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So what are you reading now (Part 4)?

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Just finished Star Wars: Jedi Trial. I can see why it has such a bad reputation. It was like the author thought, "Scifi war stories miss a the realistic details of war, I'm going to change that. Now I'll write huge expository passages about the logistics of water supplies in a warzone, commanders going on pre-battle inspection tours, etc. That will show everyone what war is really like. Plus Anakin Skywalker should preform a wedding ceremony."

Now it's off to Star Wars: The Cestus Deception.
 
ryan123450 said:
Just finished Star Wars: Jedi Trial. I can see why it has such a bad reputation. It was like the author thought, "Scifi war stories miss a the realistic details of war, I'm going to change that. Now I'll write huge expository passages about the logistics of water supplies in a warzone, commanders going on pre-battle inspection tours, etc. That will show everyone what war is really like. Plus Anakin Skywalker should preform a wedding ceremony."

Now it's off to Star Wars: The Cestus Deception.
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I read a few slow-moving SW reads a year or so ago, and Jedi Trial was one of them. It did put distance between Anakin and the Jedi council, if I remember right.

I recently purchased Full Circle and Unworthy. In the meantime I'm going to try to get started on The Good that Men Do, but my attention at the moment is on a history book (Life of Greece by Will Durant) and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach.
 
I finished Warpath last week and now almost done with Fearful Symmetry. Next is The Soul Key and I'll be caught up on the DS9 relaunch.
 
I have been reading TOS novels in chronological order of publication, beginning with the novelization of The Motion Picture. I am now more than halfway through book #5, "The Prometheus Design" I am gratified that the authors have maintained continuity with the first movie. Also, enjoying the introduction of new Vulcan terminology. I have heard scathing reviews of these authors (Marshak and Culbreath) books but I would rate this as average so far.
 
The Prometheus Design "maintained continuity" with TMP? Well, superficially, yes. But I always found it odd that they dealt with Spock's life-changing epiphany in that film by completely reversing it with little justification, and if anything taking Spock in the opposite direction, a "hyper-Vulcan" mode or whatever they called it.
 
Christopher said:
The Prometheus Design "maintained continuity" with TMP? Well, superficially, yes. But I always found it odd that they dealt with Spock's life-changing epiphany in that film by completely reversing it with little justification, and if anything taking Spock in the opposite direction, a "hyper-Vulcan" mode or whatever they called it.
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Take away Spock's hyper-Vulcan mode in a Marshak and Culbreath novel and there'd be nothing to stop him leaping into Kirk's arms. And after Kirk's worked so hard to free Spock of his "Vulcan chains", we can't have V'ger coming along and killing all the sexual tension, can we? :lol: :barf: (we need a laughing-while-puking emoticon)



In other news, Vulcan artist "D'Mack" just got a mention in Full Circle :rolleyes:.
 
Christopher said:
The Prometheus Design "maintained continuity" with TMP? Well, superficially, yes. But I always found it odd that they dealt with Spock's life-changing epiphany in that film by completely reversing it with little justification, and if anything taking Spock in the opposite direction, a "hyper-Vulcan" mode or whatever they called it.
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Agreed, continuity only in the sense of ranks and other minutiae. Certainly not in in terms of the character arc for Spock. Your novel, "Ex Machina" unquestionably maintains such continuity much more.
 
^Indeed, my dissatisfaction with how The Prometheus Design followed up on Spock's TMP arc -- and the fact that it was the only Trek novel that seemed to do so at all, with every other post-TMP novel pretty much avoiding the question -- was what made me want to explore it in more depth in ExM.
 
Hey Christopher, if you had gotten to, or do get to, write a follow up to Ex Machina, was it the plan for Spock to have gradually went back to his old self, like he eventually ended up by the time The Wrath of Kahn began?
 
ryan123450 said:
Hey Christopher, if you had gotten to, or do get to, write a follow up to Ex Machina, was it the plan for Spock to have gradually went back to his old self, like he eventually ended up by the time The Wrath of Kahn began?
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But he didn't go back to his old self. The Spock seen in TWOK and ever after was a Spock who still took the lessons of V'Ger to heart: though still a logical being, he was at peace with his emotions, comfortable with expressing his friendship for Kirk, able to recognize that logic was only the beginning of wisdom rather than the end, etc. He wasn't as openly emotional as in TMP, but he no longer feared or denied his emotions; he mastered them, managed them, and integrated them into his serene, enlightened persona.

