Star Trek and/or SF lit...?

[Warped9]

Technically this could be considered a Trek Lit question, but this really is aimed at TOS fans.

Do you still read published Trek fiction? Do you read non Trek science fiction? I started way back with James Blish's adaptationsof the episodes and his novel Spock Must Die! but I soon gravitated to non Trek SF. Now non Trek SF is what I read predomiinantly and I don't bother with Trek lit anymore.

 

[Warped9]

Why oh why can I never get the start time on these things ever to work right?

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Well, I'll say what I would have clicked: I read Trek lit so very infrequently these days as to qualify as a "no." (I re-read The Entropy Effect* back in 2004 or 5 and that was the last Trek book I read; it was also the first Trek book I read since 1998--I stopped regularly reading Trek books back in 1986, when I was 16.) I read a lot of non-Trek SF; I plan on seeing William Gibson when he speaks at the Philadelphia Free Library in August. I also read a lot of hard-boiled crime (James Ellroy, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, George Pellecanos, James Cain, etc.) and so-called literary fiction. My all-time favorite author in any genre is Philip K. Dick.

*The parts that were a Star Trek novel--namely, those parts centered on Spock--were good. Those parts that read like third-rate Delany--namely, those parts centered on Sulu, the ridiculous, Mary Sue security chief and her crew of wacky/scary misfits, and on Hunter, the Mary Sue-squared captain of the border patrol vessel, were awful.

 

[Warped9]

^^ I gave up on Trek lit by the mid '90s. I've tried a handful of Trek books since, usually titles most talked about, but they had just diverged from what I felt could be much better. I've a fondness for some of the early Timescape/Pocket Trek books as well as one or two of the Bantam titles, but I've no interest after that.

On the other hand I now much prefer non Trek SF. Often enough I come across a novel or short story that would have been ideal as a Star Trek story, but Pocket doesn't seem at all interested in publishing those kind of books. Or perhaps no one is submitting those kind of stories. I don't know. All I know is that when I've tried some of the more recent reccommended Trek novels I've been very disappointed. A shame really because I'd really enjoy reading a Trek novel I could get into.

 

[Jack Bauer]

I read Trek Lit regularly and non Trek SF once in a while.

 

[TrekNut87]

I kind of gave up on Trek Lit in the late '90s. Everything I read just seemed so dry to me and I got bored very easily, although I did enjoy the Crucible trilogy this past year. Other than that, I don't have much interest in it. I much prefer non-Trek SF nowadays.

 

[Bad_Will_Riker]

<3 Maxi Mounds!

*snip*

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

I stopped reading new Trek Lit years ago, when the current trends in Trek Lit became established.

I love the old novels though, and I still re-read those.

But predominantly, my SF reading will be non tie-in.

Trek Lit lost my interest when it began to ape the shows' soap opera nature, there is very little SF left in them. I remember the old novels like Tears Of The Singers, Corona, even The Three Minute Universe, all took the familiar characters and inserted them into genuine SF stories, these were books that would make you think, that would present you with ideas, and provoke thought. Even the Marshak and Culbreath novels managed that. The worst of old Trek Lit had more spark to them than anything released now.

Now we get series that stretch into infinity, stories that go nowhere, and character developments that I don't even care for. I'm not saying that the stories aren't well written, or they aren't engaging. They fulfil the need that many fans need to see the adventures of their favourite characters to continue. But I can't help but see them as so much wanfank, excessive emphasis on irrelevant continuity. And that is something I would never type in the Trek Lit forum.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
Trek Lit lost my interest when it began to ape the shows' soap opera nature, there is very little SF left in them.

Please name the recent Star Trek novels which have "very little SF left in them" and are therefore less compelling than the Phoenix books.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Therin of Andor said:

The Laughing Vulcan said:
Trek Lit lost my interest when it began to ape the shows' soap opera nature, there is very little SF left in them.

Please name the recent Star Trek novels which have "very little SF left in them" and are therefore less compelling than the Phoenix books.

I stopped reading new Trek Lit years ago, when the current trends in Trek Lit became established.

I don't know any of the recent Trek novels. And this is where you will no doubt say, if I don't read them, how can I know how bad they are, to which I will reply, I don't want to read them, limited exposure was enough for me to form an opinion and act on it. To which you will reply, but such an ill-formed opinion without any weight to it should not be aired in polite company. Ad infintum

We're not in Trek Lit now. Don't nitpick my posts into incomprehensibility. I don't like current Trek Lit. I don't want to read current Trek Lit, I have posted my reasons why. Don't expect any deeper reasoning at this point.

 

[Deleted 2]

Therin of Andor said:
Please name the recent Star Trek novels which have "very little SF left in them" and are therefore less compelling than the Phoenix books.

Easy. Even the well-written recent Trek lit, such as Vulcan's Forge and it's successors, fit The Laughing Vulcan's description.

Current tie-in fiction is written to the tastes of a certain audience. And that's fine. Star Trek, on tv, never represented the cutting edge of science fiction. Not in the 1960s, not in the 1980s, and not in the 1990s. It doesn't make sense to expect naughties Star Trek tie-in fic to push the envelope in science fiction. Especially as science fiction is losing ground faster than other genres in a fiction market that is slinking to begin with.

