Next Titan novel announced

[Therin of Andor]

There was a vision before, and for a while at least the line has been coasting on the remnants of that. But what next?

How do you know that Ed has not made plans?

Pay them three cents an hour or there abouts as tie-in underlings. they can plan out the Trek line a little bit better.

Is this an attempt to be insulting to Dayton? Why the need to keep harping on about a fictitious, low rate of pay for what you seem to think is an essential task?

 

[Andy Mangels]

The Section 31 miniseries foreshadowed an end-of-Section-31 pitch that never ended up being made.

Or which hasn't happened yet.

The beginning of The Sundered makes explicit references to Forged In Fire, which was published 5 years later.

Yeah, but was that Marco's doing or Martin and Mangel's?

I doubt that the Section 31 story will be gotten back to anytime soon. Mike and I had really started setting up the idea for a big hardcover cross-over, which is why Rogue had many of the ending threads it had, and other books followed suit. Other projects kept getting put in the way, including A Time To, and then Titan, and then... and every time we brought up Section 31, it got pushed back again. Other things just took the lead, and now, it would take far too much time to get back to that story in today's continuity.

And I don't recall the explicit references with Sundered and FiF, but Mike and I did make a LOT of effort to tie a lot of our books together by threads... especially when they were of the same ship. We had done early work on FiF prior to The Sundered, as I recall (FiF had a very long gestation period).

When working out the initial plot - if he wanted certain things - Marco would more often give us very specific story beats to hit, or end results for characters or situations, but how we got to them was up to us in the plotting stages. Sometimes we got almost no story beats ahead, other times (such as the DS9 books) we got a lot of them.

But as a for instance, in Worlds of DS9 Trill, I recall that our main story beats that Marco wanted were: (a) it had to take place on Trill; (b) it had to address the history of the Trill; and (c) it had to feature the dissolution of Bashir and Ezri's relationship. I believe the tie-in to the parasites was Mike's idea (as was much of the Trill history), and I think I came up with the terrorism subplots and the "end of joining" ending that was a real game-changer. Of course both Mike and I contributed parts of all of the ideas, and then it was submitted to Marco, who worked with us to better things he didn't think worked.

And I agree that Marco seemed to like "hopeful-but-melancholy" endings and stories. I do as well, much of the time, as it gives more of a continuation for character development. "Happily Ever After" or "He/She's Dead," don't leave a lot of interesting avenues to travel on for the future...

 

[Thrawn]

I don't think post-Marco Trek Literature has, as a whole, lost any sort of interconnectedness or feeling of connectedness. It's not about plot. What I think post-Marco Trek Lit has lost--not entirely, but in part--is Marco's particular set of thematic motifs. Marco's Trek lines, I think, tended to be a bit melancholy, a bit bittersweet; his influence was in a sort of, I suppose I'd call it melancholy optimism, this sort of feeling that things will get better but at the cost of tragedy. I hesitate to say that Trek Lit has lost that thematic concern, because I think it's one that recurs in a number of individual authors' works -- David Mack, for instance, or James Swallow. But I think it is fair to say that that particular creative sensibility is not as widespread across the various Trek Lit lines as it once was. That's not inherently a bad thing -- although I did prefer the TrekLit lines when it was more prevalent.

Huh, that's interesting. Because I feel like that spirit is just as prevalent as ever; Beyer's Voyager books, the Vanguard books, and all the Typhon Pact books feel like melancholy/hope blends to me.

I think maybe it's harder to define the impact of a really great editor than it seems, but that we all seem to agree something is missing. Maybe Marco just made everything a little bit better, and the rest of our feelings arose out of that anyway.

But I mean, think about it. Take any prolific TrekLit author from the last decade, and it's basically a given they did their best work with Marco. KRAD? Articles of the Federation, A Burning House, Art of the Impossible. Christopher? The Buried Age. David Mack? Destiny, Reap The Whirlwind. Mangels/Martin? They mostly worked with Marco, so maybe this one isn't fair, but no one was calling their Enterprise books their best work. DRG3? Crucible: McCoy. James Swallow? Day of the Vipers. Wardilmore? Gotta be either Summon the Thunder or Open Secrets.

Etc, etc, etc.

