The funny thing is if you replace the word "Catom" with "Pixie Dust" it doesn't change the story one bit.
If it was pixie dust, wouldn't the entire plot revolve around Ezri?
Star Trek Destiny!
- Thread starter Smitty
- Start date
If it was pixie dust, wouldn't the entire plot revolve around Ezri?
Further deconstruction, just for the hell of it:
Doesn't it? In order to answer that question, we must define what "pixie dust" actually is and what it has been reputed to do. Has it ever been characterized as possessing the range of abilities ascribed to the Caeliar's catoms?
I looked up "pixie dust" on Wikipedia, and it directed me to the article on Tinker Bell. Google suggested the same: that the term originated in the Disney film of Peter Pan. (In the play version thereof, it's called fairy dust, and Tinker Bell is a fairy instead of a pixie as in the movie; I wonder if Disney changed it for homophobic reasons.) In the film and play, the only demonstrated power of pixie/fairy dust is inducing the ability to levitate in children with sufficient willingness to believe. (So basically it's a substance that Peter Pan pushes kids to take in order to get high. And he then convinces them to run away from home and live with him. Sounds kinda creepy when you put it that way.) In subsequent Disney depictions of Tinker Bell, pixie dust seems to have the additional ability to make the studio logo materialize, but I don't think this counts as canonical.
So in fact, pixie dust has only one of the demonstrated properties of catoms, namely levitation. It can't allow transformation of matter, metamorphosis of self, immortality, group consciousness, or any of the other demonstrated abilities of universal-assembler nanites sharing a networked intelligence. Therefore the substitution TerraUnam suggests would in fact radically alter the story. Not to mention that it might've attracted the attention of Disney's lawyers, which would make a Borg invasion seem mild in comparison.
The funny thing is if you replace the word "Catom" with "Pixie Dust" it doesn't change the story one bit.
Doesn't it? In order to answer that question, we must define what "pixie dust" actually is and what it has been reputed to do. Has it ever been characterized as possessing the range of abilities ascribed to the Caeliar's catoms?
I looked up "pixie dust" on Wikipedia, and it directed me to the article on Tinker Bell. Google suggested the same: that the term originated in the Disney film of Peter Pan. (In the play version thereof, it's called fairy dust, and Tinker Bell is a fairy instead of a pixie as in the movie; I wonder if Disney changed it for homophobic reasons.) In the film and play, the only demonstrated power of pixie/fairy dust is inducing the ability to levitate in children with sufficient willingness to believe. (So basically it's a substance that Peter Pan pushes kids to take in order to get high. And he then convinces them to run away from home and live with him. Sounds kinda creepy when you put it that way.) In subsequent Disney depictions of Tinker Bell, pixie dust seems to have the additional ability to make the studio logo materialize, but I don't think this counts as canonical.
So in fact, pixie dust has only one of the demonstrated properties of catoms, namely levitation. It can't allow transformation of matter, metamorphosis of self, immortality, group consciousness, or any of the other demonstrated abilities of universal-assembler nanites sharing a networked intelligence. Therefore the substitution TerraUnam suggests would in fact radically alter the story. Not to mention that it might've attracted the attention of Disney's lawyers, which would make a Borg invasion seem mild in comparison.
And it wouldn't even work unless everyone was thinking happy thoughts!
Antimatter is a real physical concept too but it won't make your ship travel faster than light.
For that, we need Fictional Enhancement.
Apparently Catoms don't work unless you are thinking Happy Thoughts, er, linked with the Gestalt.
Which isn't to say that Destiny wasn't a great story, it was.
For that, we need Fictional Enhancement.
Apparently Catoms don't work unless you are thinking Happy Thoughts, er, linked with the Gestalt.
Which isn't to say that Destiny wasn't a great story, it was.
Of course they work without being linked to the Gestalt. All of Borg technology is built on catoms.
I don't understand what your complaint is. Of course science fiction is about extrapolating beyond reality, so what else is new?
Besides, Star Trek has given us plenty of hyper-advanced aliens with godlike powers, but it's usually been treated as a form of psychic mumbo-jumbo, evolution into "incorporeal beings" (which really just means angels or spirits with the religious implications filtered out), or just snapping their fingers and doing magic. Personally I found it refreshing that Dave chose to portray a hyperadvanced intelligence in a more grounded, better researched, and less cliched way. Ever since K. Eric Drexler wrote Engines of Creation in 1986 and popularized the notion of nanotechnology, it's been a staple of science fiction literature, but Star Trek has done far too little with it, since it's difficult to graft onto the fundamentally 1940s-pulp framework of ST technology. But Dave took the concept and ran with it, and thus managed to make Destiny feel more up-to-date conceptually than if he'd just painted the Caeliar as another bunch of Organians or Q.
