Just curious what was your first Trek novel to read?

[Bibliomike]

my teacher let me use this for a book report.

That was one cool teacher! I asked to read Hound of the Baskervilles once for a book report and was told "no" because it was "too much like pop fiction." Great Bird only knows what she'd have said if I'd brought in a Star Trek novel! Sounds like your teacher understands the real point of book reports is, not to review a book, but to encourage critical reading and writing, which can be accomplished with any kind of literature. I'm all for great literature, but kudos to your teacher for letting you have some fun, too!

 

[Idran]

I can never remember which exactly, but it was either "The Captain's Daughter" or "Intellivore". Definitely one of those two, and I'm like 75% sure it was "The Captain's Daughter".

Whether first or second though, it was definitely before I ever actually watched TOS.

 

[RonG]

TNG: Vendetta

 

[Bibliomike]

TNG: Vendetta

I read that one to cheer myself up after missing out on a job in college

 

[Riverside2233]

Mission to Horatius. I'm a new fan to the shows and the literature, and I was planning on working my way from the early publications and moving forward in order of publication, but ever since I found the chronological LitVerse timeline, I'm intrigued in trying to tackle them that way.

Again, I only started watching all of the shows this year (talk about being late to the party) and I'm all the way to VOY S2 / DS9 S4 and trucking right along. I haven't read too many books yet. Safe to say that I am hooked though, and I love the creative storytelling in both the shows and the literature.

 

[JD]

That was one cool teacher! I asked to read Hound of the Baskervilles once for a book report and was told "no" because it was "too much like pop fiction." Great Bird only knows what she'd have said if I'd brought in a Star Trek novel! Sounds like your teacher understands the real point of book reports is, not to review a book, but to encourage critical reading and writing, which can be accomplished with any kind of literature. I'm all for great literature, but kudos to your teacher for letting you have some fun, too!

Wow, you had a very picky teacher. I know I did DS9: Rising Son for a book report in HS, and I'm pretty sure I'd done at least one or two Star Trek or Star Wars books before that.
My first Trek book was the first book in the TNG: Starfleet Academy YA series, but at the time I wasn't old enough to read myself, so my parents read it to me. I'm pretty sure one of the other YA books would have been the first I read by myself. My first adult Trek book was the first New Frontier novel. That one sticks in my head because that year I was still in middle school, and the teacher wanted to check out the books we had to make sure they were age and reading skill appropriate and I was terrified she'd find one of the more sexual or violent parts.

 

[Bibliomike]

Wow, you had a very picky teacher.....That one sticks in my head because that year I was still in middle school, and the teacher wanted to check out the books we had to make sure they were age and reading skill appropriate and I was terrified she'd find one of the more sexual or violent parts.

Ha!
My teacher wasn't usually all that picky; she just didn't think Sherlock Holmes counted as real literature. (What would Data say?!?!) But she was cool otherwise (and still is - she's the only one of my high school teachers I'm still in touch with, almost 30 years later...)

 

[Christopher]

My teacher wasn't usually all that picky; she just didn't think Sherlock Holmes counted as real literature.

Well, neither did Arthur Conan Doyle. But your teacher should've known better after all that time. I mean, Holmes is perhaps the world's most popular fictional character. It's pure elitism to dismiss that as somehow unworthy.

 

[20fridge]

It's not that uncommon for english teachers to have arbitrary definitions as to what constitutes real literature. One of my high school english teachers told me that I could not read HG Welles' The Invisible Man as a book for class since it isn't real literature, but another one (different year) was completely OK with it.

 

[Kor]

I was in honors English classes in high school, and the teachers were always pretty lax on what kind of books the kids were allowed to read for their book reports and during silent reading time. Two girls did a collaborative report on some trashy biography of a hip hop star. One mischievous boy got a stern lecture from the teacher because he wanted to read the dictionary instead of something with a narrative. As for me, I usually did some sci fi novel or other.

Anyway, I think the first Trek novel I ever read was TOS "Chain of Attack." It was a hand-me-down from my brother. To me, the novels opened up whole new worlds of imagination that couldn't be depicted in the confines of the one-hour television format.

Kor

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The City on the Edge of Forever and Where No Man Has Gone Before photonovels, because they belonged to my parents. I actually read the books years before I ever saw the episodes.

