I will neither defend PAD or attack him, but don't you think this response is a little silly? His original post clearly specified that it was his opinion. And the idea that someone has to be an expert in a subject of better than the person being criticized is just silly. Ktrek doesn't have to be a better author than Peter David to criticize his work.
Is it time for Peter David to go?
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I will neither defend PAD or attack him, but don't you think this response is a little silly? His original post clearly specified that it was his opinion. And the idea that someone has to be an expert in a subject of better than the person being criticized is just silly. Ktrek doesn't have to be a better author than Peter David to criticize his work.
In Voyages of Imagination, AotF is not included in the ATT... series, it is put in a different section. And to answer others here without a dozen quotes, most of the numbered/unnumbered novels were standalones. I don't consider a book that is part of a series to be a standalone. EM didn't feel like a standalone to me, it felt like the start of something great, but even judging my own criteria, I guess that FoF is a standalone until another novel is written with the Excelsior crew. Or you can just ignore my ramblings, I'm a lovesick puppy at the moment. Just started a new relationship so I'm not making a whole lot of sense.
Orions Hounds and Sword of Damocles are stand-alone novels. you don't NEED to read the previous books to enjoy them or even to hook in. Which was by editorial design.
There have been others mentioned and, if he wants, I'm sure KRAD can drop the can of encyclopedic whoop ass he sometimes enjoys.
Even within the various relaunches you can read isolated novels without any or much preamble and finish them without feeling cheated that you missed the "end" of the story.
Which of course is a dubious desire in itself as these are, all of them, examples of serial fiction by definition.
There have been others mentioned and, if he wants, I'm sure KRAD can drop the can of encyclopedic whoop ass he sometimes enjoys.
Even within the various relaunches you can read isolated novels without any or much preamble and finish them without feeling cheated that you missed the "end" of the story.
Which of course is a dubious desire in itself as these are, all of them, examples of serial fiction by definition.
Well, you can say it feels like it, but it isn't, it's a standalone. It only relies on a movie and an episode for background, but if you disqualified a book that uses an episode and/or movie as a jumping-off point, there would be no standalones.
Yeah, and The Children of Hamlin was the third novel in the TNG series. Aside from the first two, the Titan novels have all been standalone. It hasn't been like, say, the DS9 post-finale novels, which are heavily serialized.
Again, being part of a series doesn't preclude being a standalone. Death in Winter and Q & A were both standalones.
These are arguable, but I'll let you have that.
A miniseries entirely composed of standalones. The novels labelled as "Lost Era" are so called because of a time period in which they take place. They're all standalone.
Not really, no. There's no indication of it, nor that if there was another Star Trek: Excelsior it would be the second part of the story started in Forged in Fire (which, truly, would be "Blood Oath" anyhow).
Uhm -- no. A Singular Destiny is a follow-up to Destiny, the "Family" to Dave's "Best of Both Worlds" in many ways, but it's not a sequel to Articles by any stretch.
Yes, but the stories aren't interdependent -- especially not the MyrU ones.
Actually, I agree with the OP's opinion. (Well, someone has to. *g*)
NF is past its prime, its problemsolving methods have become more juvenile (fists/violence and/or sex), its characters more 2-dimensional with each new volume. The whole arc with the gods, McHenry, Moke and Morgan has been overused - and I think the more protagonists appeared, the thinner the characterization and plot got. Although NF has been my favourite ST-book-series for a long time, I wouldn't be too sad to see it end - rather end it in style than drag it out forever... although the NF apparently still makes much money - but we saw with TV-Star Trek that you can milk a cash cow to death.
NF is past its prime, its problemsolving methods have become more juvenile (fists/violence and/or sex), its characters more 2-dimensional with each new volume. The whole arc with the gods, McHenry, Moke and Morgan has been overused - and I think the more protagonists appeared, the thinner the characterization and plot got. Although NF has been my favourite ST-book-series for a long time, I wouldn't be too sad to see it end - rather end it in style than drag it out forever... although the NF apparently still makes much money - but we saw with TV-Star Trek that you can milk a cash cow to death.