What I wanted to explore in ExM and anything that followed was how Spock took the lessons of V'Ger to heart and matured into that new self we've seen ever since, how he grew from the turbulent embrace of emotion seen in TMP to the more serene, balanced integration of logic and emotion seen in TWOK and after. And since I knew there was no guarantee of any continuation beyond ExM, that's the arc I gave Spock in that book: at the start, he was in his TMP mode, ready to embrace emotion but still wrestling with how to integrate it into a logical life, and by the end of the book, he'd worked out a fairly comfortable balance and was settling into the more placid persona seen in TWOK.
 
Christopher said:
ryan123450 said:
Hey Christopher, if you had gotten to, or do get to, write a follow up to Ex Machina, was it the plan for Spock to have gradually went back to his old self, like he eventually ended up by the time The Wrath of Kahn began?
Click to expand...

But he didn't go back to his old self. The Spock seen in TWOK and ever after was a Spock who still took the lessons of V'Ger to heart: though still a logical being, he was at peace with his emotions, comfortable with expressing his friendship for Kirk, able to recognize that logic was only the beginning of wisdom rather than the end, etc. He wasn't as openly emotional as in TMP, but he no longer feared or denied his emotions; he mastered them, managed them, and integrated them into his serene, enlightened persona..
Click to expand...


Indeed. The Spock of the later movies is much "warmer" and more at peace with his divided nature than the younger Spock of the tv series. One of the few good scenes in STAR TREK V was when Sybok tried to confront Spock with his former conflicts, only to be informed by Spock that he was no longer tormented by his half-human nature. That was right on the button, and reflected how much Spock had evolved since Sybok had last known him.

By the time of the sixth movie, remember, Spock was able to counsel Valeris that logic was only the beginning of wisdom. Not something that the younger Spock would have been likely to concede.
 
Currently reading:

*Type O Negative by Joel Tan (Not by choice, although it looks to be a quick read)

*The Boss' Christmas Proposal

*Imaging Blackness (a good book that didn't cover as much as it should).

*Six-Gun Mystique Sequel (not by choice)

*Chinese Primer, Blue Book (Not by choice)

I might throw in a Trek book or two.
 
Still reading Full Circle, and I've come to one bit I don't like...

Chakotay sleeps with Janeway. It would have been fine during the series, but after the C/7 fiasco, and the total lack of anything J/C in the Homecoming duology, it seemed forced and wrong.

Also, earlier on, the way Counselor Cambridge figured out that Logt was a spy all by himself left the Voyager crew looking like dolts and screamed "Mary Sue!"
 
Finished Fearful Symmetry yesterday and started The Soul Key. Not sure what I'll read next, either the Crucible trilogy or Eureka: Substitution Method.
 
Just started The Third Claw Of God, the second (and hopefully not final, though it seems to be at the moment) novel in Adam-Troy Castro's Andrea Cort series. Great space opera mystery stories, with a bitingly sarcastic narrator/main character. Second, so far, is just as good as the first was (Emissaries From The Dead).
 
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^See if you can track down the original Andrea Cort novella, "Unseen Demons." It was originally published in the July/August 2002 Analog, and was reprinted in the anthology Tangled Strings. It has a few slight continuity differences from the novels, but as the title suggests, it depicts a key event in Cort's backstory that's referenced in the novels.

I liked both the novels, but I have a preference for Emissaries, since its worldbuilding is more interesting. Third Claw is more enclosed; it feels like a bottle episode of a TV series, the whole story confined to a single location. I wondered if maybe it was written with the possibility of a low-budget film adaptation in mind.
 
^ Amazon has used copies of that collection for $61. It would be cool to read, but for that much, I think I'll pass!

And regardless of the setting for Third Claw, which I haven't gotten to far into, I just adore Castro's writing style and the character of Cort. I could read a dozen of these.
 
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