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Non-star Trek books for Star Trek fans

And I was indeed saying that I'd heard of neither the series nor the author.

Keep in mind that I'm 2 books into reading Potter. For the first time. Without having seen more than a few clips of any of the movies.

And I'm considering reading Doctor Dolittle. For the first time.

And I gave up on post-Baum Oz novels after the first RPT volume. And have no intention of reading, or seeing any movie or Broadway adaptation of, any of the Maguire Oz books.

On the other hand, I've now read two different English translations of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Oh, and this may be an Orange County, California thing, but when I hear the name Cordelia, I think of Walter Knott's wife.


Huh?

Lear carries his adult daughter Cordelia in his arms during the last act of King Lear. Thus, the famous advice from one venerable Shakespearean actor to another: Get a small (lightweight) actress to play Cordelia!

Meanwhile, I confess I have no idea who Walter Knott is. :)
 
Meanwhile, I confess I have no idea who Walter Knott is.
Founder of Knott's Berry Farm. Which was originally a working farm specializing in (guess what?) berries. Knott was showing a new hybrid plant to somebody, who promptly asked what it was, and he named it after his neighbor, Rudolph Boysen, whom he credited with breeding it. Hence the Boysenberry. During the depression, the Knott family supplemented their income by opening their home to travelers as a restaurant, serving Cordelia Knott's fried chicken. And the idea of a theme park on the farm property originated as a way to entertain the people waiting for the next seating.

Oh, and I didn't read Anne of Green Gables until after I'd visited Prince Edward Island. (I've been to all 10 Canadian Provinces [and one Territory, namely Yukon], within 20 feet of the ground, just as I've been within 20 feet of the ground in all 50 States. 20 feet means passing through on a train counts, even if I'm in an upper level sleeping car accommodation, and never bothered to get out of bed, but flying overhead doesn't count.)
 
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Watership Down. Particularly the incident at Cowslip's warren. All seems like Eden until its horrifying secret is revealed.

The wild rabbits are being trapped and killed by a farmer and it's the price they pay for safety from wild animals and disease.

Kind of struggling here to see what about that reminded you of Star Trek in some way, as the OP mentioned, but moving right along...

Yes, considering that Star Wolf was basically Gerrold's take on "how I would've done TNG given free rein" and incorporated ideas he'd developed for TNG during his stint as its uncredited co-creator. And it was a reboot of characters and concepts from Gerrold's earlier novel Yesterday's Children, which was loosely based on Gerrold's unsold pitch for a 2-part TOS episode. Which is why the title has nothing to do with the novel's plot, since it's left over from the original version of the pitch, which eventually became Gerrold's Bantam Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool -- so he essentially turned this one unsold pitch into three different novels, or six if you count the expanded Yesterday's Children aka Starhunt and the Star Wolf sequels.

The problem for me with Star Wolf is how self-indulgent it is, and that it's almost autofanwank at times. Sure, his bad feelings about Roddenberry and Maizlish are entirely understandable, but he really, really makes sure anyone who knows the least bit about TNG behind the scenes will understand how much he hates them. Not in a foreword or introduction, but in the novel. There's also not just a lot of recycling of his unproduced material, there's recycling of his already produced material, and frequent references to his own other fiction. But I guess writing the same story for the third time is one way to avoid finishing a series that he left hanging in 1993. (GRRM fans, google The War Against the Chtorr and you may feel a bit better. I'm glad I didn't start reading either, personally....)
 
Founder of Knott's Berry Farm. Which was originally a working farm specializing in (guess what?) berries. Knott was showing a new hybrid plant to somebody, who promptly asked what it was, and he named it after his neighbor, Rudolph Boysen, whom he credited with breeding it. Hence the Boysenberry. During the depression, the Knott family supplemented their income by opening their home to travelers as a restaurant, serving Cordelia Knott's fried chicken. And the idea of a theme park on the farm property originated as a way to entertain the people waiting for the next seating.

True story: Back in the seventies, when my family was vacationing in CA, I chose the Universal Studios Tour (and the Hollywood Wax Museum) over Knott's Berry Farm, which I have still never visited.

Meanwhile, BUFFY fans surely think of another "Cordelia" first. :)
 
True story: Back in the seventies, when my family was vacationing in CA, I chose the Universal Studios Tour (and the Hollywood Wax Museum) over Knott's Berry Farm, which I have still never visited.
I've been to Universal 2 or 3 times. The first time when the primary attraction was an actual tour of a working studio.

More recently, I took the Paramount tour. Which still is an actual tour of a working studio.
 
Lear carries his adult daughter Cordelia in his arms during the last act of King Lear. Thus, the famous advice from one venerable Shakespearean actor to another: Get a small (lightweight) actress to play Cordelia!