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
Honestly, he lost me a long time ago. I was thrilled when he got permission to use Arex and M'ress, but he so badly mishandled M'ress (turned her into a right proper b****) and the whole "sexual harassment" subplot was just crap. Then he did the "pantheon aliens" and it just turned too comic booky for my tastes (Trek wise).
Vanguard is a MUCH better series of Trek novels than the current NF offerings...
Vanguard is a MUCH better series of Trek novels than the current NF offerings...
yeah, but TerriO's not writing Trek any more, so i understand. plus which it's the 6th best story.
By that logic, almost every single Star Trek novel ever published is disqualified as a standalone. By that logic, for instance, Q-in-Law, published at a time when the novels were FORBIDDEN from using serialization, isn't a standalone, simply by virtue of it being #18 in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
"Standalone" refers to the CONTENT of the story -- i.e., is the story heavily serialized?; does it draw heavily or primarily upon material from other novels, or on material from within itself? Star Trek: Destiny - Gods of Night is not a standalone because it does not tell a complete story by itself, but joins with the others to tell a complete story. A Time to Kill is not a standalone because, even though it tells a complete story by itself, it draws upon and sets up other novels quite heavily. On the other hand, Orion's Hounds, by any reasonable standard, is a standalone: It draws primarily upon material originating in that novel, tells a complete story by itself, and only minimally sets things up for future novels in the Titan series.
Why do you say that? There's been no indication that the Bacco Administration will be the primary focus of A Singular Destiny.
... yeah, but so what? Each individual story is mostly non-serialized.
Sleeping bear, sharp stick. Sharp stick, sleeping bear.
--Ted
--Ted
But the Xeris held up "Hollow Men" as his recent standalone example, and that's a very definite sequel to DS9's "In the Pale Moonlight" episode.
Considering PAD himself had tapped a flirtatious/comedic side to M'Ress in the post-ST IV comics he did for DC, I saw M'Ress's 24th century personality shift to be part of her emotional state in reaction to being uprooted almost a century. Most of Arex's long-lived relatives are still alive. M'Ress had only Arex. Both of them had to relearn many skills to survive as Stafleet officers in a new century. Her bitchiness has certainly toned down in recent NF arcs. I particularly liked the revelations about her in Janos's arc in "Stone and Anvil", for example.
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Ignore me, I'm not making sense. They're all good books.
Dude, no one's asking you to love everything. We just want to understand your reasoning.
Ultimately, isn't the question on whether or not a book's a true standalone whether it can be read and fully-followed by a newcomer to the line? That's the way I'd define it, but I admit, that's a personal definition. There has to always be a jumping-on point. You can never assume that book 3 in a series isn't someone's first book in that universe. I can only imagine the confusion that new readers would have when it comes to some of the more arc-based stuff that's been done. From a storytelling perspective, IMO, of course, too much reliance on arc-based storytelling is just shooting yourself in the foot. Law of diminishing returns and all that.
I'm not sure I'd consider episode followups to not be standalones. Yeah, having knowledge of that episode helps, but it's far more believable that someone's seen that episode before picking up a book than someone reading books 1 and 2 in a series before picking up book 3. But if you rely too much on other things that have happened in the books as well as what happened in the episode to tell the story, then you're venturing (IMO, of course) into non-standalone territory.
And at the risk of pissing off a bunch of people...
I'm sorry, but for all the talk of the ST books being written to be able to be read and/or understood without having to read what came before, a great many of them fail at that attempt, IMO.
So as not to call anyone out specifically, I'll use another medium as an example (Don't worry spoilerphobes, there are none). Let's take the new TV Show Fringe for example. Each episode has what one could easily call a standalone story, the majority of the episode is an event happened that is out of the ordinary, and the team goes to investigate it and they usually solve it completely by the end of the same episode. Standalone right? No, because there are plenty of other scenes with other people doing things that don't make sense unless you know of the arc behind the whole story.
