Just curious what was your first Trek novel to read?

[hbquikcomjamesl]

The high points are Planet of Judgment and The Galactic Whirlpool.

I also rather liked Trek to Madworld and Death's Angel.

On the other hand, the two Marshak/Culbreath "Phoenix" novels were almost impossible to follow, and not really worth trying. And then, there were the "Planet of Judgment-wannabes" (e.g., The Starless World) that just rehashed the "Kirk & co. get roughed up by some superbeing(s)" plot ad nauseum.

 

[Christopher]

I also rather liked Trek to Madworld and Death's Angel.

Madworld is entertaining, but a bit silly. David Gerrold's introduction is probably the best part. Death's Angel is just dumb. It's loaded with the laziest, most unimaginative aliens I've ever seen (just anthropomorphic Earth animals or fantasy creatures), and it features the most blatant and obnoxious Mary Sue character in the Bantam line.

On the other hand, the two Marshak/Culbreath "Phoenix" novels were almost impossible to follow, and not really worth trying.

Price of the Phoenix is pretty dire, but Fate actually has some halfway interesting ideas. It was the first novel that made an attempt to challenge the ethics of the Prime Directive, though it didn't really follow through on the questions it raised.

 

[Scout101]

definitely a bit heavy on the slash elements if you want to read it that way, but I liked those two. Christopher is right, though, Fate is a much better book. Enjoyed the attempt at taking on some of those questions, even if the follow-through wasn't fully there.

I think in general, my tolerance for things being a little 'off' is pretty high. In my head, I seem to round off a lot of the rough edges so that I see the characters more 'in character' anyway, even if the book has them wandering off a little. Sometimes it's too hard to overcome, but for the most part, I'm good with whatever as long as the story isn't stupid. And not a stickler for cannon, I can take each story as it comes without forcing them all to go together. 5YM is already like 60 years long to account for everything if you want to piece them together

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Well, of course Madworld is silly. It was intended to be. What do you expect from a premise the author himself described as "Captain Kirk meets Willy Wonka"?

Nothing wrong with cornball humor growing out of a cornball premise. Think of How Much for Just the Planet.

As to Death's Angel, I must continue to disagree on the Mary Sue issue (and besides, Ruth Rigel seems a more obvious author-surrogate than Schaeffer, even bearing a certain physical resemblance to my recollections of what Kathleen Sky looked like at the time).

 

[Christopher]

Author surrogacy aside, Schaeffer is a textbook Mary Sue -- a character who's impossibly overqualified, who outperforms the leads and earns their undying fascination in ways that make them act out of character, and that doesn't demonstrate the qualities she's alleged to have. (The best illustration of the latter two points: She's supposedly an ultra-tough woman who takes no nonsense from anyone, but when Kirk romances her by infantilizing her with saccharine baby talk, she totally loves the demeaning treatment. So not only is Kirk badly out of character in that interaction, but so is Schaeffer.) And both of Sky's books portray Spock out of character, though Vulcan! is worse with the way it has Spock irrationally embrace a false and unsupported conclusion about the aliens just so the guest character can be smarter than him.

 

[nightwind1]

If you don't count the Blish adaptations, it was "Spock Must Die!".

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

What bothered me about Death's Angel as much as the whole Schaeffer thing was the utterly horrible 'Special Security Service' propounded in that novel. Those guys were even worse than Section 31. A bunch of Nazi jackboots like that have no place in an enlightened Federation. I'd expect the Terran Empire to have something like that, though...

Hell, even the Judges from 2000 A.D. allowed more freedom than the SSS (I'm sure that abbreviation was an intentional pun...just leave out one S).

 

[DrCorby]

Madworld is entertaining, but a bit silly. David Gerrold's introduction is probably the best part.

Yes! That was a very funny intro, detailing how the author was a were-koala, and the behaviors that led to. Went on for several pages, as I recall.

Price of the Phoenix is pretty dire, but Fate actually has some halfway interesting ideas. It was the first novel that made an attempt to challenge the ethics of the Prime Directive, though it didn't really follow through on the questions it raised.

This is what I really remembered from Phoenix books -- the challenge Omni made to the Federation and their Prime Directive. Like you said, it wasn't followed through very well, but some of the discussions were interesting. And, weirdly, referring to Kirk and Spock like they were Platonic ideals -- "The Human", "The Vulcan". Very odd. I was a young teen when I first read them, but even then I knew there was an odd undertone to the books. When I reread them a few years later, I better understood a lot more of the apparent subtext. Today, I view them as artifacts of both the 70s, and the state of a certain segment of Star Trek fandom in that era.

