Stand-Alone Novels

[AuntKate]

It seems to me that the recent novels have become interrelated to the point that some readers might be put off on purchasing one if they hadn't read the previous novels or if they were unhappy with the direction some of the novels have taken.

I miss "the good old days" when novels stood alone, and I wonder if we will ever see those again? Would the editors ever accept a post-series novel that is NOT part of the relaunches we've already seen? If not, I think they might be painting themselves into a corner and quickly limiting readership.

Just an idle thought--don't shoot me!

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I think SWORD OF DAMOCLES stands alone. Reading the other TITAN books will enhance the experience but they aren't required.

In fact, you could read 1,3 and 4 out of sequence without trouble.

And there are a stack of stand-alone's out there.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

I just felt someone walking over my grave.

 

[Trent Roman]

AuntKate said:
I miss "the good old days" when novels stood alone

I remember reading Trek fiction in those days, and don't particularly miss them. The quality of the fiction is much better now, and one of the reasons why is that the books don't have to limit themselves to bottled, static adventures introduced and resolved between two covers to never be mentioned again. It's no coincidence that the best post-series line out there, Deep Space Nine, is also the one with the strongest continuity and takes most advantage of arc-based storytelling. And I don't think it's true that there are no more stand-alone novels; most of the books coming out now, even when part of a larger mosaic, function perfectly well on their own. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of releases are perfectly intelligeable without having read any other novel. Continuity and arcs should enhance, not limit, enjoyment of a novel, and I think Pocket has found a good balance in that respect with the current crop of offerings.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Christopher]

There are certainly a good number of standalones still coming out. My own Ex Machina and The Buried Age are standalones, and as RedJack said, the Titan series is essentially episodic. So I have yet to get a single Trek novel published that isn't a standalone. My next novel, in Myriad Universes, is standalone by definition because it's in a separate timeline. The closest thing I've done to a non-standalone Trek novel is the one after that, TNG: Greater Than the Sum, which follows up on Before Dishonor and leads into Destiny.

 

[David cgc]

AuntKate said:
I miss "the good old days" when novels stood alone, and I wonder if we will ever see those again? Would the editors ever accept a post-series novel that is NOT part of the relaunches we've already seen?

Yes, repeatedly. The Shatnerverse novels, the Crucible trilogy, probably some others I can't think of all flout the mainline novel continuity. The editors have consistently said that they have no problem contradicting themselves if it's needed by the story.

 

[Therin of Andor]

AuntKate said:
I miss "the good old days" when novels stood alone, and I wonder if we will ever see those again? Would the editors ever accept a post-series novel that is NOT part of the relaunches we've already seen?

Of course they do. Happens often enough. There's no ban on stand-alones. I take it you're not enjoying some Relaunches and want something else? It'll happen, eventually. Have you read the "Crucible" trilogy? Or even the first one ("McCoy"), which can be/is totally stand-alone, even to its trilogy mates, if you so choose?

IIRC, first-time authors following Pocket's official ST submission policy must submit a stand-alone novel that makes no reference to existing novels. (Mind you, that's to prove that they can write in the genre, and can follow guidelines.)

But even in the "good old days", a stand-alone novel could become so successful that it spawns a sequel. So one might say fans would be hesitant to pick up AC Crispin's "Time for Yesterday" if they hadn't already read "Yesterday's Son", but neither the editor nor author knew that the first adventure would extend beyond one book. The first ST novel I ever read was Bantam's "The Fate of the Phoenix", a sequel to "The Price of the Phoenix"!

Trust the authors to make every ST novel as stand-alone as possible, which they do. There are very few novels, except perhaps a few early duologies and trilogies that were designed as duologies or trilogies, that can't stand alone.

But many readers don't want any novels to ever comflict with another. And that becomes harder and harder to achieve every month.

