STILL no nuTrek novels?

[Admiral_Young]

^ I don't get this comment. Are you suggesting that Christopher would allow any kind of personal conflict he may or may not have with New Trek's universe creep into his book? Given the nature of his previous "prime" universe books I seriously doubt he would do that. He would simply execute the story he had been hired to write.

 

[Christopher]

But not really nuTrek. I'm really curious to see how To Seek a Newer World would have turned out. I can see Greg Cox and David Mack and ADF letting stuff like 10,000 surviving Vulcans and magical impossible supernovae and slide, but could Christopher resist the temptation to "fix" the movie to comply with the how he would prefer to see the Trek universe? Would the novel have been packed with the science-y technobabble stuff that Christopher loves, but JJ and friends deliberately avoided?

The mandate was not to "fix" things or to take a critical tone, but to accept the universe as presented. The target audience was the new fans brought into Star Trek by the movie and unfamiliar with the rest of it, so the goal was to tell stories that worked within the new continuity and didn't throw in a lot of distracting attempts to reconcile it with the old stuff. And the goal was to tell stories that had a fast, action-oriented pace and light tone like the movie, so I knew going in that it required a different approach from my usual Trek work. But it wasn't the first time I've done a more action-oriented book; see my two Marvel novels.

And heck, although the movie had a few technical points I could quibble with, the same goes for a lot of other Trek productions. For the most part, I didn't want to "fix" it. I relished the opportunity to explore Star Trek with a new voice, a new style, and to embrace the potential of the new stuff the film gave us. I enjoy exploring the details of the Trek universe, and ST'09 gave me all sorts of fresh new details to play around with, like the new set designs, the new aliens, the new spacedock complex, the new character backgrounds and relationships... all this fresh new stuff that it was exciting to explore and discover.

Still, that's not incompatible with finding ways to work in subtle clarifications. That's part of how I explore details -- figuring out how they work and how they fit. For instance, I had a throwaway reference to "one of the Delta Vega Consortium's mostly automated mining planets," a painless and simple way of justifying the presence of two completely different planets named Delta Vega, a mere ten words rather than a distracting lecture. And I had exactly one sentence, in passing, about how the supernova that destroyed Romulus was an anomalous one whose effects propagated FTL through subspace. Stuff like that, things the continuity diehards would notice and go "Ohh, okay" about, but that the casual reader wouldn't even notice.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^Fascinating, thank you.
Now I'm more curious than ever to read it!

^ I don't get this comment. Are you suggesting that Christopher would allow any kind of personal conflict he may or may not have with New Trek's universe creep into his book? Given the nature of his previous "prime" universe books I seriously doubt he would do that. He would simply execute the story he had been hired to write.

Nothing as malicious as that. Just what I saw as a clash of storytelling styles and perhaps interpretations of certain happenings (which have been debated to death here in the past and probably will be again). Which Christopher addressed.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Fair enough.

 

[Christopher]

Well, the issue of the Vulcan refugees (which is probably what KingDaniel is thinking of) didn't come up in Seek a Newer World. But my interpretation is the same as that of the screenwriters (or at least the one who regularly discusses things with the fans), so I don't think I would've run into any trouble there if I had addressed it.

I understand that my job as a tie-in author is to respect the style and intentions of the universe I'm tying into. I try to balance that with my own style and voice as a writer -- to adapt myself to the subject matter while still bringing my own particular perspective to it. And it's not really that hard to do that with the Abramsverse. Yes, there are a few things in the movie that are very difficult to rationalize scientifically (though the same can be said of just about any Trek movie), but there's also a thread of good science running through it, nice little details like the way the sound drops out when the camera follows the Kelvin crewwoman who's sucked into vacuum, and the use of a model of alternate timelines that's grounded in real quantum physics. Screenwriter Roberto Orci's comments in interviews and online have shown a good understanding of and regard for science, so in writing SaNW I tried to follow his lead.

And of course my book wasn't about the Romulan supernova or the destruction of Vulcan or Delta Vega or any of that stuff. I slipped in passing allusions here and there, but my job was not to deconstruct the movie. It was to tell an original, standalone story set in the movie's continuity. So the kinds of topics I've debated about here on the board wouldn't really have played much of a role in the story.

 

[JD]

Just out of curiosity, did any of you guys deal with any of the new supporting or background characters, like "Madeline", "Cupcake", or Keenser?

 

[David Mack]

^ Keenser had some fun moments in More Beautiful Than Death.

 

[Christopher]

Keenser had a good moment or two in SaNW. I tried to establish a species name for him, but the studio shot it down. (I was going to call him a Purba, after the real surname of Deep Roy, who played him.) I think I made a passing reference to the character nicknamed "Madeline," though not under that nickname, of course (I didn't even know about it until recently).

 

[JD]

I just found it when I looked her up while writing that post. I don't know why, but she really caught my eye when I first saw the movie.