I'm more inclined to say that it's something that Q can do, but between Q's own flair for the dramatic and a general 'it's no fun if you remove any competition from it' attitude, Q chooses to not use that kind of power - there's not fun for him if he's making Picard (or whoever) give him what he wants, preferring to get an admission of victory rather than coercing it.
is q squared a good book?
- Thread starter tmosler
- Start date
Plus, it really wouldn't be difficult to remove free will if you can literally manipulate matter down to the subatomic level and you have a perfect understanding of the functioning of the brain enough to turn someone into a dog and back without them noticing (since it's not like a human-sized brain could fit into a dog-sized skull, so there had to be some degree of mapping over there). Just rewrite their brain to make them do the thing you want them to do. You could even make them think it was an exercising of their will and their own choice and idea.
OMG! You are missing some really good Trek. I suggest starting with the books that Christie Golden wrote even though they aren't all that good because you'll understand the first book that Kirsten Beyer wrote better.
Now there's an enticing recommendation! "Be sure that you read these four not-very-good things before you start on this thing you might enjoy!"
Did you accidentally forget to type the words "right to" between "skip" and "the"?
In all seriousness, MLB, if you're interested in the series at all, go with the Beyer books and skip the Golden ones. Full Circle probably recaps enough that you won't be totally lost. Even if you didn't care for the show that much, you might still find Beyer's work enjoyable.
Yeah, I meant skip the Golden books. Sorry.Did you accidentally forget to type the words "right to" between "skip" and "the"?
In all seriousness, MLB, if you're interested in the series at all, go with the Beyer books and skip the Golden ones. Full Circle probably recaps enough that you won't be totally lost. Even if you didn't care for the show that much, you might still find Beyer's work enjoyable.
The metaphor that comes to mind is that Homecoming/The Farther Shore serve almost as an epilogue to Voyager the TV show, and Spirit Walk acts almost as a pilot that didn't get picked up (I know the metaphor's more than a little strained, but it's how it works in my mind). While Homecoming sets up pieces of the places that Golden was going to go, it's also dealing with clean up from Voyager, serving a bit as a transition between the two stages of the Voyager crew's lives, from the Delta Quadrant to being back in the Federation. Spirit Walk, then, is sort of the official 'start' of what Golden was planning, but since she didn't get back to the series after writing them, it's got a bunch of starting points that end up being non-starters or not going anywhere.
I'd recommend them if you want the full picture, but you can comfortably start from Full Circle and go from there without much trouble.
I'd recommend them if you want the full picture, but you can comfortably start from Full Circle and go from there without much trouble.
Honestly, I know it's a little thing and this is probably me being picky, but I tried reading through Golden's relaunch, and as soon as I hit the holostrike in Homecoming I was thrown completely out of things and I just couldn't keep reading. It makes absolutely no sense unless you assume that literally every holographic figure is sapient instead of just (to use a Mass Effect term) a VI or something. And even if I could buy it as plausible, I can't buy that the Federation would allow a situation like that to happen for so long that it led up to a strike.
I mean, yeah, the simulations are well-done, but I never got the impression that sapience in holograms was anything but rare. 99% of them just seem like fancy RPG NPCs; I mean, look at "Heroes and Demons", they literally ran the same player interaction scenario twice with modifications according to the specific responses they got. And the show itself handled the concept much better in "Flesh and Blood", with the nonsapient mining holograms Iden tried to rescue that were essentially just robots made of light instead of metal.
Maybe I gave up on it too soon, though. I probably didn't give the book a fair shake, and reading back over this it feels like it might be even pickier of me than I first thought. I don't know.
I mean, yeah, the simulations are well-done, but I never got the impression that sapience in holograms was anything but rare. 99% of them just seem like fancy RPG NPCs; I mean, look at "Heroes and Demons", they literally ran the same player interaction scenario twice with modifications according to the specific responses they got. And the show itself handled the concept much better in "Flesh and Blood", with the nonsapient mining holograms Iden tried to rescue that were essentially just robots made of light instead of metal.
Maybe I gave up on it too soon, though. I probably didn't give the book a fair shake, and reading back over this it feels like it might be even pickier of me than I first thought. I don't know.
Last edited:
I don't think it requires the holograms to be sapient; it just requires Oliver Baines, the leader of the movement, to be fanatical enough to believe they're sapient. The rest was just the spin he put on events, and maybe some programming of holograms to do what he wanted. Maybe that's not what Golden had in mind, but I don't recall anything in the story that explicitly disproves that reading.
Yes. As I recall, when Marco Palmieri was editing the books (but not the VGR books until Kirsten took over), he preferred to portray strong AI as a very rare and exceptional occurrence, one that Federation science didn't know how to duplicate reliably. That seems to be the norm in most of the novelverse.
Also, Voyager had a fairly confused message about holograms to begin with, muddying how much independence and intelligence and sapience each hologram had - a lot of times, I got the impression that the Doctor (and by extension, the writing) was approaching 'holographic rights' as if he was the standard for holograms, that with enough time and ability, all holograms could exceed their initial programming and be sapient. I mean, 'Author Author' ends with a Federation arbiter saying that holographic rights will soon have to be addressed. So there was foundation in the show for the holostrike, at least in theory. Obviously, how well it worked is subjective, but it did have a basis from the show.
Yeah, I think the "holostrike" story mainly grew out of that final scene in "Author, Author" with all the retired EMH Mk 1s working in a mining colony. Which made no sense anyway, because, even aside from the sentience issues, that's a ludicrously inefficient way to conduct mining operations. So the raw material the books were building on had flaws from the start.
Hmm. I'll give it another try with this in mind, then.
I would say no as the first non-Golden book won't make all that much sense.
It sounds like quite a few did skip Christie Golden's books and didn't have any trouble following Kirsten Beyer's.
If you don't want to read the Golden books but want to know what happened there, Memory Beta covers the events pretty well in their Voyager related entries, that was how I got caught up.
If you don't want to read the Golden books but want to know what happened there, Memory Beta covers the events pretty well in their Voyager related entries, that was how I got caught up.
^Agreed.
The worst thing is I've loved Golden's writing in the past (her Ravenloft fiction back in the day was great, and I even got to interview her via email in college!), but what I've heard about her VOY fiction was just...maybe I didn't want to tarnish my impressions of someone I've enjoyed reading before.
The worst thing is I've loved Golden's writing in the past (her Ravenloft fiction back in the day was great, and I even got to interview her via email in college!), but what I've heard about her VOY fiction was just...maybe I didn't want to tarnish my impressions of someone I've enjoyed reading before.