As for conventional novels, I know the first one I read was a DS9 one, but I can't remember whether it was The 34th Rule or one of the others. That one sticks out, particularly the tale of Rom selling his hand to another Ferengi kid. Yikes. :P

 

[Christopher]

It's not that uncommon for english teachers to have arbitrary definitions as to what constitutes real literature.

All the more reason why it's obnoxiously elitist. It's not based on anything real, just the petty desire to believe that one's own standards are superior to someone else's.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

The first Star Trek novel I read was James Blish's Star Trek 1. I thought it was Vonda McIntyre's novelization of Star Trek III, but that came after. The first non-novelization was The Entropy Effect,

 

[DimesDan]

What I have a problem with is that some teachers who should encourage reading of any type of books would stop children from reading certain stories, because what? Just reasons!

Oh and Vendetta, I wasn't sure how to pronounce the title, but I liked the cover and that's all that mattered at the time.

 

[Christopher]

The first Star Trek novel I read was James Blish's Star Trek 1.

Technically that was a story collection, not a novel. I suppose you could say the same about my first, Star Trek Log Three, but I think Foster's Logs could be counted as fix-up novels, since he wrote in transitions between the episodes and portrayed them as parts of a continuous chronological sequence.

 

[C.E. Evans]

For me, it was the TMP novelization. It was around the time of the 20th anniversary, and although I had been long reading Trek comics from DC, I had never bought a Trek novel before. I really had the novelizations of the first three Trek movies simultaneously, but I started reading TMP first. The thing I loved the most about those novelizations was the different takes the authors had with the source material, especially when they added "scenes" not in the actual movies or screenplays.

 

[T'Ressa Dax]

Shell Game by Melissa Crandall

 

[DrCorby]

A friend gave me James Blish's Star Trek 4 collection, shortly after it came out. I had no idea there even were Star Trek books, so I started searching for them in the book store. The first Star Trek novel I owned and read was Blish's Spock Must Die!, which was certainly a different take on Star Trek, but still enjoyable on its own terms.

During the days of syndication in the 70s, Blish's episode adaptations were a major source of Star Trek lore for me, especially when I found out that stations sometimes trimmed scenes to make room for more commercials. Unfortunately, not all of the little scenes and other bits I didn't see on TV but read in Blish's adaptations were actually from the original shows, but added by Blish for his own reasons. For example, in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (where the Enterprise is thrown back to the 60s and picks up an Air Force pilot), there's a scene in Kirk's cabin where they discuss where they can go in that time period. In the book, Scotty mentions the Vegan Tyranny being in the stellar neighborhood and that "you remember what happened when we hit them". I long assumed that exchange was snipped from the original episode, but was surprised to learn that it was actually a reference to Blish's Cities in Flight novel series (which I later read and enjoyed). But I still half-expect that mention whenever I watch the ep.

 

[Christopher]

During the days of syndication in the 70s, Blish's episode adaptations were a major source of Star Trek lore for me, especially when I found out that stations sometimes trimmed scenes to make room for more commercials. Unfortunately, not all of the little scenes and other bits I didn't see on TV but read in Blish's adaptations were actually from the original shows, but added by Blish for his own reasons. For example, in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (where the Enterprise is thrown back to the 60s and picks up an Air Force pilot), there's a scene in Kirk's cabin where they discuss where they can go in that time period. In the book, Scotty mentions the Vegan Tyranny being in the stellar neighborhood and that "you remember what happened when we hit them". I long assumed that exchange was snipped from the original episode, but was surprised to learn that it was actually a reference to Blish's Cities in Flight novel series (which I later read and enjoyed). But I still half-expect that mention whenever I watch the ep.

That same "Tomorrow is Yesterday" adaptation was also where Blish proposed 40 Eridani as Vulcan's primary star, an idea that was all but rendered canonical by Enterprise's fourth season (which put Vulcan 16 light-years from Earth, consistent with 40 Eri as well as a smattering of other stars). Blish added a scene where Captain Christopher assumed that Vulcan was the hypothetical planet of that name that was once theorized to exist between the Sun and Mercury's orbit, and Kirk explained to him that Spock was a native of "The Vulcan," a planet of 40 Eridani.

 

[Hey Missy]

Probably the first novel I read the entirety of was one of the TNG young adult "Starfleet Academy" titles.
As for an actual "adult" full-length novel, either Vendetta or Q-in-Law.