 

[JD]

I have to disagree here. I really think that even the majority of the could probably be enjoyed without reading any of the books before them, because the authors almost always do a good job of filling the gaps you might have missed. Plus we have enough sites like Memory Beta, that allow you to look up what you might have missed.

 

[donners22]

For what it's worth, I agree entirely with the original post. I once bought virtually every Trek book, but when interlinked books started coming out left, right and centre, in several cases with plots that just didn't support that length, I became much more careful about what I did and didn't buy.

Q & A was fine for me, as even though I hadn't read the previous book in sequence, it had a self-contained plot. It's when books don't have an independant ending that I get annoyed, especially when it is not flagged as part of a series.

 

[Trent Roman]

donners22 said:
I once bought virtually every Trek book, but when interlinked books started coming out left, right and centre, in several cases with plots that just didn't support that length, I became much more careful about what I did and didn't buy.

I assume you're referring to that spate of duologies (and sometimes trilogies) that were just one story split into two or more books, like Maximum Warp, Rebels and the VOY-R books, and other such cheesy gimmicks like the Gateways conclusion? There I'll agree. They were blantant attempts to boost sales (apparently duologies and trilogies sell better per capita than single books), and the stories, however they might have been contracted, often felt as though they had just been split down the middle and padded. Fortunately, editorial policy has changed since, and such ploys have fallen out of favour. Better yet, there seems to have been an overt attempt to increase the amount of content in the books themselves to make-up for the cut in individual releases, so we don't often get offerings which aren't meaty and fulfulling in and of themselves; these days when books are serialized, like the String Theory or Crucible trilogies, each novel has its own plotline. I see the knee-jerk duology trend of those years as a sort of 'growing pains' for the greater freedom of interlinked stories Pocket had post-Richard Arnold.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[JD]

donners22 said:
For what it's worth, I agree entirely with the original post. I once bought virtually every Trek book, but when interlinked books started coming out left, right and centre, in several cases with plots that just didn't support that length, I became much more careful about what I did and didn't buy.

Q & A was fine for me, as even though I hadn't read the previous book in sequence, it had a self-contained plot. It's when books don't have an independant ending that I get annoyed, especially when it is not flagged as part of a series.

What would be the difference between a regular ending and an indepentant ending? If you mean a book that doesm't end it's main plotline, pretty much all of them do, except for duologies/trilogies/whatever. Even the DS9-R and Vanguard books, which are probably the two most interconnnected series, usually have a main plot that ends with that book (or duology or whater), except for maybe a few threads that continue on throughout the series.

 

[donners22]

The books I was particularly thinking of there were Millennium, Rebels, the Q trilogy and the first two post-Voyager books. The first three I didn't like at all, the latter I didn't mind but was irritated that the fact they were a duology was not made clear upfront [unless I missed something obvious, which is not uncommon...].

Beyond that though, the mini-series and particularly series crossovers just got way out of hand at one point. Even aside from plots stretching credibility and the sheer difficulty of tracking them down as their popularity in Australia declined, I just became irritated with the way they looked on my bookshelves, as opposed to the uniform neatness of the numbered novels...

 

[sgsmitty]

I prefer standalone or episodic books as well. Only because I do not have the time to read as much as I would like. But, a well developed series can be very habit forming!

 

[Steve Roby]

donners22 said:

Beyond that though, the mini-series and particularly series crossovers just got way out of hand at one point.

I'm not sure you're necessarily talking about quite the same thing as the original poster. When I read the first post, I assumed it was referring to the continuity within the DS9 relaunch, and the way the A Time To... books, Articles of the Federation, the Titan books, and the post-Nemesis TNG books connect. I see that as a very different thing from the gimmicky crossovers and padded trilogies of a few years ago.

For a start, those crossovers and trilogies and whatnot felt like purely marketing-driven concepts. Even some of the writers didn't seem to fully buy into the idea; you wouldn't have to change much at all in Diane Carey's and Peter David's contributions to Gateways to make them completely standalone novels. Also, each of the crossovers and trilogies were pretty much self-contained -- you wouldn't get more out of reading Day of Honor by having read Invasion.

