Hell, Picard in the movies is significantly different from Picard on TV.
Random Thought: Was Janeway Killed Because She was So Polarizing?
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Hell, Picard in the movies is significantly different from Picard on TV.
Honestly, I'd prefer Picard to retire at this point, or at least accept the admiralcy he was offered and become a background/minor player (a la Ben Sisko at this point). I thought the end of Destiny would've been a great time for this, a true passing of the torch. Not kill him, because that would be devastating/unfair to Beverly (having already lost one husband in action) and he's got a child to raise now, but retire from the "front lines" so to speak.
24th century planets are safer than starships?
The Picard Chateu is safer than the flagship of the Federation, I'd wager.
Remember, this is Earth in TrekLit we're talking about. I DARE them to blow up Earth for real. 
The Picard Chateu is safer than the flagship of the Federation, I'd wager.
Well, (1) Picard on the ship outlived his brother at the Chateu, and
(2) I have more fear for the Earth reading a David Mack book then I did during the entire 3rd season of Enterprise!
If you go to fanfiction.net and look at the listing of TV Shows you will see the following for Trek-related programs (as of 10:53 cst 10/12/2009):
TOS: 2445
TNG: 1971
DS9: 892
VOY: 5881
ENT: 3342
Other: 1003
Of the 5881 Voyager stories if you filter by all for everything except filter A for characters and search for Janeway she is featured in 2386 of the above 5881 stories.
There seems to be a pent-up demand for Voyager fiction and fiction featuring Janeway in particular that Pocket doesn't seem interested in meeting. When the call was made to kill off Janeway was it because they had inaccurate information on the market or was it a personal preference of someone on the editorial staff? It's hard to say but I remain baffled as to why Pocket has no interest in tapping this market.
TOS: 2445
TNG: 1971
DS9: 892
VOY: 5881
ENT: 3342
Other: 1003
Of the 5881 Voyager stories if you filter by all for everything except filter A for characters and search for Janeway she is featured in 2386 of the above 5881 stories.
There seems to be a pent-up demand for Voyager fiction and fiction featuring Janeway in particular that Pocket doesn't seem interested in meeting. When the call was made to kill off Janeway was it because they had inaccurate information on the market or was it a personal preference of someone on the editorial staff? It's hard to say but I remain baffled as to why Pocket has no interest in tapping this market.
^ And the fanfic communities for Stargate and Heroes are positively absurd, but you don't see Stargate or Heroes novels selling well enough to justify 15 a year, do you?
It seems to me like there's a fundamental community-based aspect to the appeal of fanfiction; the interactivity, being able to post and comment on stories, react to others' stories, etc, that doesn't necessarily (or even probably) translate to sales of professional fiction. The non-professional aspect of fanfiction is sort of the point.
It seems to me like there's a fundamental community-based aspect to the appeal of fanfiction; the interactivity, being able to post and comment on stories, react to others' stories, etc, that doesn't necessarily (or even probably) translate to sales of professional fiction. The non-professional aspect of fanfiction is sort of the point.
I believe it was John Ordover who pointed out many years ago that what makes Voyager so appealing to a fanfic author is the "broken" nature of the series; it's a flawed series, with loose ends, dropped storylines, and the like, which makes it attractive to people who think they can do better. Whereas something like Deep Space Nine, because it's a tighter series, isn't as attractive as there aren't dangling threads to play with.
Also, that people are writing fanfic of Voyager doesn't indicate that there's a market for people who want to read stories about Voyager. Are there statistics on how many people are reading Voyager fanfic? The only statistics Pocket has that mean anything are how many people are buying Voyager novels.
Right, exactly. There's a different sort of appeal there, and one that's not congruent with a desire to read professional fiction. And especially not for all the people who aren't part of the fanfic community.
Plus, there's the fact that even before Voyager's recent difficulties, we were told several times that TNG and TOS at least sold far better than VOY, and that was when VOY books were getting tremendously well-reviewed for a while there. (VOY #13-#18 all have great amazon reviews.)
The Picard Chateu is safer than the flagship of the Federation, I'd wager.
Well, (1) Picard on the ship outlived his brother at the Chateu, and
(2) I have more fear for the Earth reading a David Mack book then I did during the entire 3rd season of Enterprise!
Of course Jean-Luc did. He's The Hero; Robert is not.
You make a good point, the march of Cubes across the Federation was gripping and intense. I stand by my previous assertion though.
Which makes sense with Thrawn's point about the thriving nature of Heroes and Stargate fanfic communities.
Also, with so much free stuff out there, perhaps there's simply too much competition for Pocket to bother with. We've had people come on here saying, more or less, "Why should I buy official VOY novels I won't enjoy when I have so much fanfic to read - and it's all free?"
Mind you, it says nothing about quality control. I read quite a bit of fanfic in the 80s, but with soooooo much to choose from out there, and much of it illiterate drek, I only read stuff that trusted friends recommended. (And, in those days, fanfic wasn't usually free - unless someone was lending you their stash - because someone had to think it was good enough to print off and bind 100 copies at a time.)
