Spoilers It’s Official... (probably TV spoilers here too)

[ryan123450]

It’s official. The moment we all knew was coming.

The Litverse Continuity is, as of today, out of continuity with canonical Star Trek.

I truly hope that somehow, in some form, this is rectified in-universe in the next few years. I really await the writers being given the chance to give the Litverse the ending it deserves.

 

[The Wormhole]

Would be interesting to find out what this "plan" is David Mack has spoken of.

 

[flandry84]

Seems like an ideal time to get off the bus alas.
Just imagine the knots people will tie themselves up in to try squaring so many circles (even my metaphors are getting convoluted).

 

[Damian]

There's no way to reconcile the current TNG era relaunches with Picard at this point. I think David Mack's Tweet may have been tongue in cheek---or maybe at that time some thought something could be salvaged. But there's no amount of knots you could do to bring the relaunches as they stand in line with Picard. And it's not really a surprise. The little bits we got before the show even started strongly indicated the show was going in a vastly different direction then where the novels were headed.

I think we just have one more relaunch novel coming out, Voyager's "To Lose the Earth" (though that is admittedly a few years behind "Collateral Damage". Hopefully Beyer will tie some things up. I would have loved to have seen one more DS9 book to tie up some major loose ends as well. But sadly I think time is up. The only reason we're even getting another Voyager novel is it was already contracted previously. Otherwise I don't think we'd even get that.

I think from this point on the books will all center around the current running shows and the original series. I don't expect to see any more TNG, DS9, Voyager or Enterprise books at this point. Unfortunately, at least IMO, I think the franchise has moved on.

As much as I love seeing a new 24th century show (though as I noted on another thread I'm not sure I like where it's headed), I have to admit I regret seeing the continuing relaunches end. I guess I just kind of assumed they would continue indefinitely. It seemed we were just on a continuing voyages journey that would never end.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I am of course speaking sight-unseen here, but:

"Such Sweet Sorrow" manages (to paraphrase something said in one of the bonus featurettes from the Discovery Season 2 DVD set) to reconcile Discovery to all prior canon, and then set it completely free of all prior canon. Indeed, it manages to do the same for a lot of the Litverse, and a good deal of "fanon" and "headcanon."

Never say "impossible" with Star Trek.

 

[JD]

The only way to reconcile things is to either say that everything in the relaunches didn't really happen, or reset the timeline somehow.
It was already pretty clear from the bits and pieces I was seeing in the promotional stuff that this was going to happen, so watching the episode hasn't really changed anything for me.

 

[tomswift2002]

The only way to reconcile things is to either say that everything in the relaunches didn't really happen, or reset the timeline somehow.
It was already pretty clear from the bits and pieces I was seeing in the promotional stuff that this was going to happen, so watching the episode hasn't really changed anything for me.

Or use the in universe “Parallels” explanation and say that the relaunch books split just after “Star Trek Nemesis” and still have a supernova that destroys Romulus, while STP takes another track with Romulus also destroyed.

 

[Christopher]

Or use the in universe “Parallels” explanation and say that the relaunch books split just after “Star Trek Nemesis” and still have a supernova that destroys Romulus, while STP takes another track with Romulus also destroyed.

Logically, large-scale natural phenomena like that would be expected to happen similarly in every divergent timeline, though their timing might vary.

Looking at it just from a reader's perspective, and not an "alternate timeline" perspective but just the kind of "what books are still compatible with new episodes/films" perspective I used as a fan back in the '80s and '90s, it does seem to me like most of the pre-NEM stuff is probably still consistent for now, though it's possible that Seven of Nine will say something that conflicts with the early VGR Relaunch, or something like that. The bulk of post-finale DS9 books might be unaffected, as well as earlier stuff.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

At any rate, Lyman Frank Baum never let continuity get in the way of storytelling. And neither did Alan Dean Foster.

Nor did the Great Bird of the Galaxy, for that matter.

 

[JD]

L. Frank Baum didn't write tie-in novels for a major franchise owned by a massive corporation.

 

[BillJ]

"Such Sweet Sorrow" manages (to paraphrase something said in one of the bonus featurettes from the Discovery Season 2 DVD set) to reconcile Discovery to all prior canon...

It didn’t remotely reconcile Discovery with the Prime timeline.

 

[Christopher]

L. Frank Baum didn't write tie-in novels for a major franchise owned by a massive corporation.

And tie-in novels for major franchises are even more likely to have their continuity altered when new canon ignores them, so what's your point?

 

[Greg Cox]

At any rate, Lyman Frank Baum never let continuity get in the way of storytelling. And neither did Alan Dean Foster.

Nor did the Great Bird of the Galaxy, for that matter.

Johnston McCully was famously laissez-faire about continuity in the original Zorro novels--and he created the character.

And this is where I drag out my anecdote about having written two mutually incompatible prequels to UNDERWORLD, reflecting the the evolving continuity of the movie series.

It's an occupational hazard. Comes with the territory.

 

[BillJ]

There were good books and bad books over the last twenty years, I imagine there will be good books and bad books over the next twenty.

 

[The Wormhole]

I have to admit I regret seeing the continuing relaunches end. I guess I just kind of assumed they would continue indefinitely.

The Litverse was always going to end at some point. Everything ends and nothing is permanent. Personally, I think having it end because there's new material on TV that is supplanting it is far preferable to having it end because sales were poor and the decision was made to stop publishing Trek books.

 

[thribs]

What do you mean? Did they announce something or because of Picard? If the latter we all knew that anyway. The novels were never really canon and so they could easily continue them. The novel community is smart enough to know the difference.

 

[Thrawn]

It's not a question of if they can, it's a question of if that is the best decision they can make. It doesn't seem like common sense to you that tie-ins for recent shows would sell better, and that any new fans brought into the TrekLit fold from the new shows probably wouldn't be super excited about the next book on the shelf being book 237 of an ongoing interconnected saga so complex that fans had to make websites to keep track of it all?

 

[thribs]

They could still do tie ins. Nothing to stop them doing both. it’s all irrelevant anyway since TOS books always sell the best.

 

[Thrawn]

And Disney could've run Star Wars Legends novels alongside the canon ones too, and they didn't do that, and they had way more readers than TrekLit.

 

[thribs]

And Disney could've run Star Wars Legends novels alongside the canon ones too, and they didn't do that, and they had way more readers than TrekLit.

Well Star Wars fans are dumb. It would just confuse them.
That always bothered me. They have a novel, Sword of the Jedi, a sequel to Crucible which is ready but they won’t release it, not even digitally. I would love to read it but they won’t let me.