Star Trek and/or SF lit...?

[T'Bonz]

I read the DS9 relaunch faithfully.

Some TOS books.

Others depending upon my interest.

Sci Fi - it has been a while since I've read it heavily. Every now and then one will catch my eye.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I read Trek lit and SF lit regularly. I read two or three books at a time. (one at home and one at work, plus a back up) One is usually a Trek book. Though I'm a bit selective. TOS related books mostly, but I've enjoyed The Titan series and the recent Enterprise novels. they've tossed in a few SF concepts into some of them, but Star Trek works best when its about people rather than science.

 

[Psion]

I'm not quite at the point where I'm willing to say I won't read any more Star Trek books, but I'm certainly getting close. There's been a definite loss of quality between the early 80's and now. Even back then, an occasional novel misfired, but the books were still better written and frequently had imaginative plots.

I lay the blame at the door of Pocket Books. They chose quantity over quality in an effort to simply sell as many books as the bookstores would stock. Rather than cultivating a genre with the best of the best, it was more profitable (for a few years) to swamp the shelves with mediocre efforts.

I've always loved reading science fiction, Star Trek included. But as the quality suffered and Pocket rushed to put out as many books as possible, I've largely left them behind.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Sir Rhosis said:
I read and enjoyed the "Koloth and the prison camp" novel

"In the Name of Honor" by Dayton Ward.

I also read the first "Khan novel"

"The Eugenics Wars, Volume I: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh" by Greg Cox.

an earlier novel centering on Gary and Roberta

"Assignment: Eternity", also by Greg Cox.

Psion said:
I lay the blame at the door of Pocket Books. They chose quantity over quality in an effort to simply sell as many books as the bookstores would stock. Rather than cultivating a genre with the best of the best, it was more profitable (for a few years) to swamp the shelves with mediocre efforts.

For a long time Pocket was doing one MMPB book bimonthly, and the odd hardcover. They went monthly when TNG started (at a time of maximum viewership), alternating titles. By the time DS9 and VOY were around, the market was supporting two titles per month. the law of supply and demand.

However, in 1989, a memo was issued from the then-Star Trek office that the novels were no longer permitted to share original characters and storylines, nor could the focus be on anyone except the main casts of each series. The best chance a ST novel of achieving approved from the ST Office was for it to take on a cookie cutter format: a landing party/away mission to a new planet. This memo was not strictly adhered to after Roddenberry's death in 1991, but it took several years for the backlog to clear.

In recent years, the production has scaled back to one MMPB per month, although average wordcount has doubled. As someone who reads all the novels as they are published, including catching up on all the old Bantams, I've seen a steady improvement in overall quality, with a slump that coincides with "that memo" of the late 80s/early 90s.

The last few years have been almost uniformly excellent.

 

[USS Mariner]

The only author that I'll compulsively pick up any material from is Christopher. Ex Machina and Orion's Hounds are just good SF, let alone ST (especially the latter, as I'm not as interested in TNG, though I obviously still remember everything.)

The only non-Bennett books I've enjoyed in Trek-Lit are David Mack's Vanguard (No.1) and, of course, Spock Must Die.

I've read Ringworld, and I really need to find more Larry Niven.

 

[jimbtnp2]

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.

well said, but its mimicing sf on tv today

DS9 and especially nuBSG turned into ongoing - to nowhere - story telling. The idea of starting and ending an engaging story like TOS or Twilight Zone was dropped in favor of character driven drivel

For example - would you see an Indiana Jones about Indiana Jones, probably not, that's called a soap opera. Now take Raiders - a well defined stong character in an exciting story and you'll be first in line.

I've come to be indifferent to so-called Character development to mostly dreading it...
No need for "Days of our Trek Lives" in Star Trek

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Therin of Andor said:

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.

You seem to take my opinion as a personal affront.

Don't worry, it isn't contagious.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Nebusj said:

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.)

No, shelf space is fundamentally imbalanced by the fact that few of the books Pohl and Haldeman (and Varley and Ellison and...) have written are on the shelves at any given time. These are giants of the genre and I had to scour the used bookshops of Philadeplphia to find Jem. Surely you don't mean to equate the importance of the works in question? (And yes, that is elitist. I've read enough Trek lit and lit SF to know of what I speak.)

Thank God (or whatever Vast Active Living Intelligence System you may worship) for Vintage and their PKD re-issues.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
You seem to take my opinion as a personal affront.

Don't nitpick my posts into incomprehensibility.

