Spoilers Picard Autobiography by David Goodman - Discussion and Review Thread

I am reading this at present, and am disappointed that they have ignored the stargazer books for how he got command. Does anyone know a reason or is it simply a case of the author going a different direction?

 

Probably just going his own way, much as he did with the Kirk bio.

 

Trek tie-ins have never been under any obligation to maintain continuity with each other. There are a lot of events in Trek lore and history that have been presented in multiple different ways by different authors; for instance, there are at least 7 different versions of the end of the TOS 5-year mission, two or three different versions of Kirk's Kobayashi Maru simulation, etc.

 

I blame time travel.

There's multiple Mirror Universes too!

 

Finished it this morning, it totally ignores the pocket novels and instead followed the story Q showed in All Good Things.

Spoiler

Including having Q bring a dead crew mate back and the JJ universe with Spock.

@Christopher I understand that I guess I am just used to the modern Trek where you guys all seem to talk and tie in to each other’s worlds

I noticed that it was published by Titan books, as is the upcoming Prometheus novel, I am wondering if they are the new publishers and they are getting rid of the stories we have been enjoying and starting again from scratch like Disney did for Star Wars.

 

The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, published over two years ago, also did not use any of the novel continuity, and there have been a lot of novels published since then. And it has been confirmed that the Prometheus novel IS in continuity with the Pocket Books timeline, so I don't think the theory that you suggested hold much water. I hope that's reassuring!

 

Yeah, but only within Pocket. The IDW Trek comics, Star Trek Online, and the new Star Trek Adventures RPG all have their own separate continuities (or absence of a single unified continuity, in IDW's case), and so do the Goodman books. Even within Pocket, there have been side series or standalones that didn't share continuity with the other books. Trek tie-ins have only ever been required to maintain continuity with the shows and films. With each other, it's always been optional.

 

Fascinating.

 

Not always. For a time, "with each other" was forbidden.

 

A Picard autobiography... 288 pages of holier-than-thou, self-righteous pomposity.

No, thanks.

Kor

 

Did it suck? Did you read it?

 

Have you not read Goodman's other novels? Neither the Kirk autobiography or The First 150 Years of the Federation were consistent with Pocket's continuity at all.

That's not happening at all, and besides the Prometheus trilogy is consistent with Pocket's continuity.

 

I read the Kirk autobio.

Would people recommend the first 150 years?

 

Sounds like the perfect format for Quark.

 

So anything interesting, notes or peculiar stuff that we weren't aware of?

 

No, Titan isn't publishing the novels. So far everything they've published has been either real world or in universe non-fiction. They are publishing the three Prometheus novels, but those are translated from German, so they are seperate from the English language novels Pocket/Gallery publishes, although they are in-continuity with the Pocket books.

 

How is the Star Trek Adventures RPG different from the Pocket Book continuity?

 

I'm halfway through it and I've kind of given up. It's not so much the fact that it doesn't stick at all to the Pocket Book continuity that bothers me (although there is a bit of a little itch there... I mean, it's not difficult to research, and there is a lot of nice stuff to draw from), but the fact that the writing is... not very good, this time around. It's all very flat and superficial and there's very little insight to be gained. His book on Kirk was a bit more enjoyable because it was more introspective, but here events just zoom by with little or no dwelling on them and the appearance of people we know to be of significance in later decades are barely cameos in some cases.

The original stuff that Goodman comes up with is also not terribly interesting or exciting, and the whole thing strikes me as resembling an exercise in sleepwalking fanfic writing (I should know, I've produced enough of it in my younger days). I'm disappointed because I quite liked the Kirk book, but I have a feeling this is going to my last Goodman "autobiography".