should PARAMOUNT take over?

[Therin of Andor]

If you have no interest in ever growing the line, and are instead trying to just make a quick buck, sure. If you're trying to create a long-term source of income, though, that's not necessarily the way to go about things.

You were talking about the release of reprints. "Growing the line" is a separate issue. The Titan example I was discussing was indeed Titan making a quick buck. They had no license to "grow the line".

But that's not the point you were trying to make.

I was making several points, and that was one of them. RobertScorpio's idea infers that more than 1-2% of the general cinema-going audience should be reading books to get every nuance of a blockbuster movie, and that if only the books were seen as "canon", the public would be more inclined to buy and read them. The fallout would mean that the producers of the next sequels would have to start following the books, too. Even some that come out and are not popular.

But the main point I was making still holds: licensed media tie-ins should not have the same status as live-action episodes or movies.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, like in M*A*S*H were Hawkeye went from having a mother, father and sister while in Korea, to having been an only child who was raised by his widowed father who never remarries. Then there was also Radar, who lost his verginity like 3 or 4 times.

Or the fact that a three-year war was made to last eleven years.

I always maintained the first three seasons was about the first year of the war, the following four seasons was about the second year, and the final four about the third and final year.

Of course, that theory is blown to hell considering all of the Christmas episodes they had...

 

[Christopher]

The priority of storytellers is to make the story they're telling now as good as possible, and they usually won't throw out a good idea because it conflicts with something they did years ago.

But the better storytellers find a way to make that idea work without disavowing their earlier work.

That's an easy thing to say when you don't actually have to do the job yourself. You can't make such a blanket statement, because it depends on the situation. What if it's an SF writer whose past work is contradicted by real scientific advances? If the writer then does a new work in the same universe, she has a choice between compromising continuity for the sake of credibility, or compromising credibility for the sake of continuity. Either way, something has to give.

The point is, yes, obviously maintaining internal consistency is a good thing, but it's not such an absolute priority that it even overrides telling a good story. The story is always the highest priority, and other priorities, though important, can and should be applied with flexibility, rather than so rigidly that they hurt the quality of the work.

I always maintained the first three seasons [of M*A*S*H] was about the first year of the war, the following four seasons was about the second year, and the final four about the third and final year.

Of course, that theory is blown to hell considering all of the Christmas episodes they had...

It also can't work in light of the explicit date references given onscreen. In the first several seasons, there were various references placing the show in late 1951 or early '52, more than a year into the war. I think they even got up to '53 at one point. But then, after it had become a long-running hit with no end in sight, they retconned the date back to the early part of the war. There was that episode in the Potter/Winchester era that began with New Year's Day 1951 and went through the entire year, despite the fact that the episode introducing BJ Hunnicutt, immediately preceding Potter's arrival and during Frank Burns's tenure, was explicitly dated as being in the fall of 1952.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Ah, yeah, I forgot about all of the different date references.

 

[Omega Particle]

I have an idea...

Let's just create a set of sticky-labels that say 'THIS BOOK IS 100% CANON' or 'THIS BOOK IS OFFICIAL CANON - JJ ABRAMS MYSTERIOUSLY APPROVED' or 'THE WORD OF GENE RODENBERRY HIMSELF (BOOBIES NOT INCLUDED)'...

Then, those people who are most concerned about books being canon can print out those sticky-labels and paste them all over their Star Trek novels, comics, games, Pez dispensers, action figures etc.

Those books will then be just as canon as Star Wars books, and Star Trek fans may rest easy in the knowledge that their books are canon. After all, it will say it on the cover, and the creators will continue investing as much time and effort treating the books as canon as they do in Star Wars (see quoted Lucas above).

We can then get back to discussing what's important - the stories themselves and how much we enjoyed them, how they made us feel, and what happened to our favourite characters.

It also means that, since I don't care about canon (but love the books internal continuity!) there aren't any ugly 'THIS IS CANON' stickers crowding up my beautiful book covers.

 

[pookha]

Why are you so eager to make the novels canonical? You really think more people will flock to them because Paramount branded them as missing movie arcs?

Yes..I do. I think if they rebooted the books and said that any new book really 'mattered' they would sale more..BUT more importantly, just one book every two months or so so as not to overload on them...

Rob
Scorpio

or have happened what happened with me and the star wars books.
get disgruntled at having to buy substandard books just to buy
books by the few authors i liked.

i have gone from buying most of the books to buying almost none.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I have an idea...