I haven't read this thread to closely...as that I've just started Book Three and don't want to get too spoiled...
But, I just have to say...7000 Borg cubes!!!
HOLY SHIT!!! (I love it!)
That's the same crazy 'get-their-attention' stuff I used to do running my old FASA Star Trek RPG.
I suspect this is going to be a long night of (almost) non-stop reading. I better go get some Jack-In-The-Box mystery meat tacos so I can feed myself and not stop reading. (They're easy to gob down while reading...trust me.)
But, I just have to say...7000 Borg cubes!!!
HOLY SHIT!!! (I love it!)
That's the same crazy 'get-their-attention' stuff I used to do running my old FASA Star Trek RPG.
I suspect this is going to be a long night of (almost) non-stop reading. I better go get some Jack-In-The-Box mystery meat tacos so I can feed myself and not stop reading. (They're easy to gob down while reading...trust me.)
Well, finished Destiny: Lost Souls...and WOW!
Talk about game-changing event. Awesomely epic story, wonderfully smart plot line and snappy dramatic writing.
Though I don't count myself a 'Borg Hater' I am rather glad to see them removed from the Litverse and I'm very satisfied on how that was accomplished.
After a long absence from Treklit (tho I did read enjoy Greg Cox excellent Eugenics Wars series) Destiny & Vanguard have definitely got me back into reading Star Trek.
Well done and thank you Mr. Mack.
Now I'm off to read William Leisner's Losing The Peace & Keith R. A. Decandido's A Singular Destiny.
That's the nice thing about 'catching up'...plenty of good books to read waiting in the wings.
Talk about game-changing event. Awesomely epic story, wonderfully smart plot line and snappy dramatic writing.
Though I don't count myself a 'Borg Hater' I am rather glad to see them removed from the Litverse and I'm very satisfied on how that was accomplished.
After a long absence from Treklit (tho I did read enjoy Greg Cox excellent Eugenics Wars series) Destiny & Vanguard have definitely got me back into reading Star Trek.
Well done and thank you Mr. Mack.
Now I'm off to read William Leisner's Losing The Peace & Keith R. A. Decandido's A Singular Destiny.
That's the nice thing about 'catching up'...plenty of good books to read waiting in the wings.
Glad you enjoyed the trilogy, Jakks! Happy to hear that it and Vanguard are what drew you back into the Treklit. 
Not yet. It seems unlikely that S&S would collect them, though, since the finished tome would exceed 300,000 words and need to be an absolutely massive hardcover. Considering the saturation level of the paperbacks, I'm not sure how much of a market for a hardcover collection there would be at this point.
And by the way, individual novels aren't called "issues" the way magazines and comics are. Installments in a book series are "volumes." Or just "books."
Thanks, I'm aware of that. I was just a bit of a less cautious / loss in my forum posts. I typically use works like book, novel, part (e.g. the first part of TP), etc.
And to be honest, as Chris is well aware, language is always changing and the use of one word can often be changed to mean something else. Issue could very well be adopted as a new term for describing multi volume book series one day and you Janos could have began that change.
Actually, I have to apologize. My last few posts have been riddled with typos.
So, sorry everyone.
I apologize for bumping the thread, but I just finished Gods of Night, and wanted to offer a review of it without having to start a brand-new thread.
*** Spoilers ahead ***
I'm a huge fan of the DS9 crew, in particular the two Daxes, so it was great to have such a large portion of the story told from their respective POVs (it was also great that we start with one Dax and then immediately go to the other, and see how they reacted to/dealt with more or less the same situation). Speaking of the latter Dax (Ezri), being a Captain really seems to suit her, and is a perfect evolution of her character from where she was during the DS9 Relaunch (which I still haven't finished). It was also great to see Sam Bowers again, although I do have to say that there seemed to me to be some discrepancies between Destiny and his role/personality as described by/in the DS9 Relaunch novels, as he seemed to be much older here than is described in said novels (particularly Avatar). That's not really a bad thing, but is definitely something that I noticed.
I also really liked the rest of the Aventine's crew, and would be more than open to them getting their own novels to play in at some point down the line.
This novel constituted my second exposure to the post-Nemesis TNG crew, and after just having finished Paths of Disharmony, it was fun to see many of them at an earlier point in their lives/character development; it was also great to get to learn more about the one TNG Relaunch character who's mentioned in PoD but not seen, that being Miranda Kadohata.
The book's back cover may have put the emphasis/focus on the Borg's invasion, but the 'core' of this novel's storyline was really the stuff involving the Aventine and the Columbia, which I thought was great; it was neat/awesome to find out more about that particular ship and her crew, and the tragic nature of their encounter with the Caeliar really had me on the proverbial edge of my seat through most of the novel.
