I'm reading my first numbered trek book so I'm curious on the difference between numbered and unnumbered books? I have always had the thinking that numbered books were quickly thrown together crappy books (with a few exceptions) and the unnumbered novels were more quality trek books. So whats the real difference and why don't they do them anymore?
Numbered books
- Thread starter Divine
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The numbered novels are like random episodes of the TV Show. They don't refer to other books; they're a complete story on their own. Well, once and a while they might if they're by the same author. Quality wise some of them are hits, and some of them are misses. Don't go in expecting epic arcs like in DS9-R or longterm character development. Just go in expecting another episode of Star Trek.
The perception you have is a very big reason why the numbers were discontinued. It made the books seem assembly-line.
Also honestly the numbers didn't mean anything, and meant even less once there were multiple series.
In my opinion the fact if there's a number on the cover doesn't really say anything about the quality. There are awesome numbered books and crappy unnumbered books and vice versa.
IIRC One of the reason for dropping the numbers where that TPTB feared that the high numbers could actually drive readers away because they think they have to read all the previous books to understand the newer one. A bit ironic when you see that actually the unnumbered novels are much more interconnected (although you don't have to read others novels most of the time to enjoy/understand them either).
Numbered books have numbers on them. Unnumbered books don't.
Where did you get that idea? The issue was never one of quality. Pocket started numbering the books as a routine thing, and then decided to start doing occasional event books -- not better books, just bigger and more expensive -- a few big paperbacks, and then the introduction of hardcovers. Think of it as episodes and movies. A lot of the best Trek is in weekly episodes, but people tend to think of movies as a bigger deal.
They don't do them any more because some people thought they had to read the first 96 TOS books to understand the 97th and because some people had the same misunderstanding you had.
Many of the best Trek novels ever written were numbered. Indeed, I'm pretty sure The Final Reflection, which was just cited in another thread as the best Trek novel ever, was the very first novel to have a number displayed on the cover (#16; the earlier books were retroactively numbered on the backlist and in reprints). The era of numbered novels thus stretches from 1984 to 2002, and encompasses over 200 titles. There's a lot of diversity in that range, including quite a few highly regarded books. There's no single thing that the numbered books had in common aside from having numbers on their covers.
Yep. Although numbering seemed like a great idea at the sixteenth MMPB, Pocket found - by ST IV - that a quirk of retro-numbering the novels was that even TMP, ST II and ST III had to be kept "in print" so that new readers of ST tie-ins could "complete" their numbered collections, with the result that TMP set some kind of a record for the number of times a novelization was reprinted, long after the movie itself had completed its theatrical release. Thus ST IV received no numbering, and in UK, the very next novel, "Chain of Attack" started a new set of numbering for the UK Titan collectors.
Numbering supposedly encourages collectors to "get them all" even if a title doesn't seem to appeal. Numbers can be an aid to shelving in production order by series (eg. it was useful when I moved house) - unless one shelves by author surname or timeline order.
It's essentially a market gimmick that starts off well but loses impact. Playmates action figures took great delight in individually numbering ST toys and, although it caused some initial excitement, some fans were distressed that legs were being numbered separate to the figures - and then fitted to random Starfleet male figures - so even "low numbers" often meant nothing as to production runs. And the really, really low numbers were often given away, and genuine buyers had no way to find them.
But numbering the covers of ST books was no guide to quality. and a nuisance for things like "The Lost Years Saga", which get scattered across my shelves.
Actually, that's not true. The books of the Invasion series were numbered, as was each individual book of the New Earth series and the Double Helix series.
Until about ten years ago, the books were simply given numbers as a matter of course, unless they were hardcovers or special "giant" novels (itself a rather arbitrary designation). Once they were discontinued, they became irrelevant. There is really no difference, either substantive or qualitative, between the books with numbers and those without.
The numbered TOS books were beautiful things.
Until #97.
That hunk of crap stopped the whole numbering thing cold.
Until #97.
That hunk of crap stopped the whole numbering thing cold.
Damned right. It's like one of those situations where a bunch of friends are hanging out at a restaurant, telling slightly off colour jokes and having a good time, then one guy gets a little too desperate and tells an offensive stinker, and not only does the table go quiet, the whole restaurant does as well.
Mind you the numbers of death probably do apply to the TNG series, with such horrible numbers as 62 and 63 coming after a rather promising 61.
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