Let's just create a set of sticky-labels that say 'THIS BOOK IS 100% CANON' or 'THIS BOOK IS OFFICIAL CANON - JJ ABRAMS MYSTERIOUSLY APPROVED' or 'THE WORD OF GENE RODENBERRY HIMSELF (BOOBIES NOT INCLUDED)'...

Then, those people who are most concerned about books being canon can print out those sticky-labels and paste them all over their Star Trek novels, comics, games, Pez dispensers, action figures etc.

Those books will then be just as canon as Star Wars books, and Star Trek fans may rest easy in the knowledge that their books are canon. After all, it will say it on the cover, and the creators will continue investing as much time and effort treating the books as canon as they do in Star Wars (see quoted Lucas above).

We can then get back to discussing what's important - the stories themselves and how much we enjoyed them, how they made us feel, and what happened to our favourite characters.

It also means that, since I don't care about canon (but love the books internal continuity!) there aren't any ugly 'THIS IS CANON' stickers crowding up my beautiful book covers.

I think this an appropriate time to post Steve Roby's "Every Fan's Canon Primer" (also accessible from the pinned FAQ).

 

[Steve Roby]

why would we want the Star Trek novel line to imitate what the Star Wars novel line does? Isn't it better for us to assert our own identity rather than copying their conceits? Heck, we were here first. ST existed over a decade before SW, and ST prose fiction was a going concern long before SW novels became a regular thing. And our books profoundly outnumber theirs. So why the heck should we follow their lead?

And if Lucasfilm Marketing jumped off a bridge, would you follow them?

Quoted for truth, as the youngsters say these days.

Star Trek books are for Star Trek fans, and what Star Wars does is irrelevant. The fact that a handful of loudmouth Star Wars fans on the Internet don't even understand that their own books aren't canon is no reason to change anything to do with Star Trek books.

The first original Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye was a really big deal in 1978. Lucas wholly approved the book (in a way I don't remember him doing for the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies Del Rey published from 1979-1983; Splinter was promoted as a big deal event), and it was rumoured to be a backup plan for a low-budget second movie if the first flopped and Empire was too expensive to produce. But Foster obviously had no idea Lucas would reveal that Luke and Leia were siblings, so he threw in some sexual tension between them. That was the first Star Wars original novel, and it was at best ignored and arguably contradicted by The Empire Strikes Back.

And let's not forget: Lucas is the guy who keeps going back and changing the actual movies. Even the movies themselves aren't unchangeably canonical.

 

[Omega Particle]

I think this an appropriate time to post Steve Roby's "Every Fan's Canon Primer" (also accessible from the pinned FAQ).

Somehow, I don't think even that will be enough for some people.

 

[Christopher]

And let's not forget: Lucas is the guy who keeps going back and changing the actual movies. Even the movies themselves aren't unchangeably canonical.

Or rather, even a canon is not immune to revision. Lucas isn't the first storyteller who's gone back and revised a story; various novelists have tweaked their books in reprints. (David Gerrold has done wholesale rewrites of some of his early novels.) Creators generally don't like to be restricted by their past ideas from back when they had less experience and (theoretically) wisdom.

By the way, I just read that Lucas is thinking of converting the Star Wars films into 3D. Apparently there's a new technology that lets you do that with 2D films. I don't think wisdom has much to do with Lucas's revisionism, frankly.

 

[GaslightGreen]

Or rather, even a canon is not immune to revision. Lucas isn't the first storyteller who's gone back and revised a story; various novelists have tweaked their books in reprints. (David Gerrold has done wholesale rewrites of some of his early novels.) Creators generally don't like to be restricted by their past ideas from back when they had less experience and (theoretically) wisdom.

While this example is slightly different, I think that it is in the same vain. Bob Dylan has been consistently changing the lyrics and music of his songs in live performance for over 40 years. As a fan of his I initially balked at these sweeping changes, often radically changing the stories in performance than those captured on vinyl, cassette, CD, what have you. However, at some point I realized that these were his creations and that he is the one who has to live with, and perform them over 100 times a year (at least since he started his "Never-Ending Tour"). Now I enjoy and appreciate the changes that he makes. It keeps the performances lively and entertaining. The stories may change, the melodies may evolve, but I always appreciate the art that he is creating.

 

[Christopher]

^^Nice observation. Indeed, for most of human history and prehistory, all storytelling was oral, and every story was thus constantly changing and evolving with each new telling. The same was no doubt true of folk music.

