Ah. I didn’t realise it came out after TNG ended.
So What Are you Reading?: Generations
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I've been getting back into reading Trek books after a several year break. I read Pliable Truths a few weeks ago, it was pretty good
Today I picked up the Picard and janeway "Autobiographies" from the library and I'm already almost done with the Picard one. I like it a lot, but I do have to say that
Besides that I will say, in a non spoiler way, that Picard does "Forrest Gump" around the Galaxy a bit too much when it comes to meeting important figures/ships. Still overall I've enjoyed the book, it feels like something Picard would write and I especially like how it portrays his family life a lot better then the flashbacks in Picard Season 2 did.
but I liked the TNG/DS9 parts a lot better then the parts set in the work camp.
Today I picked up the Picard and janeway "Autobiographies" from the library and I'm already almost done with the Picard one. I like it a lot, but I do have to say that
the Denobulan thing is easily the stupidest thing i've ever read in a Star Trek book, and I've read Spock, Messiah!. Its just so out of left field, I know the book is not even remotely "canon", Picard the TV show by itself contradicts the book in general in several places and Lower Decks had Denobulans just being around, but the whole little section is just so bizarre. Its been the only thing that has really pulled me out of the book, but luckily its just a small, ignorable section
Besides that I will say, in a non spoiler way, that Picard does "Forrest Gump" around the Galaxy a bit too much when it comes to meeting important figures/ships. Still overall I've enjoyed the book, it feels like something Picard would write and I especially like how it portrays his family life a lot better then the flashbacks in Picard Season 2 did.
Still working my way through THE AVENGER CHRONICLES, a few stories a night before bedtime.
Based on the 1930s pulp hero. Not to be confused with the Marvel superheros OR Steed and Mrs. Peel, both of whom were invented decades later.
My favorite pulp-flavored title so far: "Death in Clown Alley."
How can I resist a title like that?
Based on the 1930s pulp hero. Not to be confused with the Marvel superheros OR Steed and Mrs. Peel, both of whom were invented decades later.
My favorite pulp-flavored title so far: "Death in Clown Alley."
How can I resist a title like that?
I think you'll find that the Janeway "Autobiography" is much better, and much truer to Star Trek. While Goodman's Picard "Autobiography" is far better than his Kirk "Autobiography," I am relieved that the publisher decided to put Goodman out of our misery, and go with ST prose authors with track records.
And quite frankly, I'd completely forgotten "the Denobulan thing." And I, too, have read Spock: Messiah. And enjoyed it (back in the day when it was that, Spock Must Die, Mission to Horatius, and episode adaptations, and not much else). And even had my copy hardbound.
I'm onto Janeway's "Autobiography" and I'm enjoying it. I think that the writing in the Picard bio felt more like he was actually writing it, but I think the Janeway one (so far, at least) has a better told story (I especially like how she's not constantly running into famous people every few pages).
The May and July/August issues of Reader's Digest. Which is how I found out that they phased out the Canadian edition - my local library system still gets the American ones.
I've finished The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway. It was a solid read, and definitely better written then the Picard one (although I liked that too, despite its flaws). I will say a funny thing about these "autobiographies" is how little the focus on what (in universe) would be the main part of these peoples lives (Picard's time on the Ent-D and Janeway's time on Voyager). The books do a good job of giving us their perspectives on certain big moments, but I'd think an actual biography made in universe would focus a lot more on those areas. It makes sense why these books don't do that, they'd basically just be episode guides of TNG and VOY at that point, but for books presented as being written by the characters its an element that came to mind.
I recently read Murder By Invitation Only by Colleen Cambridge (pen name of Colleen Gleason). There is some cutesy meta stuff with the protagonist working for Agatha Christie, but mostly, it is a solid murder mystery with a dash of thriller at the end. 4 out of 5 stars is my rating, and I've put the others in the series on my TBR.
Yet actual biographies, especially autobiographies, tend to concentrate on the lesser-known aspects of the subject's life. Think about Alex Trebek's The Answer Is . . . : it dwells a great deal on his years growing up, his years in radio broadcasting, and his years hosting mostly-forgotten game shows, before it gets to High Rollers and the 1984 revival of Jeopardy!, and even then, it goes into some detail on what he was doing when he wasn't hosting game shows.
Speaking of Trebek, and Jeopardy!, every time I find myself expecting Johnny Gilbert to announce Trebek, a split second before he announces Jennings, I reflect back on how, for the first few years of the revival, I was expecting Don Pardo to announce Art Fleming!
Likewise, the few ST actors who've written memoirs or autobiographies tend to dwell an awful lot on the stuff most people don't know about them. Ditto for astronaut biographies and autobiographies.
Meanwhile, I'm about halfway through reviewing my own opus, taking the time to not only timeline every significant event (in the process, finding a few conflicts, and a few important events that had never made it onto the page!), but to create a reference spreadsheet listing every character, every important definition, and my protagonist's University coursework. And of course, to enter the revisions and corrections into the actual files (usually in Ventura Publisher, so I can see right away if something's going to screw up the pagination).
And I'm also about a third of the way through re-reading CLB's The Face of the Unknown. It seems like every time I re-read it, I've forgotten enough of it to where I re-experience the wonders of CLB's world-building. But I still have this picture in the back of my mind of a young princess with a distinctive hairstyle walking into Mudds (from LD: "The Inner Fight"), asking to see the Information Broker, and on meeting him asking, "Aren't you a little short for a Dassik?"
