Spoilers Picard Autobiography by David Goodman - Discussion and Review Thread

[Unimatrix Q]

Spoiler

What i find interesting but also strange is that according to this book the relations between the Federation and the Klingons are that bad for such a long time in the 24th Century. That and the mention of the 2247 vintage of Chateau Picard might be because of the book was written with the author possessing Information about Discovery and using that when he wrote the book. Wasn't a bottle of Chateau Picard 2247 owned by Captain Georgiou?

 

[Charles Phipps]

I prefer the novelverse approach where Data's resurrection didn't require B4's sacrifice. There's something very ugly and ableist about the implication that a mentally disabled being like B4 has less right to live than a genius like Data. You can try to spin it as a noble sacrifice, but there are too many stories already about minority characters sacrificing themselves for the sake of "normal" characters, and far too few about the reverse happening. So the cumulative effect is to largely erase the minority characters from the narrative -- and to imply that they "should" see themselves as disposable and existing only to serve majority characters' needs rather than their own. I'm glad Dave Mack was able to come up with a version that avoided that unfortunate cliche. Data's return still required a sacrifice, but it was the sacrifice of a father who'd already lived much more than a full life, and elements of his personality still live on in Data Soong. (Which also keeps it from being just a reset button to put Data back the way he was.)

Oh, it's absolutely ableist and that's part of the reason why I though Path worked so well. The idea being that Geordi and the other individuals had allowed themselves to fall prey to the idea it was possible to "resurrect" their friend but paying no attention to the idea B4 was an entirely valid being in his own right. In-universe it's because it was because of some talent ideas about Data and B4 being machines but out of universe because the audience doesn't consider B4 useful or a valid person in his own right. While his sacrifice has some problematic elements, I also think it's the fact B4 shows himself capable of all the self-sacrifice and nobility Data was. In short, the story critiques abelism in a way which I think gives it oomph.

Obviously, you're right, the problem there is that it seems so often it's the character with a disability who dies for the healthy person.

 

[The Wormhole]

Spoiler

What i find interesting but also strange is that according to this book the relations between the Federation and the Klingons are that bad for such a long time in the 24th Century. That and the mention of the 2247 vintage of Chateau Picard might be because of the book was written with the author possessing Information about Discovery and using that when he wrote the book. Wasn't a bottle of Chateau Picard 2247 owned by Captain Georgiou?

It was actually a 2249 vintage Captain Georgiou had, according to Memory Alpha. 2247 was likely chosen in the book because of Trek's longstanding fixation with the number 47:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/47

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Where are Greyhorse, "Pug" Joseph, Simenon, and the Asmund Twins?

I see that Goodman is still up to his old tricks of directly contradicting the Novelverse, this time with the entire Stargazer series.

 

[Christopher]

I see that Goodman is still up to his old tricks of directly contradicting the Novelverse, this time with the entire Stargazer series.

There's no reason to expect him to be consistent with the novelverse. Continuity between different publishers' tie-ins has always been the exception, not the rule. And coffee-table hardcovers like this are aimed at a different market of readers than MMPBs, people who might not be familiar with the novelverse and would find references to it confusing.

 

[Idran]

Where are Greyhorse, "Pug" Joseph, Simenon, and the Asmund Twins?

I see that Goodman is still up to his old tricks of directly contradicting the Novelverse, this time with the entire Stargazer series.

What kind of evidence would distinguish between looking for things in the Novelverse to go out of your way to contradict and writing a story that overlaps with the Novelverse and not looking at the Novelverse at all when you write it, leading naturally to contradictions due to differing interpretations or elaborations

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

And coffee-table hardcovers like this are aimed at a different market of readers than MMPBs, people who might not be familiar with the novelverse and would find references to it confusing.

Hmm. I don't think I've ever heard anybody describe the Goodman books (or any other "autobiographies" of fictional characters who, being nothing but ink on paper [and silver-based emulsions on either cellulose triacetate or Estar, and bits in mass storage] aren't actually capable of writing autobiographies, or anything else for that matter) as "coffee table" books. To me, a Star Trek "coffee table book" would be something like Ships of the Line or Star Trek Costumes. It seems to me that the Goodman books are aimed at people who have the Starfleet Technical Manual, as well as both the self-published and Ballantine editions of the Medical Reference. (Guilty as charged, on both counts, but I don't have Federation: the First 150 Years.)