 

[Therin of Andor]

all storytelling was oral, and every story was thus constantly changing and evolving with each new telling.

I'm sure I recall a Roddenberry interview where he talked about Star Trek having entered the realm of modern mythology, and the fact that, as a storytelling mode, it'll be reworked and reinterpreted in future generations, long after he (and we) pass on.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

Just a quick note about "caring."

As of this weekend I've met or interacted with over twenty-five people (authors, editors,screenwriters) of Star Trek. I've met Paula Block on a couple of occasions. Despite the fact that all of us get paid to do this stuff, so far, I have not met ONE person, from Paramount down to myself, who doesn't consider themselves a fan of Star Trek. More than that these people, like the larger fan community, have favorite series', characters, story arcs, all that.

When making Sword of Damocles, my only personal experience with the full tilt editorial process of banging against canon with potential story points, there was a lot of wrangling about how Riker and Troi would be presented (filmed canon) but just as much about how Vale and Ra-Havreii and, especially, Jaza would be as well (Lit canon).

These were not simple structural discussions to prevent me stepping on some author's toes or to make sure I didn't switch the genders of the main characters inadvertently. These were real, sometimes emotional, discussions about who these people, the characters, were. As with all fans there were subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) variances in how we each saw the characters and, in some ways, STAR TREK itself. All of which were equally legit interpretations.

We all worked hard. We all pushed our positions, supporting them with anecdotal evidence from both the current canons. Sometimes editorial won. Sometimes I did. The result is a work everybody could sign off on and which we hoped the majority of fans would enjoy. THis is always a team effort.

Paramount, in the form of Paula Block, DOES takes these books VERY seriously. So do Marco and Margaret and Ed and so did John and Dean and Elissa and the others. And so do we.

I never understand how a fan community that apparently can reconcile the concepts used in Many Worlds Theory (Myriad Universes, etc.) AND the idea that a timeline can be "broken" and subsequently "fixed" (Yesterday's Enterprise, City on the Edge of Forever) doesn't understand the obvious result those two viewpoints coming together.

There is no fixed canon and everything ever written in any version of Star Trek fiction (including the most indulgent fanfic slash) is "in." EVERYTHING.

To suggest that Paramount "take over" something they already own is to create a sentence devoid of information. It's just words arranged in a row. They have no aggregate or practical meaning.

 

[Omega Particle]

Paramount, in the form of Paula Block, DOES takes these books VERY seriously. So do Marco and Margaret and Ed and so did John and Dean and Elissa and the others. And so do we.

I never understand how a fan community that apparently can reconcile the concepts used in Many Worlds Theory (Myriad Universes, etc.) AND the idea that a timeline can be "broken" and subsequently "fixed" (Yesterday's Enterprise, City on the Edge of Forever) doesn't understand the obvious result those two viewpoints coming together.

There is no fixed canon and everything ever written in any version of Star Trek fiction (including the most indulgent fanfic slash) is "in." EVERYTHING.

To suggest that Paramount "take over" something they already own is to create a sentence devoid of information. It's just words arranged in a row. They have no aggregate or practical meaning.

I applaud you, sir.

I think that is a very convincing final word on the topic. Why do fans need to bitch and moan about what's 'in' and what's 'out' when we clearly eat it all up?

We've been waiting for 'Myriad Universes' with baited breath since it was announced in its most original form...five? six? years ago? We clearly enjoy seeing different takes on the same stories, and so there's simply no need for this debate. And no need for meaningless canon.

As long as the authors, editors and the licensing department care about 'Star Trek' and have its best intents at heart, a fact which you and others have ably shown in your writings, both in print and online, we needn't worry about any of this.

We're 'Star Trek' fans, after all. If there were no incosistencies to debate and explain away, what would we *do* with our time?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Just a quick note about "caring."

Well said. For some fans, a ST product that is at odds with their personal preferences is further proof that the mysterious, "stupid"(?) Powers That Be "don't care".

For example, a typo-filled page in a novel might mean Impossible Deadline, or Computer Glitch, not Editor Didn't Care.

 

[David Henderson]

Or, the first two reprints sold so poorly, they didn't do the next seven.

And they just happened to start with books #7 and #9, as opposed with, oh, #1 and #2?

The editor was a fan of Voyager, and wanted to subtly promote that series with their choice of books. ;-)

davidh