Speaking of the Caeliar, they have to be one of the most interesting alien races/species to come out of the ST universe in a while, and really reminded me in some ways of the Shedai.
I also enjoyed the portions of the book that dealt with the Titan and her crew, and was fascinated by the drama playing itself out between Riker and Troi (and am dying to know/find out how/if it plays into their own encounter with the Caeliar). I also liked the interpersonal relationships between many of the ship's other major crewmembers. The relationship between Christine Vale and Riker really reminded me in some ways of the early relationship between Janeway and Chakotay, which was great to see.
The only issue I had with regards to the Titan, her role in the story, and her crew is that, not having read any of the other Titan novels in their entirety, I kind of had a hard time acclimating to the idea of Tuvok being part of the ship's crew (particularly because his role seems somewhat redundant, at least to me; I've never understood the need for the positions of Tactical Officer and Chief of Security to be separated when it comes to starships in the Trek universe); it also didn't help that his actual role in this particular novel was fairly minor, especially in comparison to most of the ship's other major crew members.
I've never shared some people's resistance (no pun intended) to the amount of times that the Borg have been used over the years in both TNG and Voyager (especially the latter), and thought it was great to see them in action again (particularly after the events of Homecoming/The Farther Shore); I do have to say, though, that as I read through the book, I found myself dying to know what motivated the dramatic shift in their modus operandi, and was somewhat disappointed that the book didn't really address that (hopefully it'll come up in Mere Mortals - which I'm currently reading - or Lost Souls).
One final thought: can anybody tell me what the book's title refers to? The story doesn't really specify/provide any clues, and I'm dying to know.
*** Spoilers ahead ***
I'm a huge fan of the DS9 crew, in particular the two Daxes, so it was great to have such a large portion of the story told from their respective POVs (it was also great that we start with one Dax and then immediately go to the other, and see how they reacted to/dealt with more or less the same situation). Speaking of the latter Dax (Ezri), being a Captain really seems to suit her, and is a perfect evolution of her character from where she was during the DS9 Relaunch (which I still haven't finished). It was also great to see Sam Bowers again, although I do have to say that there seemed to me to be some discrepancies between Destiny and his role/personality as described by/in the DS9 Relaunch novels, as he seemed to be much older here than is described in said novels (particularly Avatar). That's not really a bad thing, but is definitely something that I noticed.
I also really liked the rest of the Aventine's crew, and would be more than open to them getting their own novels to play in at some point down the line.
This novel constituted my second exposure to the post-Nemesis TNG crew, and after just having finished Paths of Disharmony, it was fun to see many of them at an earlier point in their lives/character development; it was also great to get to learn more about the one TNG Relaunch character who's mentioned in PoD but not seen, that being Miranda Kadohata.
The book's back cover may have put the emphasis/focus on the Borg's invasion, but the 'core' of this novel's storyline was really the stuff involving the Aventine and the Columbia, which I thought was great; it was neat/awesome to find out more about that particular ship and her crew, and the tragic nature of their encounter with the Caeliar really had me on the proverbial edge of my seat through most of the novel.
Speaking of the Caeliar, they have to be one of the most interesting alien races/species to come out of the ST universe in a while, and really reminded me in some ways of the Shedai.
I also enjoyed the portions of the book that dealt with the Titan and her crew, and was fascinated by the drama playing itself out between Riker and Troi (and am dying to know/find out how/if it plays into their own encounter with the Caeliar). I also liked the interpersonal relationships between many of the ship's other major crewmembers. The relationship between Christine Vale and Riker really reminded me in some ways of the early relationship between Janeway and Chakotay, which was great to see.
The only issue I had with regards to the Titan, her role in the story, and her crew is that, not having read any of the other Titan novels in their entirety, I kind of had a hard time acclimating to the idea of Tuvok being part of the ship's crew (particularly because his role seems somewhat redundant, at least to me; I've never understood the need for the positions of Tactical Officer and Chief of Security to be separated when it comes to starships in the Trek universe); it also didn't help that his actual role in this particular novel was fairly minor, especially in comparison to most of the ship's other major crew members.
I've never shared some people's resistance (no pun intended) to the amount of times that the Borg have been used over the years in both TNG and Voyager (especially the latter), and thought it was great to see them in action again (particularly after the events of Homecoming/The Farther Shore); I do have to say, though, that as I read through the book, I found myself dying to know what motivated the dramatic shift in their modus operandi, and was somewhat disappointed that the book didn't really address that (hopefully it'll come up in Mere Mortals - which I'm currently reading - or Lost Souls).
One final thought: can anybody tell me what the book's title refers to? The story doesn't really specify/provide any clues, and I'm dying to know.
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