Not to mention, the most disappointing Treklit of the past decade was almost certainly the TNG relaunch, which Marco didn't do. The ENT relaunch was pretty controversial, too. Not Marco. Regardless of its many printings, messageboard fans seemed to pan the pre-Beyer Voyager books. Marco didn't do those either. In fact, I can only think of three books Marco ever edited that I genuinely didn't enjoy - Voyager's Section 31 entry, String Theory 3, and Deny Thy Father. And I guess Mission: Gamma 4 was pretty mediocre. That's it.

None of the other editors had that kind of record.

Again, I still think the group of authors working now is awesome, by and large. But under Marco, I just trusted him and bought every book without question, knowing it'd be worth it. With this thread, I'm realizing I'm not interested in reading the next Titan book. Under Marco, no matter who was writing it, that would have been a no brainer.

 

[Lindley]

There was a vision before, and for a while at least the line has been coasting on the remnants of that. But what next?

How do you know that Ed has not made plans?

I'm not making any such claim. But I am concerned. He has to prove himself a worthy successor, I'm not going to just assume it.

 

[Defcon]

If he hasn't proven himself to you in the many years he has been involved with the Star Trek line up til now, I doubt he will do so anytime soon.

Only because John Ordover, Marco and to a certain extent Margaret were the most vocal of the editors over the years (and before someone tries to imply I mean that in a negative way: I appreciated the way they interacted with the audience), doesn't mean they edited everything.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm not making any such claim. But I am concerned. He has to prove himself a worthy successor, I'm not going to just assume it.

AFAIK, Ed has edited some of the best "New Frontier" novels, and Peter David's excellent "Sir Apropos of Nothing" trilogy. I don't know how he's supposed to "prove himself".

 

[Defcon]

I could be remembering wrong, but wasn't he also the editor for some of the later A Time to novels (after Ordover left S&S mid-project)?

 

[Lindley]

I'm not making any such claim. But I am concerned. He has to prove himself a worthy successor, I'm not going to just assume it.

AFAIK, Ed has edited some of the best "New Frontier" novels, and Peter David's excellent "Sir Apropos of Nothing" trilogy. I don't know how he's supposed to "prove himself".

Editing a few books is not the same as being in charge and providing an overall guiding vision for the line.

As for how he can do it....success is assumed. Failure is observed. The less we have to complain about, the better a job he's doing.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Trekkies? Not complain about something with "Star Trek" in the title?

Never gonna happen.

 

[Lindley]

Trekkies? Not complain about something with "Star Trek" in the title?

Never gonna happen.

Well, there is that. But I also think there's a clear distinction between a few complaints about specific things, which we get quite a bit of, and an overall dissatisfaction with the direction. That hasn't really be a problem so far. I just hope it stays that way.

 

[zarkon]

Well I have quite a few issues with
-the gradual dilution of the tv characters in the books based on the series they were once in(how much of the old crew is left on the ente for example)
-the addition of rather uninteresting new characters(imo obviously)
-and the direction some of the older characters have been taken in(bashir, sisko)

But whether that's down to the editor or the authors I wouldn't know (Second point definately sounds more authorish to me offhand, but I'm unsure about the first and third).

 

[James Cole]

I'm not making any such claim. But I am concerned. He has to prove himself a worthy successor, I'm not going to just assume it.

AFAIK, Ed has edited some of the best "New Frontier" novels, and Peter David's excellent "Sir Apropos of Nothing" trilogy. I don't know how he's supposed to "prove himself".

Editing a few books is not the same as being in charge and providing an overall guiding vision for the line.

As for how he can do it....success is assumed. Failure is observed. The less we have to complain about, the better a job he's doing.

All of the botched continuity references in NF/Blind Man's Bluff could have been caught in editing without changing any part of the story.

 

[DrBashir]

Or which hasn't happened yet.

Yeah, but was that Marco's doing or Martin and Mangel's?

I doubt that the Section 31 story will be gotten back to anytime soon. Mike and I had really started setting up the idea for a big hardcover cross-over, which is why Rogue had many of the ending threads it had, and other books followed suit. Other projects kept getting put in the way, including A Time To, and then Titan, and then... and every time we brought up Section 31, it got pushed back again. Other things just took the lead, and now, it would take far too much time to get back to that story in today's continuity.

