Novel feature by Empire Film Magazine
- Thread starter Csalem
- Start date
But, if you look at the articles wording, the only books that the author set off to the side are the novelizations. The author did not make any statement that he was only looking at the adult line. Thus they were in error.
No-one's saying there wasn't an error - Therin was just coming up with an idea as to why they may have made that mistake.
Which are all way more sophisticated that the Whitman TV tie-ins of the 60s.
Exactly. Even many lists of ST books of the 80s and 90s omitted "Mission to Horatius".
I hope you've written a letter-to-the-editor at "Empire" magazine.
I had never even heard of it until the recent reissue. My first reaction to that was "Wait- there was a Star Trek book before Spock Must Die?? No way!" And I'd been an avid novel collector for decades.
Is it worth reading? I never actually bothered to check it out.
Is it worth reading? I never actually bothered to check it out.
^Same here -- I never knew Horatius had existed until it was reissued.
DorkBoy [TM];8103013 said:
It's not great. If you miss it, life will go on just fine.
If you've read lots of Astounding/Analog stories from the '50's & '60's, it will make more sense. It's very Campbellian in not-so-subtle ways. Star Trek (the TV series) was never as "Astounding" as Reynold's novel.
DorkBoy [TM];8103013 said:
I spent most of 1980 running from second hand bookshop to second hand bookshop, attempted to complete my collection. There was no definitive list, and I eventually went to the State Library to check all annual volumes of "Books in Print" to ensure I had everything from Bantam's output.
In one shop, they had a tattered and motley collection of Whitman's TV tie-in hardcovers and "Mission to Horatius" was $AU 70. I suddenly remembered that I had the "I Spy" volume at home, and that my younger brother had owned "Mission to Horatius" - Christmas gifts from grandma in the 60s - and that I'd read his book when I was home from school with the flu in about 1970.
I raced home and found his copy in the bottom of the old toybox. I never told him I'd seen poor condition versions for $70. Win!
DorkBoy [TM];8103013 said:
I got the book for my birthday back in '99 (it was the Reprint). I find that it's a lot better than the Bantam books, and I've read the book about 4 times since '99.
Take note Pocket Books!
Nice shout out but I have to disagree with several of their "if you only read one" suggestions, including Treason for New Frontier (I would have picked Once Burned), Warpath for the post-finale Deep Space 9 series (I would have picked Avatar, even if it's really two books), Oblivion for Stargazer (I would have picked Valiant), and Forged in Fire for Lost Era (I would have picked The Sundered or The Art of the Impossible).
You'll be thrilled to note that the recent SFX magazine special, "The A-Z of Star Trek", does give "Mission to Horatius" its due as the first ST novel. Well, kind of:
SFX Magazine by Therin of Andor, on Flickr
SFX magazine said:
The "T is for Tie-In Novels" feature encompasses pages 99-103.
I don't know if "Warpath" is as "arc heavy" as people think; a lot of it is on the bridge of the Defiant , with Taran'atar and Tenmei on the runabout and Bashir treating Kira and Ro.
"Warpath" is kind of like a part 3 of a 10 part story where different cenario's have been setup in previous stories, and the overall arc stuff is pretty heavy, since some people might pick up th book and be like "How did Kira come to be under the operating knife?" and "Why hasn't the author given us the starting details?"
That SFX article looks interesting, but I can't read the little blurb under the Horatius cover.
Seems to say: "The wide-open nature of the core material allowed writers to tell pretty much any story they wanted."
Exactly. I really think to fully understand it you'd at least need to read Olympus Decending since it picks up from the cliffhangers that closed that story.
Yep. It's a pull-out from the main article. The little caption under the cover of MtH is the bit that says, "WELL, IT LOOKS GOOD... Trek's first spin-off novel was terrible - fortunately, the range didn't stop there."
The author, Tom Holt, is obviously a fan of the David Hartwell & co.'s 80s output ("professionally-written fanfic by authors who'd loved Star Trek for years", who were "writing as much for love as for money") and is quite scathing of what he perceives as the shift to novels by "tie-in professionals (practically full-time Trek novelists)", John Ordover's linked mini-series, "New Frontier" descending into self-parody, and Marco Palmieri's introduction of original characters into DS9: "a huge army of new people the readers hadn't heard of and had no reason to care about, populating a universe that was rapidly ceasing to be relevant" (ie. as reflected by ever-falling TV ratings).
He does go on to say that "recent trends are more hopeful" and "there's life in the old targ yet."
Well, that's not very accurate or fair. A number of the early Pocket writers were pre-established professional SF authors, including Vonda McIntyre, "Lee Correy" (G. Harry Stine), Diane Duane, Greg Bear (though not as big yet as he'd later become), and John M. Ford. And the idea that folks like myself, KRAD, Dave Mack, Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, Kirsten Beyer, and the like are writing only for money instead of love of Trek is ridiculous to anyone who's acquainted with us at all -- not to mention that many of us got our first big breaks writing Trek.
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