 

[ClayinCA]

I remember reading The Price of the Phoenix and being confused by it at the time (I hadn't encountered the whole K/S phenomenon yet) but basically enjoying the book. I then tried to read Fate, but couldn't get through it; now, years later, I can't bring myself to read either one of them.

 

[Hugh Cambridge]

My first one was The Galactic Whirlpool.

 

[David Strickhouser]

Hello, new poster.
The first novel I read was the TMP novelization by Gene Roddenberry, after seeing the movie in the theater at the ripe old age of 11.
At that age it was, to me: wow! The creator wrote the book of the movie, cool!
That opened the door to the Bantam novels, the Blish series, and I was off to the races!

 

[Idran]

And, weirdly, referring to Kirk and Spock like they were Platonic ideals -- "The Human", "The Vulcan". Very odd.

There's a weird but common habit in fic in some regions of fandom where authors will habitually use that kind of euphemistic reference to characters instead of using pronouns or names. It's kind of strange, yeah, and I don't think it's as much a thing now, but it was common enough even a couple decades ago that it was often specifically called out as something not to do in fic writing. Since Marshak and Culbreath came up through fic, that's probably where that came from.

 

[Christopher]

^I dunno... I recall in Michael Jan Friedman's The Valiant, he routinely referred to Picard as "the second officer," even after Picard had been field-promoted to captain.

 

[Idran]

^I dunno... I recall in Michael Jan Friedman's The Valiant, he routinely referred to Picard as "the second officer," even after Picard had been field-promoted to captain.

Fair point, it might not be universally from fic; it might just be irksome writing technique across all regions of writing.

(It might be considered in the same category as using goofy alternatives to "said"? Like trying to avoid repetitiveness in writing and overcompensating in doing so.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

(It might be considered in the same category as using goofy alternatives to "said"? Like trying to avoid repetitiveness in writing and overcompensating in doing so.)

. . .quoth Idran

Why not simply not tag the speaker at all, if the context makes it reasonably obvious who's speaking? (Of course, that, too, can be taken to ridiculous extremes, leading the reader to have no idea who said what.)

 

[RedForman]

I'm not sure, but I think it was "Dreadnought!" by Diane Carey.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Last time we had this kind of thread, it was interesting that, for many fans, their first novel was "Chain of Attack". This was the first original novel to follow the very popular ST IV, had a major branding change, with "Star Trek" more prominent on the US cover, and Book 1 in the UK's new Titan Books line of Trek novels. "Chain of Attack" was not a favourite for me, but it certainly proved a popular first Trek novel for many new fans/collectors.

Re "Death's Angel", I certainly should have enjoyed that novel with all of its new aliens (and surprise revelation of the serial killer; I rarely guess whodunnits), but the "running gag" humour of their personal and species' names got very old very fast. It was reminiscent of "Journey to Babel", which I love, and I rather liked the concept of Schaeffer and her Special Security Service (in black Starfleet shirts, IIRC), even though she wasn't very likable.


A friend as Si-s-s-s (click) the Gavalian ambassador, 1982 by Ian McLean, on Flickr

 

[Christopher]

Re "Death's Angel", I certainly should have enjoyed that novel with all of its new aliens...

The problem for me is that they weren't really aliens. They were just anthropomorphized Earth animals or creatures from mythology. Granted, there's precedent for that in Trek (e.g. Caitians), but they were all like that, and I found it very corny and unimaginative.

 

[Jim Johnson]

The first Trek books I remember reading were the fotonovels for "The Trouble With Tribbles" and "Galileo 7". As for actual novel novels, I suspect it was either a Blish book or maybe the STTMP novelization. And then a ton of the Pocket Books novels after that. I worked in a Waldenbooks back in the day and kept the sci-fi section well-stocked with Star Trek books. I had one in hand pretty much every lunch break.

 

[Frontier]

The Return by Shatner (Well, really the Reeve-Stevens). The concept of a book about Kirk written by Kirk was too much for my fragile 11 or 12 year old mind to not go nuts over.

I've got to say too, I really enjoy that original trilogy of the Shatnerverse even to this day. Might be a bit fanwank but it was GOOD fanwank, you know?