So what are you reading now? Part 2

[F. King Daniel]

I finished Trek to Madworld. You might (just barely) cope if you love How Much for Just the Planet. Otherwise…

The crew briefly meet the Time Being, whom “everyone is always doing things for”. It took me half a page to get it. I giggled. That is the best bit of the book (except the cover).

I’ve just started re-reading The Wounded Sky. It’s so much better than I remembered: Diane Duane’s version of the Trek universe is so vibrant and colourful (or at least it was before she had to water-down her stuff from Doctor’s Orders onward) it’s amazing. The multi-species crew from TMP (which returned in STXI), the implied much larger Federation (Enterprise is only the flagship of the human branch, there’s an Academy branch for non-hominids), the brilliant friendly aliens. Even Duane’s version of warp speed (“otherspace”) leaves the nonsense-techno-babytalk of TNG and Voyager in the dust.
It’s hard to see the link between it and the TNG episode.

 

[Christopher]

...
All male Borg drones? Sweet G-Zeus! Did Dillard (normally a Trek author whose work I like) ever even freakin' bother to WATCH a Borg episode? ANY Borg episode? gaaaaah!

To be fair, TPTB on TNG said all along that they deliberately tried to disguise the forms of female Borg-performers to make the race seem androgynous...

Which still leaves Voyager, and Seven Of Nine....

TNG's Borg were very different from FC's and VGR's Borg. The TNG concept was that Borg drones were incubated, that they had no individual identity and had never been anything but drones. They all certainly seemed to be male or androgynous. When the Borg assimilated Picard, it was portrayed as an unprecedented event, and the idea of assimilation was not followed up on in TNG proper. But in FC, the Borg were heavily retconned, becoming a zombie-like species that assimilated en masse. VGR ran with this and portrayed all Borg as assimilated humanoids.

I did my best to reconcile these two approaches in Greater Than the Sum, postulating two distinct categories of Borg, one incubated and one assimilated, and asserting that the drones encountered by the Enterprise crew in TNG and Resistance were of the former category.

I’ve just started re-reading The Wounded Sky. ...
It’s hard to see the link between it and the TNG episode.

That's because the script for the episode was profoundly rewritten by the show's staffers, with practically nothing remaining of the draft that Duane and Michael Reaves wrote based on The Wounded Sky.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I'm currently reading 'Troublesome Minds' and will be reading the 'Terminator: Salvation' novelization afterward.

 

[JD]

I just started DS9: Prophecy & Change last night. I've had it for years, and I've heard nothing but good things about it here, so I finally decided to actually read it.

Has anything ever been said about who the anonymous author of the opening and closing stories was?

 

[Rosalind]

Has anything ever been said about who the anonymous author of the opening and closing stories was?

this used to be a FAQ for a long time, no, nobody ever confessed.

 

[donners22]

Reading The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson QC.

If you've ever seen his Hypotheticals TV specials, you'll know how entertaining and thought-provoking he can be.

This book is particularly interesting, as it deals with the barrister who prosecuted Charles I for tyranny, at a time when the King was generally regarded as above the law. It offers great insight into the politics and law of the time, and manages to correct several other accounts of the events.

 

[Paris]

I'm putting aside treklit for a few days and am reading through Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". I'm really enjoying it so far. Lots of cool insight into all different kinds of stuff. Wifey recommends

 

[Daddy Todd]

I'm re-reading Julian May's Intervention for the first time since it was new (1987) and really enjoying it all over again. I'm planning on following with re-reads of the Galactic Milieu trilogy (Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask and Magnificat ), then the Saga of the Pliocene Exile (The Many-Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King and The Adversary) all of which I enjoyed tremendously back in the day.

I deliberately started in the "middle" on this re-read, partly because I had such warm memories of Intervention and thought it would be a good place to start, but also because it's really of the earliest book in the sequence, at least in terms of the character's lives.

 

[TenLubak]

Finished TNG #14 Exiles. Enjoyed it very much four popcorns. Read bits of TNG (no number) Q+A by P David, and picking back up on Ship of the Line by Diane Carey which focus's on Frasier being the very frst commander of the Enterprie E, along with some stuff going on with humans in an Cardie prison camp, and Picard talking to Kirk on holodeck simulation. Hail Kirk the god.
Alot of stuff for school. A little bit of John Vornholt's TNG Starfleet Acadamy #11 Crossfire about LaForge as a roadie and Will Riker as cadets in a band in school.

Too much other real life stressors right now to concentrate on Trek , so little time. It does ease the pain of life sometimes escaping to Trek world if only for a few minuites a day.

 

[Steve Roby]

Getting near to the end of Tales From the Captain's Table. It's all over the place stylistically and storywise, but I'm enjoying it so far.

 

[Christopher]

Read bits of TNG (no number) Q+A by P David

Q&A is by Keith DeCandido.

 

[donners22]

^ It's a sign of the quality of that book that somebody would link it to the author who wrote two terrific Q novels, though.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I'm actually reading Q & A now....and listening to the Starship Troopers audiobook (not at the same time, of course).

 

[Fer]

I'm currently reading a Doctor Who book, The Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell. Just finished Kirsten Beyer's Voyager book Unworthy before that (excellent!!!) and am hoping to have time to squeeze in another book between Scales of Injustice and Synthesis!

 

[Reanok]

I just finished reading Surak's soul by J.M. Dillard. I'm also trying to finish reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

 

[Steve Roby]

Working on the pile of still-unread Trek books, I just finished Deceptions, the last of the Next Generation Starfleet Academy YA books from the late '90s. It's a Data story, and a reasonably good one. Next: probably more old Trek stuff. Still have to get through two of the DS9 YA books, the three Voyager Starfleet Academy YA books, and two YA novelizations, among other things.

 

[JD]

I'm not reading any of them yet, but I got Unworthy, Fool Moon, the second Dresden Files book, , and Guards! Guards! the first Discworld City Watch book.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I just finished reading Surak's soul by J.M. Dillard. I'm also trying to finish reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

What did you think of Surak's Soul, Reanok?

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I finished Full Circle a few days ago and decided to get back to some Sherlock Holmes. I read The Resident Patient, The Greek Interpreter, The Naval Treaty, The Final Problem, and The Adventure of the Empty House. I've since started Voyager: Unworthy by Kirsten Beyer. When I'm done with that I'll be starting on The 4400: Welcome to Promise City by Greg Cox.

 

[shanejayell]

Finished Unworthy, rather liked it. Slower start but good, and the baby was quite amusing.