 

[Nebusj]

Brutal Strudel said:
No, shelf space is fundamentally imbalanced by the fact that few of the books Pohl and Haldeman (and Varley and Ellison and...) have written are on the shelves at any given time.

Yes, because relatively few books of any particular author are in print at any one time. Relatively few books of any particular Trek author are in print at any one time either, yet there are enough Trek authors that in total they outnumber Pohl. What would you expect? Pohl has published, what, three books this century? If there were three Trek tie-in novels published since 2001 they'd be almost impossible to find too. But what with there being more than one person writing Trek tie-in novels, they can outproduce single authors, at least now that Asimov isn't writing anymore, and of course that's reflected in what books are published and sold.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Brutal Strudel said:
few of the books Pohl and Haldeman (and Varley and Ellison and...) have written are on the shelves at any given time. These are giants of the genre and I had to scour the used bookshops of Philadeplphia to find Jem.

Is the book still in print? In which case any good bookstore will order you in a copy.

If it's out of print, you can't complain the Borders doesn't stock it.

Here in Sydney we have a large science fiction specialist bookshop and the media section, while generous, would not be more than about one sixth of the total stock.

In regular bookstores, they might have a whole bookcase or so of science fiction novels, with a few rows dedicated to media tie-ins. I don't see that the tie-ins are overrunning the classics and new SF at all.

Actually, collectors of ST titles only would have the same complaint as you with "Jem". The chances that the one or two back titles they want to buy are "in stock" are very small. But again, if they really need it, the stores will order in any "in print" book.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

So B&N and Borders can't be expected to keep 6 or 7 (because often enough you can't find any) titles from the greats in stock so that 20% (more like 30% in my estimate) of the shelf space needs to go to another formulaic book designed not to nudge anybody out of his or her comfort zone? As you wish.

Suddenly, my feelings aren't so mixed.

EDIT: By comparison, go to the lit section and see how hard it is to find a decent cross-section of Roth or Oates or Updike or Amis or Doctorow. You'll find more than half of Patrick O'Brian's stuff and he died back in 1992. See how hard it is to special order what isn't on the shelf. SF fans (myself included) kvetch to high heaven about how our genre is direspected (Vonnegut went to great pains to distance himself from it--hell, to piss all over it--even as he plundered it for all his best ideas) and yet so few of us support the stuff that has true heft and merit. And so the cancer spreads.

 

[Deleted 2]

At my local bookstore, tie-in SF gets more shelf space than other SF, and has for a while now. Of course, fantasy, considering the genre's tendency to spawn vast series of tomes can easily crush both.

And, to be honest, pickings are indeed very slim amongst the ordinary SF that's stocked there. Like everything else, the genre has become more 'safe'. Which is why I read short stories almost exclusively these days.

 

[Jack Bauer]

Every bookstore in my area has more non media tie ins on the shelf than media tie ins.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Brutal Strudel said:
See how hard it is to special order what isn't on the shelf.

If it's in print you can order it.

If it's out of print, then the secondary markets linked from Amazon are bound to have the titles you need.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I know. I worked for Borders for five years. If you want a book badly enough you can find it. Doesn't change the fact that factory issue tie-ins are driving out the original SF works and that it takes a lot of the fun out of browsing.

Oh well. As the nice old Vulcan lady said, The market is the market, what can be done?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I've read one "Trek lit" book in the last ten years; I read three or four sf novels a year.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Brutal Strudel said:
I know. I worked for Borders for five years. If you want a book badly enough you can find it. Doesn't change the fact that factory issue tie-ins are driving out the original SF works and that it takes a lot of the fun out of browsing.

Then find yourself a science fiction specialist bookshop. They can't be that rare, can they? Sydney has two, and did have others.

Also, SF fans were (usually) early-adopter patrons of the Internet-based bookstores and the bricks 'n' mortar chain stores noticed this. Thus demand for SF classic titles on shelves has diminished.

 

[flandry84]

Recently I've seen more cohesion of the TREK universe in the lit output and I like that.Previous authors it seemed entered the Trek-world to tell their tale (with little regard to established facts) which really were just generic sci-fi stories in Trek clothes.
Nobody looking for "hard" sci-fi is going to pick up a Trek novel.
The current output IMHO is delivering in ways recent on-screen Trek never did.

 

[Cicero]

Therin of Andor said:
Then find yourself a science fiction specialist bookshop. They can't be that rare, can they? Sydney has two, and did have others.

I've not seen one in five years (I noticed last summer that it had closed).