 

[Spider]

I have never read a Star Trek novel. I suppose someday I should try one. Most of my reading now days is from Asimov's or Analog science fiction magazines. I rarely have the time anymore for a novel.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I have mixed feelings about tie-in lit in general. As a child, I was mildly dyslexic and thus read very little in the way of books up to the age of 12. No Narnia or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for me. Comic books I could handle and I read them voraciously. But in 1982, Pocket started the new line of Trek novels. Having been a Trekkie since I was nine, I resolved to plow through these and whatever old Bantam novels I could find in flea markets and the local used bookstore--something Bantam made easy for me when they re-issued their stuff about a year or two later. I also started to read the Dr. Who novelizations put out by Pinnacle and, later (in the states), Target. At sixteen, I largely abandonned tie-in lit for the likes of Frank Herbert, Harlan Ellison and the aforementioned John D. MacDonald but I can very likely say that, were it not for those early tie-ins, I may not be working toward a masters in English lit right now. So I owe them a debt of gratitude.

However... when I go into Barnes & Noble or Borders and see very little Pohl or Kim Stanley Robinson or Joe Haldeman on the shelves but shelf after shelf of comaparitively safe and unimaginative ST, SW and sundry other tie-ins growing like a cancer, well, it makes me cranky at best, sick at worst.

 

[blakbyrd]

I still read Trek lit and non-Trek SF once in awhile.

 

[Spider]

Brutal Strudel said:
However... when I go into Barnes & Noble or Borders and see very little Pohl or Kim Stanley Robinson or Joe Haldeman on the shelves but shelf after shelf of comaparitively safe and unimaginative ST, SW and sundry other tie-ins growing like a cancer, well, it makes me cranky at best, sick at worst.

I agree with your sentiment. Good and original science fiction is hard enough to find these days without franchise tie in novels eating up shelf space. It is, however, the market doing what it does best; giving the consumers what they want.

 

[Nebusj]

Brutal Strudel said:
However... when I go into Barnes & Noble or Borders and see very little Pohl or Kim Stanley Robinson or Joe Haldeman on the shelves but shelf after shelf of comaparitively safe and unimaginative ST, SW and sundry other tie-ins growing like a cancer, well, it makes me cranky at best, sick at worst.

Well, uh, you know, the hundred-or-so authors of the Pocket books Trek lines have written, collectively, more books than Joe Haldeman or maybe even Fred Pohl have, so shelf space is not really fundamentally imbalanced by that. (And at the Barnes and Nobles nearest me, at least, I'd say a good 80 percent of the shelf space is ``individual authors'' and the remainder tie-ins.)

Rather intriguing to me is that there's some reason to believe there's more science fiction being written, sold, and (presumably) read as romance rather than as science fiction, but I don't really know the ways to track those titles down since they grew up independently of the science fiction genre traces.

As for tie-in novels, I used to read them, but around the early 90s gave up when too many of the Original Series novels were in desperate need of a second draft and too many of the Next Generation novels were in need of a first. Haven't seriously felt an absence in my life since. I think the last Trek tie-in novels I read were re-readings of Strangers From The Sky or the John M Ford novels, which certainly have no reason to apologize for being ``merely'' tie-in novels.

 

[Mallory]

I don't generally have a lot of time for pleasure reading, but when I do I generally split my time between Trek Lit and non Trek SF.

 

[Warped9]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
I stopped reading new Trek Lit years ago, when the current trends in Trek Lit became established.

I love the old novels though, and I still re-read those.

But predominantly, my SF reading will be non tie-in.

Trek Lit lost my interest when it began to ape the shows' soap opera nature, there is very little SF left in them. I remember the old novels like Tears Of The Singers, Corona, even The Three Minute Universe, all took the familiar characters and inserted them into genuine SF stories, these were books that would make you think, that would present you with ideas, and provoke thought. Even the Marshak and Culbreath novels managed that. The worst of old Trek Lit had more spark to them than anything released now.

Now we get series that stretch into infinity, stories that go nowhere, and character developments that I don't even care for. I'm not saying that the stories aren't well written, or they aren't engaging. They fulfil the need that many fans need to see the adventures of their favourite characters to continue. But I can't help but see them as so much wanfank, excessive emphasis on irrelevant continuity. And that is something I would never type in the Trek Lit forum.

Pretty much my sentiments as well.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
We're not in Trek Lit now. Don't nitpick my posts into incomprehensibility.

I wouldn't dream of it. There's no way you'd listen.

You've lumped together all current Star Trek novels (and their authors) together as not enough like what Bantam and early Pocket tie-ins were doing without even sampling them. That's your blinkered choice to make.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

I'd say "rarely." I read most of them up to around 1985 or so, and since then have read a couple when the subject matter piqued my interest. For example, I read "The Joy Machine," by James Gunn because it was based on a Sturgeon outline. Forgive me for forgetting titles, but I read and enjoyed the "Koloth and the prison camp" novel a few years back, because of a desire to see how the author handled the transistion of the somewhat foppish character in "Tribbles" into the old warrior in "Blood OAth." I also read the first "Khan novel," based on a desire to see how the Eugenics War was handled (also because Gary Seven and Robert Lincoln were in it).

I know there was an earlier novel centering on Gary and Roberta, and if ever I see a copy at a used book store or the library, I would probably read it.

Sir Rhosis