Remarkably, I'm actually less annoyed (and that's the word I'd use) at this contradiction of ten whole novels than I was at Goodman's prior opus contradicting 4 pages of A Flag Full of Stars. Although it also contradicted some or all of Diane Carey's Captain April stuff as well.

 

[Christopher]

Well, whatever category label you use, they're a different category than paperback fiction, so they'll have a lot of buyers who don't know anything about the novelverse. So it makes sense that they draw only on screen canon and take it from there.

Look, don't even think of it as "contradiction." All Trek tie-ins are just speculations about things that might have happened offscreen. There's nothing wrong with different people offering different speculations. It can be fun to have more than one version of a given event, to see the different ways it might have happened.

 

[The Wormhole]

I see that Goodman is still up to his old tricks of directly contradicting the Novelverse, this time with the entire Stargazer series.

Seriously? This is Goodman's third Trek novel, the other two didn't follow novel continuity, why would this one?

Why should it? The book isn't even published by Pocket Books. Do you get this worked up when IDW's Prime Universe comics contradict Pocket's continuity? Did it bother you that the Shatnerverse novels did their own thing, even after the novels began building up their own continuity?

 

[Christopher]

Seriously? This is Goodman's third Trek novel, the other two didn't follow novel continuity, why would this one?

Can a fictional memoir be called a novel?

 

[Ensign_Rowan_McGrath]

The only things I take from the novels are names and starships, perhaps planet locations.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Can a fictional memoir be called a novel?

<William Daniels as John Adams>Why not? It's a book-length work of prose fiction. If there is any other requirement, I've never heard of it.</William Daniels as John Adams>

 

[Idran]

<William Daniels as John Adams>Why not? It's a book-length work of prose fiction. If there is any other requirement, I've never heard of it.</William Daniels as John Adams>

Narrative fiction. I'm not sure if a memoir can strictly speaking be necessarily called narrative, since it's not recounting a story but rather the full course of a person's life.

You can have a recounting of a person's life that follows a narrative line, novels have been written on that basis before. But such a recounting doesn't necessarily do so since lives (especially those of fictional characters from episodic works) don't necessarily follow a narrative line; they're more like a series of vignettes with a common theme, which is also how I'd describe the Kirk autobiography for example. You need to work at it to make a person's life story follow a narrative.

Needs to have a running plotline, as weak as it might be, to be a novel. Dayton Ward's travel guides are book-length, prose, and fictional too, after all, and they aren't novels. If anything, being narrative is more important to the definition of a novel than being prose; House of Leaves certainly isn't strictly prose, for the first example to spring to mind, it does a ton of playing with structure and form. But I'd still call it a novel.

 

[Christopher]

There are novels in the form of first-person memoirs, of course (Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Marie Brennan's Natural History of Dragons/Lady Trent series, just about anything by Jules Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc.), but they're still structured as narratives with dialogue and so forth. There's probably not a clear dividing line between a fictional memoir that's in the form of a novel and one that isn't, but I get the impression that the Goodman biographies tend toward the latter end of the spectrum.

 

[DavidAGoodman]

Spoiler

What i find interesting but also strange is that according to this book the relations between the Federation and the Klingons are that bad for such a long time in the 24th Century. That and the mention of the 2247 vintage of Chateau Picard might be because of the book was written with the author possessing Information about Discovery and using that when he wrote the book. Wasn't a bottle of Chateau Picard 2247 owned by Captain Georgiou?

Thanks for reading the book! To answer the second question first, I had limited info about Discovery and didn't know about the wine, so that's just fortunate coincidence. To the first question, "Yesterday's Enterprise" postulated that if the Enterprise C hadn't sacrificed itself at Narendra III, the Federation and the Klingons would've plunged into a long war. that told me that before Narendra III, the Klingons and the Federation were headed toward war.

 

[DavidAGoodman]

So far, it looks like Goodman has learned a few things from the fan reactions to the Kirk "autobiography," but

Regarding Professor Galen and his paintings:
SINCE WHEN ARE THE VEDALA AN EXTINCT SPECIES?
According to TAS:Jihad, they are an immensely advanced and powerful race that travels the galaxy on asteroids converted to warp-capable spaceships.

Really appreciate the comment - I would point out that I don't say that the Vedala are extinct, I say the painting is from a dead civilization, like a painting from the Roman Empire. But your point is valid since it wasn't clear.