The current situation seems much more like a combination of two key factors: DS9's evolution into a more serialized form of storytelling over its seven seasons, and the freedom granted a line of books based on series that are no longer on the air. You can still pick up almost any random Star Trek book and follow it more easily than you might certain individual DS9 episodes if you hadn't been keeping up with that series on TV.

 

[AuntKate]

Elsewhere in this forum, I read comments by Peter David that indicated he was given a previously published book to read before he wrote his most recent novel Before Dishonor. That would seem to imply, to me, that a reader would also benefit from reading the previous book if he/she wanted to understand and enjoy the novel to the fullest.

I'm not talking about the crossover novels, although I find them equally irritating for different reasons (some are barely long enough to justify being a separate book, for example). Nor am I talking about the books that have created new casts not seen on the screen--those are a horse of a different color.

Some have said that a writer can "fill in the gaps" on a character carried over from a previous book sufficiently for a reader to understand the character's motivation and personality. I don't really buy that. As soon as a reader feels a little "left out" of a plot or of a character's motivation, the chance is good that the book will be laid aside--and that other Star Trek books will not be purchased.

This may be a bit off topic, but the blending of crews from various series into a TNG book or a DS9 book seems to be confusing. If a TNG book has several DS9 or VOY characters playing major roles in the plot, what makes it a TNG book and not a DS9 or VOY one? Perhaps it's time for us to come up with a new name for novels that are blending character from various series?

 

[Christopher]

AuntKate said:
Elsewhere in this forum, I read comments by Peter David that indicated he was given a previously published book to read before he wrote his most recent novel Before Dishonor. That would seem to imply, to me, that a reader would also benefit from reading the previous book if he/she wanted to understand and enjoy the novel to the fullest.

Actually what he said was that he wasn't given the previous book to read. This was in response to reader complaints about the changes in characterization between the two books.

Some have said that a writer can "fill in the gaps" on a character carried over from a previous book sufficiently for a reader to understand the character's motivation and personality. I don't really buy that. As soon as a reader feels a little "left out" of a plot or of a character's motivation, the chance is good that the book will be laid aside--and that other Star Trek books will not be purchased.

I don't think that's so. In every book you read, the characters are going to have a history that influences their behavior. Even if it's a pure standalone or the first book in a series, the characters will still have had lives before the first page of the book. And any past events that are relevant to the story will be revealed as you go.

Let's take an example from TV rather than prose: "The Cage," the first Star Trek story ever written. That pilot episode begins with the Enterprise crew recovering from a dangerous mission in the Rigel system, a mission in which the captain's personal yeoman was killed. That prior mission affects several things in the story. It sets up Pike's fatigue and doubts that drive the plot. It sets up his tension with his new female yeoman, Colt. It provides the source of the first Talosian illusion. But the fact that the story depends on prior events unseen by the viewer doesn't make it impossible for the viewer to understand what's going on, because everything relevant is explained.

Same with just about any other story. Casablanca arises from the past relationship between Rick and Ilsa, the established relationship between Rick and Renault, the previous adventures of Victor Laszlo and Ilsa, etc. Hamlet begins after the murder of Hamlet's father has already taken place. Most works of fiction depend partly on events that happened before the first scene, events the audience didn't see.

So it shouldn't matter whether those events were never told at all or were told in a previous book you haven't read. An author's goal in writing any book is to write it so it can work as a first book -- so any material that needs to refer back to previous books (or Trek episodes) is explained in much the same way it would be explained in a pure standalone novel.

This may be a bit off topic, but the blending of crews from various series into a TNG book or a DS9 book seems to be confusing. If a TNG book has several DS9 or VOY characters playing major roles in the plot, what makes it a TNG book and not a DS9 or VOY one?

