New interview with Greg Cox

[Defcon]

My interview with Greg Cox is now online over at Unreality SF.

We talked about his recently released Warehouse 13 novel A Touch of Fever, his upcoming TOS novel The Rings of Time, his canceled Star Trek (2009) novel The Hazard of Concealing and more.

Greg’s next project, which he is actually “about halfway through writing” just as we’re doing this interview, is the Star Trek: The Original Series novel The Rings of Time, a “time-travel novel involving Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher and Earth’s first manned mission to Saturn (as mentioned in the old TOS episode Tomorrow is Yesterday.) Shaun Christopher appears briefly in my Eugenics Wars books and I always meant to get back to him someday. It’s also very much a Kirk novel. Probably a good half of the book is told from his POV.”

You can read the full interview here.

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[Greg Cox]

Thanks for posting that. It was a fun, and wide-ranging, interview.

 

[JD]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Thrawn]

I actually meant to ask, Greg - I haven't seen the TOS episode about Shaun Christopher, or read any of the Eugenics Wars books (or your other TOS books, for that matter). Will this book contain a lot of references I won't get, or would this be a good place to start with all of your explorations of Trek history?

 

[Greg Cox]

I actually meant to ask, Greg - I haven't seen the TOS episode about Shaun Christopher, or read any of the Eugenics Wars books (or your other TOS books, for that matter). Will this book contain a lot of references I won't get, or would this be a good place to start with all of your explorations of Trek history?

Don't worry about it. I'm not planning to make a big deal of Shaun's participation in the EW books. I figure since I wrote those books, too, I ought to at least mention that bit of his backstory, but it really doesn't have anything to do with the new story--which takes place some fifteen years later and involves a whole different set of characters.

To be more specific: in the EW books, Shaun was briefly involved with the Botany Bay project. Now, fifteen years later, he's commanding a mission to Saturn. But the new book doesn't have anything to do with Khan or Gary Seven or that whole storyline. It is by no means a sequel to EW books.

Hope that makes sense!

As for the TOS episode, that shouldn't be a problem either. Shaun didn't actually appear in that episode; Spock just delivers a bit of historical exposition about somebody named "Shaun Christopher" leading the first manned mission to Saturn way back when. That's about all you need to know.

As is often the case, I'm building an entire book out of a few lines of dialogue in an old episode!

 

[Thrawn]

^ Cool; thanks for the detailed reply. I started reading every new Trek book that came out in 2008, and I didn't want to break my run

 

[Greg Cox]

^ Cool; thanks for the detailed reply. I started reading every new Trek book that came out in 2008, and I didn't want to break my run

No problem.

To be honest, I seriously considered not mentioning the EW at bits all in this book, but decided that would be cheating. But really all we're talking about is the occasional stray memory on Shaun's part.

"Mission Control hadn't been this tense since that day, years ago, when the Botany Bay launched . . . "

That sort of thing.

(And who knows? Maybe we'll end up cutting all those lines out.)

 

[Reanok]

Great interview thanks for sharing it. I'm looking forward to getting Greg's Shaun Christopher novel.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Cool interview. I really need to start watching Warehouse 13 again. I stopped because I moved to the States and I never caught up. Will probably wait for Netflix to get it.

 

[David cgc]

^ Cool; thanks for the detailed reply. I started reading every new Trek book that came out in 2008, and I didn't want to break my run

No problem.

To be honest, I seriously considered not mentioning the EW at bits all in this book, but decided that would be cheating. But really all we're talking about is the occasional stray memory on Shaun's part.

"Mission Control hadn't been this tense since that day, years ago, when the Botany Bay launched . . . "

Well, "the DY-100". Only the people who were on it knew what it finally named. I realize that's pedantic and rather insulting to point out, but if I didn't and that line actually ended up in the book, I'd feel like a real dope a year from now or whenever when I read it.

 

[Greg Cox]

^ Cool; thanks for the detailed reply. I started reading every new Trek book that came out in 2008, and I didn't want to break my run

No problem.

To be honest, I seriously considered not mentioning the EW at bits all in this book, but decided that would be cheating. But really all we're talking about is the occasional stray memory on Shaun's part.

"Mission Control hadn't been this tense since that day, years ago, when the Botany Bay launched . . . "

Well, "the DY-100". Only the people who were on it knew what it finally named. I realize that's pedantic and rather insulting to point out, but if I didn't and that line actually ended up in the book, I'd feel like a real dope a year from now or whenever when I read it.

Don't worry. That's not an actual line from the book. I just made that up as example of the way I've been dealing with EW references. There's a stray thought here and there, but nothing essential to the plot.

Shaun only knows that a DY-100 prototype went missing. Funny thing, it was about the same time that Khan Noonien Singh was overthrown . . . .