Spoilers Picard Autobiography by David Goodman - Discussion and Review Thread

[DEWLine]

And this is why the multiverse as established on TV is so helpful here.

 

[Stevil2001]

Yes, obviously, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all fictional memoirs are novels. All giraffes are mammals, but not all mammals are giraffes.

Certainly there's a gray area here, but generally, if something is meant to be a novel, it will be referred to and promoted as a novel (as Garp is -- it says "A Novel" right on the cover). The Goodman biographies seem to be getting promoted as part of the same subgenre as "fictional nonfiction" books like Federation: The First 150 Years, The Klingon Art of War, the art book New Worlds, New Civilizations, the TNG and DS9 tech manuals, etc.

That's a good point-- if marketing matters in genre (and I would contend it does), then that must play a role.

I'm really fascinated by what I think of as "nonnovel novels," like Nabokov's Pale Fire, a novel that is actually a book-length poem with annotations.

 

[DavidAGoodman]

I

I don't think that's really fair to ask of David. He's been hired to do his own take on things, and it's his prerogative to use his own imagination and take the continuity wherever he feels like. Besides, the novelverse is hardly the only continuity out there -- both IDW and Star Trek Online have their own continuities that already conflict with it. So if David were to try to stay consistent with some prior continuity, why should he prioritize the Pocket one over the others?

Thanks. I think it would almost be an impossible task to avoid contradicting the novelverse - if I wanted to tell the story of Picard on the Stargazer for instance, I would be married to the characters that were created by other authors, characters that served the stories of those books but wouldn't necessarily serve mine.

 

[JD]

While I would love for the autobiographies to be consistent with the Novelverse, I don't think it's necessary. It's from a different publisher, and written by a writer who isn't associated with the Novelverse, so it's really not at all surprising that it doesn't use stuff from it. Honestly, I kind of get a kick out of seeing different takes on the same or similar concepts in the Trek Universe.

 

[Tosk]

Same here. Sure, there are a few bits here and there where I thought, "Wait, that's not what..." before catching myself, but I do prefer the autobios being beholden only to screen Trek.

 

[Ensign_Rowan_McGrath]

In all honesty, I prefer the Federation:First 150 Years/Autobiography verse as it feels more Star Trek then the novels and am happy to use this as references. For starters, it gets rid of the stupid Andorian four genders crap.

 

[Christopher]

For starters, it gets rid of the stupid Andorian four genders crap.

An alien race having blue skin and antennae is okay with you, but having a different number of sexes than humans is not? I don't get it.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I agree. Sounds rather diploidist to me.

 

[JD]

In all honesty, I prefer the Federation:First 150 Years/Autobiography verse as it feels more Star Trek then the novels and am happy to use this as references. For starters, it gets rid of the stupid Andorian four genders crap.

How do the novels not feel like Star Trek to you, or less like it? I've always thought the novels did a great job of capturing the feel of Star Trek.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Roddenberry, in his "Questor Tapes" monologue, remarked, in response to having the whole concept of human/android sex being shot down by the censors, that it's not often that you have the opportunity to create a whole new kind of intolerance.

I guess lightning has struck again: in addition to racism, sexism, speciesism, &c, now we have diploidism.

 

[JD]

In all honesty, I prefer the Federation:First 150 Years/Autobiography verse as it feels more Star Trek then the novels and am happy to use this as references. For starters, it gets rid of the stupid Andorian four genders crap.

How do the novels not feel like Star Trek to you, or less like it? I've always thought the novels did a great job of capturing the feel of Star Trek.

 

[Charles Phipps]

An alien race having blue skin and antennae is okay with you, but having a different number of sexes than humans is not? I don't get it.

I admit I try to figure out how that works, personally and just came up with:

Male, Female, Hermaphrodite (Male fertile), and Hermaphrodite (Female fertile) but I admit I'm just guessing.

 

[David cgc]

I admit I try to figure out how that works, personally and just came up with:

Male, Female, Hermaphrodite (Male fertile), and Hermaphrodite (Female fertile) but I admit I'm just guessing.

One of the novels went into a fair amount of detail with the facts of life, if not the actual mechanics. Either Paradigm or one of the Mission: Gamma books, I can't remember. Beta sums it up.

The gametes of each "male" sex contain one quarter of the number of chromosomes necessary to produce offspring. During the conception of an Andorian child, the thaan fertilizes a shen's egg with his gamete. The chan then also fertilizes the egg. This produces a fertilized egg that develops into a zygote. The shen then transfers the zygote to the zhen's pouch, where it develops into an embryo. The Andorian fetus is incubated and nourished to term in the zhen's pouch. The zhen does not contribute genetically to offspring.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Cool beanz.

 

[Ensign_Rowan_McGrath]

I'm fine with four gender species but not Andorians or Aenar. I always see them as two genders because that's what I saw onscreen.

 

[Christopher]

I'm fine with four gender species but not Andorians or Aenar. I always see them as two genders because that's what I saw onscreen.

But it was TNG: "Data's Day" that established Andorians marry in groups of four. The novels were simply building on that. Yes, ENT depicted Shran as having two-person relationships, but both are part of canon, and it's certainly possible that social/romantic relationships could be practiced differently from marital/procreative relationships.

And the novels have always portrayed two of the Andorian sexes as essentially male in aspect and two as essentially female, with the corresponding pronouns being used. So the novels' system is compatible with the apparent bisexuality we see onscreen -- naturally, it was designed to be that way in the first place, since of course it was meant to be reconcilable with a TV/film franchise where Andorians would be played by male and female actors. Besides, when interacting with two-gendered species, it's not implausible that Andorians would choose to adopt the appearance of a two-gendered paradigm, to accept being gendered as "male" and "female" for the convenience of non-Andorians, in the same way that, say, Chinese immigrants to the U.S. would adopt Western-style names that are easier for Americans to pronounce.

 

[Idran]

I'm fine with four gender species but not Andorians or Aenar. I always see them as two genders because that's what I saw onscreen.

By that same logic, there shouldn't be any gay or trans humans in the novels either.

 

[Charles Phipps]

By that same logic, there shouldn't be any gay or trans humans in the novels either.

Thankfully, that's averted by Discovery.

 

[Idran]

Thankfully, that's averted by Discovery.

Ah yeah, good point; Beyond too. For gay characters, at least.

We wouldn't have any gay humans in novels printed before July 2016 then.

 

[Ensign_Rowan_McGrath]

But it was TNG: "Data's Day" that established Andorians marry in groups of four. The novels were simply building on that. Yes, ENT depicted Shran as having two-person relationships, but both are part of canon, and it's certainly possible that social/romantic relationships could be practiced differently from marital/procreative relationships.

And the novels have always portrayed two of the Andorian sexes as essentially male in aspect and two as essentially female, with the corresponding pronouns being used. So the novels' system is compatible with the apparent bisexuality we see onscreen -- naturally, it was designed to be that way in the first place, since of course it was meant to be reconcilable with a TV/film franchise where Andorians would be played by male and female actors. Besides, when interacting with two-gendered species, it's not implausible that Andorians would choose to adopt the appearance of a two-gendered paradigm, to accept being gendered as "male" and "female" for the convenience of non-Andorians, in the same way that, say, Chinese immigrants to the U.S. would adopt Western-style names that are easier for Americans to pronounce.

The Andorian ceremony implied in "Data's Day" didn't indicate four genders to me to be honest.

I always figured group marriages and polyamory was common (nothing indicates Shran had just only one partner [mind you I consider the last episode of Enterprise is nothing more then an RPG game and anyone except Archer can die depending on the parts you take) in Andorian culture.