Well, no. Your figures indicate that there's an overlarge supply of Voyager fiction. Anything else is speculation, without the benefit of the real sales figures Pocket Books relies on.
Yes, it's non-professional but so was the fan movement after TOS went off the air that made Paramount consider making the first Trek film. TOS wasn't exactly out there winning awards left and right before it was discontinued.
As for how many fanfic authors read a lot and are interested in reading professional works I'd hazard a guess the majority of them are avid readers and would love to see high-calber fiction featuring Voyager and/or Janeway. Some actual writers would have to comment on that though. I'm simply one of a number of read-only folks who have a list of favorite fanfic sites I check regularly. I know if Pocket brought Janeway back I'd start reading Trek novels again.
IIRC, what convinced Paramount to make a motion picture were the consistently excellent ratings of TOS repeats in prime time syndication throughout the 70s, and... the arrival of "Star Wars".
What early ST fanfic did was produce a number of fan-writers-turned-pro authors/editors, such as Jean Lorrah, Paula Block, Geoffrey Mandel, Eileen Palestine, Marshak/Culbreath, MS Murdock, Barbara Hambly, Della Van Hise, Melinda Snodgrass, Bjo Trimble, Greg Bear, Margaret Clark, among others. Cream does rise to the top.
Paramount didn't make TMP because a few thousand people were reading fanzines, they made TMP because a few million people paid to see Star Wars.
You remember the Janeway's death wars. Some of the Janeway fanfic people who participated admitted that they'd never read any of Pocket's books before Janeway was killed off. If they didn't want to read Voyager profic before Janeway was killed off, why would they want to if Janeway's brought back?
It won three Hugo Awards, for "The Menagerie" in 1967 and for "City on the Edge of Forever" plus a special award for Roddenberry in 1968. In fact, every 1968 Hugo nominee for Best Dramatic Presentation was a Trek episode. In '67, "Menagerie" beat out two other Trek episodes plus Fantastic Voyage and Fahrenheit 451. "City on the Edge" also won a 1968 Writers Guild of America award for Best Written Dramatic Episode.
TOS was also nominated for multiple Emmys -- for Outstanding Dramatic Series in 1967 & 1968 and for Leonard Nimoy as Best Supporting Actor three years running, plus nominations in technical categories such as visual effects, art direction, editing, and sound. TAS won a Daytime Emmy in 1975.
As a fanfic writer, the direction Pocket Books has gone in lately has actually made me less likely to purchase most books. Now that everything's in one lockstep continuity, if I don't like something that happens, it ends up affecting everything. There is no longer very much room for the individual author's interpretation of things, and this to me is a real loss. This ends up, in some cases, making me prefer high-quality fanfic (and yes, it DOES exist and anyone who wants to know can PM me and I'll give you recommendations) to the "official" Pocket Books party line. And it also makes me prefer the exercise of writing my own stuff than reading things in the increasingly restrictive Pocket Books continuity.
At least in those early TOS days, authors had enough free rein to REALLY express their own take on the Trekiverse, to really do something creative! A lot of that, sadly, is gone now, and very often since that's the case, I'd rather do it myself.
Not everything is in a single continuity. Most of it has been for the past several years, but there have been exceptions. The Shatner novels are a separate continuity, though with some shared concepts. The Crucible trilogy was a separate continuity. New Frontier is a borderline case; other authors often acknowledge it, but it pretty much does its own thing and I believe it's contradicted the rest of the book continuity in some ways. And sometimes the continuity between different books is fairly tenuous, partly because mistakes can creep in, and partly because the quality of the individual works is regarded as a higher priority than mutual consistency. While consistency is usually maintained in broad strokes, certain details can be tweaked as needed.
And there seems to be a trend back toward standalones in the current and upcoming schedule. The majority of books scheduled for 2010 are standalones. There's nothing in the recent Troublesome Minds to connect it to any other books (though no contradictions either).
I don't think that's true at all. In my years as a Trek author I've almost always felt very free to bring my own voice and interpretation to bear in my Trek fiction, and I feel that other authors have brought their own individuality to their work as well. We all still have different interpretations of the Trek universe in a number of ways even if we do try to avoid contradicting each other where specific facts or events are concerned. If a room full of painters do portraits of the same subject, you'll still get a lot of different interpretations of that subject.
You talk about internovel continuity as if it were a straitjacket, a "party line" forced on us from above. I've never experienced it in that way. Rather, it's a mutual choice that the authors and editors have made. When I've referenced elements from other books in my own works, it's usually been because I wanted to, not because someone told me to. Of course, working within series like Titan, The Lost Era, or TNG, continuity with the rest of the series is expected, but with something like Ex Machina I'm sure I could've gone my own way if I'd wanted, but I chose to acknowledge other books out of appreciation for those books.
Yet wasn't it reported somewhere on the BBS that Margaret Clark referred to Janeway's "apparent death" before she was let go?
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