The fact that the majority of the characters and the setting are TNG-centric, with the DS9 or VGR characters being merely "guest stars." Or vice-versa. The DS9 Avatar duology featured a "guest" appearance by the TNG cast, but the majority of the book was set on DS9 and featured DS9 characters, and it was quite clear that the TNG cast was secondary. The same with the appearance of Kirk's crew in the first Vanguard novel, the appearance of the TNG crew in the first SCE eBook, etc.

There are very few instances of full-on equal crossovers of the sort you're postulating. When a book isn't dominated by characters from any single series, it's generally published under the generic Star Trek label (using the latter-day movie logo that's considered generic, rather than the TOS graphic style used for TOS novels), as with the Lost Era books or next year's Destiny trilogy. The only case I can think of where a book had a specific series title that wasn't really warranted was The Best and the Brightest, a Starfleet Academy novel that was billed as a TNG book.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Christopher said:
The only case I can think of where a book had a specific series title that wasn't really warranted was The Best and the Brightest, a Starfleet Academy novel that was billed as a TNG book.

Keith would probably tell you that Diplomatic Implausibility isn't a true TNG tale, either.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher said:
it shouldn't matter whether those events were never told at all or were told in a previous book you haven't read. An author's goal in writing any book is to write it so it can work as a first book -- so any material that needs to refer back to previous books (or Trek episodes) is explained in much the same way it would be explained in a pure standalone novel.

Exactly. I recently chatted with a high school student who has to write a SF short story for an assignment and he wants to imply that it is part of an arc of stories that might eventually lead to a novel, but it's essential, for the assignment, that the short story also be self-contained.

I've met many ST fans over the years who seem to be always looking for a chance to opt out of something, ie. so they have an excuse not to read/see it. "Oh, this novel requires a knowledge of the one ST film I hate so I won't be reading that one." "I heard that book had too many unexplained in-jokes." "The books aren't canonical, so I refuse to read them." "I only read novels written by people who have direct connections to canonical ST". Etc.

If AuntKate wants truly stand-alone ST stories, then they are going to conflict with all the others. We also end up with hundreds - thousands! - of interesting guest crew characters who never get to grow beyond one story.

Christopher said:
The Best and the Brightest, a Starfleet Academy novel that was billed as a TNG book.

The original advance cover slick said, "Starfleet Academy".

Probably also the "Double Helix" mini-series, which was conceived and initially promoted as being a TNG/DS9/VOY cross-series mini-series, similar to previous crossover celebrations, but ended up coming out as a TNG-bannered mini-series within the regular, numbered run. A good move for Pocket, though, because at the time TNG novels were still outselling everything else by a mile, IIRC.

 

[Christopher]

Dayton Ward said:
Keith would probably tell you that Diplomatic Implausibility isn't a true TNG tale, either.

Oh yeah, and I'd agree. That one slipped my mind.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I'm glad that we have serial arcs for a number of the book series, though I enjoy the few stand-alones as well, purely for the fact that they are just that. I've recently begun to collect all the books, and have about 80 so far, a mix of old and new, and to be honest the old TOS stand alones, while I would say they are ok, are not the best. The newer interrelated books are much more enjoyable because they weave a wider tapestry of a type that we rarely see these days. Even televised trek didn't give us that type of tapestry, except when bringing together the franchises as a whole.

The most oft-quoted example is the A Time To... miniseries, and Articles of the Federation. They are all excellent duologies/books in their own right, but when brought together they become so much more - and so much more enjoyable. Even so, Star Trek has always been greater than the sum of its parts. Bringing the five series and ten (eleven) movies together makes a tapestry richer than any other. A tapestry rich enough for stand alones like Hollow Men-for which In The Pale Moonlight is explained perfectly well within the book-or for big arcs like the Deep Space Nine relaunch.

As long as Marco, Margaret and Keith keep up the good work with their seemingly inexaustible ideas working with people like Christopher, David, Peter, Michael, Andy, Dayton, Kevin, Geoffrey and so on, we really have nothing to complain about.