Now, sure TV isn't books I know that. But the situation is similar (obviously not exactly the same). In books the A-plot may be wholly standalone, but then there are more than passing references to large events that took place in other books. Or in some cases the events of another book massively changed the status quo of the characters or universe in general, such that unless you nearly rewrote the whole other book in your book you couldn't really explain how that new state of things became the way they are.
I'm sorry, but for all the talk of the ST books being written to be able to be read and/or understood without having to read what came before, a great many of them fail at that attempt, IMO.
So as not to call anyone out specifically, I'll use another medium as an example (Don't worry spoilerphobes, there are none). Let's take the new TV Show Fringe for example. Each episode has what one could easily call a standalone story, the majority of the episode is an event happened that is out of the ordinary, and the team goes to investigate it and they usually solve it completely by the end of the same episode. Standalone right? No, because there are plenty of other scenes with other people doing things that don't make sense unless you know of the arc behind the whole story.
Now, sure TV isn't books I know that. But the situation is similar (obviously not exactly the same). In books the A-plot may be wholly standalone, but then there are more than passing references to large events that took place in other books. Or in some cases the events of another book massively changed the status quo of the characters or universe in general, such that unless you nearly rewrote the whole other book in your book you couldn't really explain how that new state of things became the way they are.
I think part of the problem everybody seems to be having defining "standalone" is simply the way we tend to consume media in this day and age. With the advent of the DVD box set for television and the trade paperback collection for comic books, we now look at stories in different ways. Authors and producers can now safely assume that if somebody really wants back story, they can simply go and find it through a variety of means, and not everything has to be recapped ad nauseum. We're no longer limited to the information presented in the books, comics, or novels we read. Everything we want to know for context is on the internet, and the previous installments are generally readily available whenever we want them.
Also, just because absolutely everything that went before a story isn't presented to you in the book you're reading, that doesn't disqualify it as a standalone. You can start watching Deep Space Nine in the middle of the fourth season if you want to. You won't get everything that's going on, but you pick up enough to get along, and you can go back and see the stuff that came before any time. Same with the books. Some of us (including myself) are a bit spoiled at this point, is what it comes down to. We want everything in front of us now, 'cause that's what we're used to. You could, of course, argue that this applies only to more traditionally ephemeral media like TV and comics, but I think the models they've introduced over the last ten years are affecting the way we look at novels as well. And wasn't it Margaret Clark who said that she essentially looked at herself as the equivalent to an executive producer on a TV show for her relaunch projects?
Also, just because absolutely everything that went before a story isn't presented to you in the book you're reading, that doesn't disqualify it as a standalone. You can start watching Deep Space Nine in the middle of the fourth season if you want to. You won't get everything that's going on, but you pick up enough to get along, and you can go back and see the stuff that came before any time. Same with the books. Some of us (including myself) are a bit spoiled at this point, is what it comes down to. We want everything in front of us now, 'cause that's what we're used to. You could, of course, argue that this applies only to more traditionally ephemeral media like TV and comics, but I think the models they've introduced over the last ten years are affecting the way we look at novels as well. And wasn't it Margaret Clark who said that she essentially looked at herself as the equivalent to an executive producer on a TV show for her relaunch projects?
Re standalones, these are some comments about Star Trek books from casual readers on a non-Trek message board:
#1: "I've pretty much stopped reading Star Trek novels for a number of reasons. (1) I'd like to be able to pick up a book with a story featuring my favourite characters and not some continuation with new characters I don't care about. Y'know, like the old days when I used to be able to pick up a Kirk/Spock/McCoy book set during the five year mission? Those are the sorts of books I want to read not alternate/mirror universes or Kirk as a child or some Mary Sue. (2) Pick up a Next gen book and what happens? You have to have read the five previous novels and short stories to be up to speed. They seem to be doing a bang up job of destroying the casual reader market."