 

[DavidAGoodman]

It was actually a 2249 vintage Captain Georgiou had, according to Memory Alpha. 2247 was likely chosen in the book because of Trek's longstanding fixation with the number 47:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/47

It was actually chosen for the book because it's mentioned in the episode "Family".

 

[DavidAGoodman]

Where are Greyhorse, "Pug" Joseph, Simenon, and the Asmund Twins?

I see that Goodman is still up to his old tricks of directly contradicting the Novelverse, this time with the entire Stargazer series.

Yeah, I understand that's definitely a problem for readers of the Star Trek novels. The way I approach these books is watching filmed canon and trying to make a full life story from the pieces we get, so that you could read this book with only a knowledge of what you'd seen on tv and film. But if you're a fan of the Star Trek novelverse I totally get why you'd be pissed that I don't follow that continuity.

 

[DavidAGoodman]

What kind of evidence would distinguish between looking for things in the Novelverse to go out of your way to contradict and writing a story that overlaps with the Novelverse and not looking at the Novelverse at all when you write it, leading naturally to contradictions due to differing interpretations or elaborations

Yeah, I don't do it to directly contradict the novelverse, I haven't read a lot of those books.

 

[DavidAGoodman]

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

I'm pretty much the opposite of @Christopher in my view of how the Star Trek universe functions. I tend to take the view we're seeing the "interesting" bits of the universe while the rest of Starfleet, if not BORING (it's still space travel after all), isn't a Pulp serial of Flash Gordon-esque adventures. It's probably due to Peter David's New Frontier because I imprinted Admiral Jellico's incredulous reaction to Captain Calhoun's successes as well as contempt for Kirk's stories.

So, yes, Captain Kirk WAS the greatest Starfleet Captain who ever lived and probably ever will live. Still, I found the "most inspirational captain" a little weird to apply to Picard. I also felt Q's attempt to say Picard was "perfect" in the prologue out of character as I'd think he'd use a much more insulting but still respectful descriptor.

What did I think?

I really liked it but I think it does run into the fact with characters like Picard, weaving together everything tends to leave "ifs, ands, or buts" which sometimes feel like they're missing some polish. For example, Captain Picard was supposed to have a mentor-student role with Boothby the Gardener who helped polish off some of his rough spots. It turns out, at least according to this book that the too shared a few months detention where they barely spoke.

There's also a few places which felt a little rough like the fact, randomly, The Doomsday Machine (yes, that one) was used by the Klingons to try to destroy Romulus. This is something you can't really just gloss over. It also is sort of a serious issue with TNG's continuity where the Klingons are friends of the Federation, the Romulans are enemies, and the atrocities the Romulans did against the Klingons are wholly unjustified. Making them retaliation for an attempted genocide let's them off the hook and vilifies the Klingons. I have to say, when this book reaches print, the Sons of Kling have a good case for libel.

I also note Spock's wedding is something of a continuity porn explosion which opened more questions than it answered. While Spock was mentioned as to having gotten married in TNG (a blink or you'll miss it moment), we don't get to know who the bride is in the book by very deliberate means other than she appears to be non-Vulcan. Given the most likely spouse of Spock would be Saavik, this is a bit odd. Also, there's a "President Uhura" that seems like another reference thrown in--I'm guessing a son or daughter than the officer herself.

Overall, I think the book definitely felt like Picard and there were a lot of good moments spread throughout. The interweaving of continuity, with the aforementioned exceptions, was well done and I loved the description of the Picard Household when he was a boy. It was just the right amount of crustiness without the spilling over into abuse. We also get the author mentioning how strange it is to find an Earl Grey Tea and Shakespeare obsessed Frenchman. I also pitified from RL experiences when Picard has to deal with his dementia-ridden mother.

Still, I can't quite give this book five stars. Why? It's not because the novelverse is ignored or anything like that but it feels like the book gives a sort of "Picard is Picard throughout his life" treatment. Picard is a character we explicitly know goes through a dramatic change of personality due to TNG but he seems all too level headed throughout this book. Aside from the fact he's an incorrigible ladies man, there doesn't seem to be much difference between the Picard of later years and the Picard of his early career--which is a mistake. His biography should really have him lamenting himself a bit more I think.

Overall, I approve of this book but I think it's a little too close to the Autobiography of James T. Kirk. They both have a somber reflective look back on their Starfleet careers that feel a bit too similar.

8/10

Thanks for your review! I think I made an attempt to show that Picard was writing towards the end of his life and commenting on how different he was as a young man - but if you didn't have that experience reading it then I won't defend it.