually.

By the way, I am not in favour of starting a new Star Trek series taking place in the farer future except maybe as What If? story or mini series. I prefer it to watch the future unfold with the “present day” time line past Nemesis. For “Dark Star Trek” we already have the Mirror Universe books so that I see no need for a “Fall of the Federation” direction.

 

[flandry84]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

The threat of execution weighs lightly,my friend.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

The Federation doesn't have to fall to inspire an interesting story, it can evolve instead. Why should future politicians and bureacrats be so blind as to not see the decay of their society, why can't they anticipate and even prepare for it?

But say that there is more than one faction looking to direct the future development of the Federation, there would be scope for conflict and drama there. It can be overt or clandestine, but it would still be interesting.
And it could lead on from those aspects of Trek that threatened to be problematic at the end of Voyager, TNG and DS9, whether it be future exploration and expansion, hologram rights, or even the validity of the Prime Directive in 25th Century society.

 

[Lindley]

Re: I would like to see a book series set 100 years after TN

If the primary problem of moving forward is technology being too advanced, then base the story around that.

How the heck do you impose any sort of security or rule of law when a matchbook-sized transporter is available to anyone on the black market?