#2: "I don't mind books set after the films or the various TV series, but what I don't want are books that are [..] expect me to have read several other previous books to know what is going on, etc. That sort continuity is what put me of reading many of the Virgin/BBC DW novels as well."
Hardcore fans who have kept up with the books may well be enjoying the heavier continuity of the novels these days, and the smaller number of standalone stories. Based on comments like those above, though, it seems that casual readers might feel differently, and I agree with TerriO that there are really very few books which could be classified as "jumping-on points".
Personally, I went eighteen months without reading any Star Trek books - partly because of pressures elsewhere in my life, and partly because I'd been disappointed with the quality of some of the ones I'd read. I caught up with the TNG Relaunch earlier this year, and have read two-thirds of Terok Nor, but there's genuinely nothing else on the schedule at the moment which (a) interests me, or (b) I feel I can read casually, having missed so much of the recent output.
I originally praised the fiction line for creating ongoing arcs, and for introducing longer storylines like the DS9 Relaunch, but I think the balance has swung way too far.
#1: "I've pretty much stopped reading Star Trek novels for a number of reasons. (1) I'd like to be able to pick up a book with a story featuring my favourite characters and not some continuation with new characters I don't care about. Y'know, like the old days when I used to be able to pick up a Kirk/Spock/McCoy book set during the five year mission? Those are the sorts of books I want to read not alternate/mirror universes or Kirk as a child or some Mary Sue. (2) Pick up a Next gen book and what happens? You have to have read the five previous novels and short stories to be up to speed. They seem to be doing a bang up job of destroying the casual reader market."
#2: "I don't mind books set after the films or the various TV series, but what I don't want are books that are [..] expect me to have read several other previous books to know what is going on, etc. That sort continuity is what put me of reading many of the Virgin/BBC DW novels as well."
Hardcore fans who have kept up with the books may well be enjoying the heavier continuity of the novels these days, and the smaller number of standalone stories. Based on comments like those above, though, it seems that casual readers might feel differently, and I agree with TerriO that there are really very few books which could be classified as "jumping-on points".
Personally, I went eighteen months without reading any Star Trek books - partly because of pressures elsewhere in my life, and partly because I'd been disappointed with the quality of some of the ones I'd read. I caught up with the TNG Relaunch earlier this year, and have read two-thirds of Terok Nor, but there's genuinely nothing else on the schedule at the moment which (a) interests me, or (b) I feel I can read casually, having missed so much of the recent output.
I originally praised the fiction line for creating ongoing arcs, and for introducing longer storylines like the DS9 Relaunch, but I think the balance has swung way too far.
^IMO, that's the problem with heavily arc-based fiction. Too much focus on the interconnection, and you're only going to keep the die-hard fans because nobody's going to be able to follow the story after a while, thereby shooting yourself in the foot with regards to potential for expanding your audience. I've started to refer to this as the Farscape syndrome. The balance is tricky as hell, I admit.
Nope, not anymore. I'm having way too much fun not dealing with the everyday agita I was dealing with back then. It's not just a job, it's a cardiac infarction waiting to happen.
And, between us, that's about where I'd put it, too. I wish we'd had time for another pass at revising that story, but it just wasn't there.
yeah, but TerriO's not writing Trek any more, so i understand. plus which it's the 6th best story.
Nope, not anymore. I'm having way too much fun not dealing with the everyday agita I was dealing with back then. It's not just a job, it's a cardiac infarction waiting to happen.
And, between us, that's about where I'd put it, too. I wish we'd had time for another pass at revising that story, but it just wasn't there.
I'm not suggesting marketing primarily toward them at all. I'm saying they shouldn't be ignored or forgotten. Remember, every book out there is somebody's first book in the series. If they can't follow it, why should they pick up another book in that series?
There's your expansion of readership. If you can't bring in new readers, the numbers stagnate, and the business end of things will start to rear its ugly head.