That's one thing that I found really disappointing. The Section 31 novels set us up to think that some sort of end to Sec 31 was coming. All the characters making claims that they wouldn't rest until they were brought down, etc, etc. And then.....nothing. It's like the characters expressed moral outrage and then said, "Who's up for lunch?" It's like the Judian People's Front in Life of Brian. Lots of speeches but no action.

Spoiler: Spoiler for current status of Section 31

Now we have Bashir working for Section 31 although he may not know that yet. It's not like he was looking to take them down, it's just where his girlfriend is working now.

Come back Andy!!!

 

[Reanok]

Well I have quite a few issues with
-the gradual dilution of the tv characters in the books based on the series they were once in(how much of the old crew is left on the ente for example)
-the addition of rather uninteresting new characters(imo obviously)
-and the direction some of the older characters have been taken in(bashir, sisko)

But whether that's down to the editor or the authors I wouldn't know (Second point definately sounds more authorish to me offhand, but I'm unsure about the first and third).

quoted for truth well said when it comes to how the tv characters have been written in the TNG era books lately. I haven't cared for the new characters at all how they're written in the books.I find them totally, dull, boring uninteresting ..

 

[Sci]

I'm not making any such claim. But I am concerned. He has to prove himself a worthy successor, I'm not going to just assume it.

AFAIK, Ed has edited some of the best "New Frontier" novels, and Peter David's excellent "Sir Apropos of Nothing" trilogy. I don't know how he's supposed to "prove himself".

Editing a few books is not the same as being in charge and providing an overall guiding vision for the line.

Which line?

I for one reject the idea that all Star Trek lines are supposed to share a single common vision.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Well I have quite a few issues with
-the gradual dilution of the tv characters in the books based on the series they were once in(how much of the old crew is left on the ente for example)

And the complaint with TOS movie era novels and comics has always been: how believable is it that these people stuck with each other for decades when they could have all pursued individual careers. The TNG novels have tried to answer that complaint, and people still complain. The books even reversed the Crusher decision, but had to live with no Data, Riker and Troi. The DS9 books actually reunited many more crew than the series proper indicated might happen (bringing back Sisko, Odo, Opaka, the O'Briens, etc). Recent VOY has also rounded up as many crew as possible, even returning the ship to the Delta Quadrant.

Gradual dilution vs believability. And most media tie-ins return to the status quo of the parent show, as required by their very nature. This stuff is cyclic.

the addition of rather uninteresting new characters(imo obviously)

Yep. Some of us like the new characters.

 

[Lindley]

Which line?

I for one reject the idea that all Star Trek lines are supposed to share a single common vision.

Stylistically, they don't need to. But in terms of major events that shape the setting of the Palais-continuity books, it's a good idea.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The Section 31 novels set us up to think that some sort of end to Sec 31 was coming. All the characters making claims that they wouldn't rest until they were brought down, etc, etc. And then.....nothing.

I thought the novels set up that, no matter what, someone, somewhere, somehow, will carry on the secret traditions of Section 31. It's like the Fifth Column in "V". There will always be dissent and a group of people who deliberately try to undermine or affect due process of the official decision makers through stealth. Workplace politics.

Stylistically, they don't need to. But in terms of major events that shape the setting of the Palais-continuity books, it's a good idea.

Except that there is also a strong group of fans who say they yearn for "the good ol' days": when each ST novel was like an episode of the show, a solid adventure of exploration, perfectly self-contained, and with no (or minimal) life-changing character development.

It's only "a good idea" if you like that idea.

 

[Sci]

Which line?

I for one reject the idea that all Star Trek lines are supposed to share a single common vision.

Stylistically, they don't need to. But in terms of major events that shape the setting of the Palais-continuity books, it's a good idea.

No, it's really not. Each of the lines is telling their own individual story, and each should progress at their own pace, with their own unique guiding visions. VOY should not feel like TTN should not feel like TNG should not feel like DS9 should not feel like VND should not feel like TOS should not feel like DTI should not feel like... Etc.

 

[DrBashir]

It makes it much easier to go all "small universe syndrome" when everyone is in the same general time frame. Crossover characters and storylines just work better when everyone is close, timewise.

If this is a good or bad thing is up to the individual readers.