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Despite having a concert last night (subscription season opener at Hollywood Bowl), I managed to read a bit more of The Face of the Unknown. And I noticed something. It shares a common theme with another CLB opus, The Higher Frontier. In both books, we have enigmatic civilizations we met once, in TOS, and then never heard from again. And in both books, those civilizations turn out to be sequestered away from the Federation, albeit in very different ways.
Hmm, I'd call that more premise than theme. But yeah, I like to pick up on underdeveloped elements, and sometimes that includes justifying why we haven't seen them since.
It was the part about them being sequestered away (in unexpected places, or behind unexpected barriers) that kind of jumped out at me. And I vaguely recall there being another case like that, but not where, or whose (whose authorship or whose civilization).
In Face of the Unknown, that's because it was reworked from my cancelled Kelvin novel, and I wanted to explain why the civilization there (which was not the First Federation in that version) was never discovered in Prime.
Just finished this one late last night (actually, early this morning): “The Director Should Have Shot You: Memoirs of the Film Trade” by Alan Dean Foster (2021, Centipede Press).
I loved it. I gave it a rare (for me) five out of five stars on GoodReads. I highly recommend it to fans of Alan Dean Foster and/or film novelizations in general.
His chapters are very short, twenty-seven in all (plus Introduction, Epilogue, etc.), from his first film novelization (“Luana” (1974), to his most recent (“Alien: Covenant” (2017).
The complete list: “Luana” (1974), “Dark Star” (1974), the “Star Trek Logs” animated series novelizations (1974-1978), “Maude’s Dilemma” (1974; TV, written but not published), Star Wars” (1976), “Alien” (1979), “The Black Hole” (1980), “Clash of the Titans” (1981), “Outland” (1981), John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), “Krull” (1983), “The Last Starfighter” (1984), “Starman” (1984), “Shadowkeep” (1984; computer game), Pale Rider” (1985), “Aliens” (1986), “Alien Nation” (1988), “Alien 3” (1992), “The Dig” (1996; computer game), The Chronicles of Riddick” (2004), “Transformers” (2007) and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (2009), “Star Trek” (2009), “Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013), “Terminator: Salvation” (2009), “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015), and “Alien: Covenant” (2017).
And I discovered last night that it’s also available in eBook now! I had to find this hardcover first printing on eBay and it took me awhile because apparently it was a small print run. I got this copy in October 2022. Amazon says the eBook version came out June 20, 2023. Anyone who is interested (buys books in eBook), it’s normally $17.99 but at the moment it’s only $2.99 on Amazon (Kindle version). Because of that, I went ahead and bought the Kindle version too.
— David Young
I loved it. I gave it a rare (for me) five out of five stars on GoodReads. I highly recommend it to fans of Alan Dean Foster and/or film novelizations in general.
His chapters are very short, twenty-seven in all (plus Introduction, Epilogue, etc.), from his first film novelization (“Luana” (1974), to his most recent (“Alien: Covenant” (2017).
The complete list: “Luana” (1974), “Dark Star” (1974), the “Star Trek Logs” animated series novelizations (1974-1978), “Maude’s Dilemma” (1974; TV, written but not published), Star Wars” (1976), “Alien” (1979), “The Black Hole” (1980), “Clash of the Titans” (1981), “Outland” (1981), John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), “Krull” (1983), “The Last Starfighter” (1984), “Starman” (1984), “Shadowkeep” (1984; computer game), Pale Rider” (1985), “Aliens” (1986), “Alien Nation” (1988), “Alien 3” (1992), “The Dig” (1996; computer game), The Chronicles of Riddick” (2004), “Transformers” (2007) and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (2009), “Star Trek” (2009), “Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013), “Terminator: Salvation” (2009), “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015), and “Alien: Covenant” (2017).
And I discovered last night that it’s also available in eBook now! I had to find this hardcover first printing on eBay and it took me awhile because apparently it was a small print run. I got this copy in October 2022. Amazon says the eBook version came out June 20, 2023. Anyone who is interested (buys books in eBook), it’s normally $17.99 but at the moment it’s only $2.99 on Amazon (Kindle version). Because of that, I went ahead and bought the Kindle version too.
— David Young
Still reviewing my own novel. And continuing to generate page after page of documentation to ensure continuity. Now including a partial organization chart of a fictional university.
Present chapter is my protagonist's wedding. And since I'm also a pretty decent typesetter, and pouring the entire opus into Xerox Ventura Publisher (which has the advantage that the text continues to live in the original word processor files, in the original format), I discovered, seeing that chapter in print for the first time today, that I need to rework a style tag I'd introduced in that chapter: it's producing WAYYYYY too narrow a column, narrow enough to clash jarringly with the body text.
Which is to say, I can produce a camera-ready version of the book, either on paper or as a PDF, set in typefaces of my own choosing. Not imposed into signatures, but there's software to do that with a PDF.
And still waiting for Mr. Cox's new opus with a worm on my tongue.
Present chapter is my protagonist's wedding. And since I'm also a pretty decent typesetter, and pouring the entire opus into Xerox Ventura Publisher (which has the advantage that the text continues to live in the original word processor files, in the original format), I discovered, seeing that chapter in print for the first time today, that I need to rework a style tag I'd introduced in that chapter: it's producing WAYYYYY too narrow a column, narrow enough to clash jarringly with the body text.
Which is to say, I can produce a camera-ready version of the book, either on paper or as a PDF, set in typefaces of my own choosing. Not imposed into signatures, but there's software to do that with a PDF.
And still waiting for Mr. Cox's new opus with a worm on my tongue.
Well, then I wouldn't have "baited" breath, then, would I?It may be best to move that worm to an apple or something, hb.
(Better to find a worm in an apple, than half a worm!)
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