Many sources claim that was Sir John Gielgud’s advice to either Michael Hordern or Ian McKellen, but apparently it goes back to an early 20th-century actor, Donald Wolfit.
 
Many sources claim that was Sir John Gielgud’s advice to either Michael Hordern or Ian McKellen, but apparently it goes back to an early 20th-century actor, Donald Wolfit.
Who I know best as the mad scientist in Blood of the Vampire (1958), where he was made up to resemble Bela Lugosi!

I believe Wolfit was also the real-life inspiration for the fading, somewhat dotty Shakespearean actor in the play and movie, The Dresser.
 
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As it happens and false modesty aside, I'm somewhat of an expert on the topic of astronaut bios. The best place to start would be Michael Collins' "Carrying the Fire".
 
Thinking of Shakespeare I suppose The Henriad (Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V) could have particular appeal to Star Trek fans with the friendships vs duty angle in Henry V
 
As it happens and false modesty aside, I'm somewhat of an expert on the topic of astronaut bios. The best place to start would be Michael Collins' "Carrying the Fire".
And the rarest I know of is the Gus Grissom biography, Ray Boomhower's Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut, published by Indiana Historical Society Press.
 
I haven't read every post in this thread closely, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone who likes Star Trek wouldn't like the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Bujold (when she was just Lois McMaster, OSU student) co-edited a very early Star Trek fanzine in 1968, called Star Date (or maybe Stardate).

Looks like there was never a second issue.

So Lois McMaster Bujold was there at the Dawn of the Third Age (wait, that was Londo Mollari) was there at the start of Trek fandom.
 
Becky Chambers' The Wayfarers series is an incredible tetralogy that gives strong Star Trek vibes, especially the first in the series The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Each book is fairly standalone, but takes place in the same universe with some shared characters. Themes of wildly different species working to get along and support each other for the greater good are explored in all the books. They are a good mix of heart and humor, adventure and drama. Highly recommended to someone wanting more of a Trek feel.
 
I'm going to take this as an opportunity to do my annual Larry Niven plug. The Known Space universe is the Star Trek universe to me. It feels like TOS/TAS/TMP era storytelling taking place across a variety of time periods. I especially like Flatlander, which feels like what was going on back home while Kirk was seducing alien women across the galaxy.
 
I'm going to take this as an opportunity to do my annual Larry Niven plug. The Known Space universe is the Star Trek universe to me. It feels like TOS/TAS/TMP era storytelling taking place across a variety of time periods. I especially like Flatlander, which feels like what was going on back home while Kirk was seducing alien women across the galaxy.
Oh known space, yeah that’s cannon to Star Trek


Jokes aside the short story collection “Neutron Star” has some awesome trek esque stories.
 
Curious what non-Star Trek books you have read that reminded you of Star Trek in some way that you think other fans would enjoy.

The first time I ran out of new Trek novels to read in the 80s, I decided to pick up "Ringworld" by Larry Niven, simply because his kzinti (also from "The Slaver Weapon", TAS) were in it. I found I could quite easily imagine this novel to be set in the Star Trek universe. Since then, I have read many Larry Niven SF novels, and enjoyed them. Also his essay on Superman, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex". That story had been recommended to me by a Superman fan, after we saw "Superman II" together at the movies, but she couldn't remember the author. Imagine my delight when the story turned up in a short story collection!

I have read most books written by David Gerrold. Always fun and always thought-provoking. Several of his series could easily be Trek tales, and a few were going to be Trek stories, but he repurposed them.

After the ST II and III novelisations, I found Vonda McInytre's "Dreamsnake and Other Stories" during a vacation, again when I ran out of reading material.

Anything by Peter David is a delight. The funny ones are rather like "New Frontier" in style.

I also enjoyed DC Fontana's novelisation of "The Questor Tapes".
 
Hmm. Other than "The Slaver Weapon," that was both an adaptation of a Niven "Known Space" story and a "Known Space"/ST crossover, my only contact with anything Niven wrote was his collaboration with Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye. Which didn't exactly thrill me, in part because the aliens were so alien, in part because the FTL drive was so limited for such a distant-future setting, and in part because the book was so damned long, probably the longest continuous narrative I'd read up to that point (I think I was still pre-teen at the time).

I've enjoyed Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (I can't, off the top of my head, remember whether it was GC or CLB who turned me on to it), and Robert Asprin's "Myth" series, and Madeleine L'Engle's "Time" books and the sequels thereof. And did I already mention Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, a steampunk tale based on the conceit of the Underground Railroad being a literal railroad running underground? And while I don't (aside from collections of favorite newspaper strips) generally go for comics, I thoroughly enjoyed The Prince and the Dressmaker, (even though the title suggests that it would be a real drag) and I also like the Foglios' Girl Genius series.
 
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