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Lit/fanon inventions that became canon

Besides, Jennifer's surname doesn't line up exactly with the novels, because it's Sh'reyan instead of sh'Reyan.

Is it, though? As far as I am aware, her last name was only ever given on a computer display, where all the names were written in all-caps. It's possible Memory Alpha is just interpreting the capitalization incorrectly.
 
Picard Season 3 gave Riker's mother's first name as 'Betty' on a personnel file.

The only other place I could find that name being used was on the official website. Memory-Alpha says it was also used in 'The Star Trek Book' reference book though they don't specify which edition, but both released years before Pic Season 3 aired.

No clue where either source got 'Betty' from.

This could kinda count as Fanon to canon if the Star Trek website writers for some reason made up a first name for Riker's mother.

That's interesting, because I typed in "Betty Riker Star Trek" in Google and it immediately went to the TNG episode "Conundrum" and an onscreen personal file for "William Riker" that they used to establish their identity when their minds were wiped.
I believe the name also appears in the novel "Deny thy Father".
 
That's interesting, because I typed in "Betty Riker Star Trek" in Google and it immediately went to the TNG episode "Conundrum" and an onscreen personal file for "William Riker" that they used to establish their identity when their minds were wiped.
I believe the name also appears in the novel "Deny thy Father".
Riker's personnel file did not appear in "Conundrum".

Deny Thy Father calls her Annie instead of Betty.
 
I guess, but it still seems awfully close, and we've already seen other stuff taken from the novels, so it's not totally unprecedented for that to happen.

Of course it's possible. I'm just saying it's never wise to assume a similarity has to be intentional, because coincidental similarities happen all the time. The name could be a novel reference, but we don't actually know that it is, because there's just as much chance that it's coincidence.


Is it, though? As far as I am aware, her last name was only ever given on a computer display, where all the names were written in all-caps. It's possible Memory Alpha is just interpreting the capitalization incorrectly.

Which, again, leaves us in the position where it could be, but we can't actually know for sure.
 
Possible instance of citogenesis from the real-life Memory Alpha:
Side note, funny thing about that.

One of the Memory-Alpha pages talking about the Klingon Great Houses had mentioned '24 Great Houses' from almost the very beginning of the site's existence and no one bothered to fact check it. It wasn't until a few months before Discovery's airing that I decided to find the canon source for that that claim.. and couldn't, there wasn't one. I pointed it out and it was promptly removed from the page (and then added back again once Discovery aired)

Maybe the Discovery writers got it from that error on M-A lol
 
"Vulcans named Doug . . ." . . . and Susan?!?
O . . . . k.

Another teaser for SNW Season 3. As if I weren't already waiting for the DVD set with a worm on my tongue.

(I will note that I named the father of my novel's protagonist "Doug." And her mother "Anne." Nearly 3 decades ago.)
 
You beat me to the bunch. It's easy to forget in these days of Google and Memory Alpha and what-not that looking this stuff required a lot more effort back in the day. Heck, even rewatching an old episode or tracking down a copy of an old paperback could be challenging . . . .
Another issue was that if a particular reference work got something wrong, that mistake could be compounded when it was repeated in other media. I remember that DC's Star Trek Annual #1 incorrectly gave Dr. Boyce's first name as "Joe" instead of "Phillip" because that's what The Star Trek Concordance listed.
 
And there is a TrekLit-forum-specific exception to that rule, because anybody could be picking up any book (going all the way back to Mission to Horatius) for the first time, at any arbitrary moment.
It occurred to me, sometime after I wrote that, that the TrekLit-forum-specific exception to the dead-thread policy should also apply to review threads in series forums, because (especially with those not broadcast on the public airwaves) people could be buying DVD sets years (or even decades) after the episodes debuted.
 
It occurred to me, sometime after I wrote that, that the TrekLit-forum-specific exception to the dead-thread policy should also apply to review threads in series forums, because (especially with those not broadcast on the public airwaves) people could be buying DVD sets years (or even decades) after the episodes debuted.
I think it's a matter of volume. The episode live commentary/review threads are some of the biggest and fastest-growing ones on the board. Some of the threads on the front page of the SNW forum are 80 pages long. Even the most fervently-discussed novels (one of the Coda installments, for instance) topped out at 30 pages, filled over months instead of days. Plus, people are going to remain fresher on episodes (its faster and easier to rewatch one than to reread a book), so they'll probably remember the details for a new thread. I've had to look back for my own posts in novel review threads to try and remember what I thought about a given book, on the other hand.

TrekLit, overall, has a smaller amount of traffic than the movie and TV boards, so it makes sense to collate the discussions a bit more.
 
The idea that the glowing domes at the front of warp nacelles are Bussard Collectors comes from an article on Warp Drive that Geoffrey Mandel and/or Doug Drexler wrote in Star Trek Giant Poster Book #13 back in 1977. I don't have my copy handy so I'm not sure about the authorship. They seem to have come up with the idea based on Franz Joseph's "Space Energy Matter Sink/Acquisition" terminology from the Star Fleet Technical Manual (although Franz Joseph seems to have had something else in mind). Of course Robert Bussard's concept dates back to 1960.
 
The idea that the glowing domes at the front of warp nacelles are Bussard Collectors comes from an article on Warp Drive that Geoffrey Mandel and/or Doug Drexler wrote in Star Trek Giant Poster Book #13 back in 1977. I don't have my copy handy so I'm not sure about the authorship. They seem to have come up with the idea based on Franz Joseph's "Space Energy Matter Sink/Acquisition" terminology from the Star Fleet Technical Manual (although Franz Joseph seems to have had something else in mind). Of course Robert Bussard's concept dates back to 1960.

In fact, the Bussard collector concept was introduced to TNG by illustrator/technical consultant Rick Sternbach, who knew Dr. Robert Bussard personally and had done multiple paintings illustrating the Bussard ramjet concept for Analog in 1978, Carl Sagan's Cosmos in 1980, and Science Digest in 1983, possibly among others. We know for a fact that Sternbach got the idea from its actual inventor, Bussard himself, and was already aware of it by 1977 (since the cover for an April 1978 issue would probably have had to be painted before the end of 1977). So I doubt Mandel or Drexler had anything to do with it.
 
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