The Great Star Trek Pocket Novel Reread

[CaptainSarine]

Hi all,

I have decided to launch myself on a grand adventure - read or reread every single Star Trek book published by Pocket, starting with the Gene Roddenberry-penned novelization of The Motion Picture. I'll post a little review on here when I finish each one.

I have most of them already, those I don't have I will pick up as I go. I'm looking forward to this, especially as most of those published until the mid-nineties I have never read and even then it wasn't until the publication of Destiny in 2008 that I started reading them regularly.

The Destiny trilogy will be the cut-off point, though I have a hell of a lot of reading to do until then!

Anyone else ever tried something like this? Or interested in reading along?

Joel

 

[Timewalker]

How long, on average, does it take you to read one Star Trek novel?

 

[ryan123450]

Wow even if I read nothing but Trek this would take me about two decades.

 

[zarkon]

If you post your reading order in advance I don't mind reading along, I've got about 90% of them so it'll give me a good excuse to stop being so lazy about picking up the others.

How long, on average, does it take you to read one Star Trek novel?

For me personally 2-4 hours depending on the chunkiness of the book and the complexity of the writing.

 

[TigerBait]

Give yourself an extra few weeks for Probe, that bastard is a tough read...

 

[flandry84]

Just finished rereading The Captains' honour and I had forgotten just how downright strange some of it was.
Funny how wrong some assumptions made by the authors look in hindsight.


Anyhow,best of luck with your quest.

 

[CaptainSarine]

How long, on average, does it take you to read one Star Trek novel?

Depends entirely on the size, but generally in one day I can get through one. No longer than two or three days. This is a long term project.

Wow even if I read nothing but Trek this would take me about two decades.

Like I said above, long term project, though I hope in two or three years I can get through them.

If you post your reading order in advance I don't mind reading along, I've got about 90% of them so it'll give me a good excuse to stop being so lazy about picking up the others.

For me personally 2-4 hours depending on the chunkiness of the book and the complexity of the writing.

I'm following the publication order. I would have liked to do a chronological order but difficult to work out exactly where everything fits... I'll post tomorrow the first ten or twenty books and hopefully my first review of The Motion Picture.

Give yourself an extra few weeks for Probe, that bastard is a tough read...

Thanks for the advice!

Just finished rereading The Captains' honour and I had forgotten just how downright strange some of it was.
Funny how wrong some assumptions made by the authors look in hindsight.
Anyhow,best of luck with your quest.

Thanks! I'm on to The Klingon Gambit at the moment and some of it is quite... !

 

[F. King Daniel]

Wow, you all read WAY faster than me!

'm following the publication order. I would have liked to do a chronological order but difficult to work out exactly where everything fits... I'll post tomorrow the first ten or twenty books and hopefully my first review of The Motion Picture.

There was a blog I came across once, someone who did attempt chronological order. I think he reached Captain Pike's era before quitting.
And with the constant squishing of new stories into the timeline, trying it that way is a flawed plan from the get-go.

EDIT: I think this is it: www.youngtrek.com/startrekchronomain.html

 

[CaptainSarine]

Wow, you all read WAY faster than me!

'm following the publication order. I would have liked to do a chronological order but difficult to work out exactly where everything fits... I'll post tomorrow the first ten or twenty books and hopefully my first review of The Motion Picture.

There was a blog I came across once, someone who did attempt chronological order. I think he reached Captain Pike's era before quitting.
And with the constant squishing of new stories into the timeline, trying it that way is a flawed plan from the get-go.

EDIT: I think this is it: www.youngtrek.com/startrekchronomain.html

Thanks for the link! Yeah, I basically got to that decision as well. Difficult to work out where some of the novels fits in, especially as a lot of the earlier novels are only very barely canon in some instances.

 

[Christopher]

^None of the novels are canon at all; the term refers solely to the shows and films. The original core material is canon, derivative works from other sources are apocrypha. Many fans use the word "canon" when they're actually talking about continuity. I think the latter is what you're referring to here -- the fact that a lot of early novels had their own idiosyncratic takes on the Trek universe and don't quite fit with the others.

 

[zarkon]

And then there's Shadow Lord which isn't so much an idiosyncratic takes as it is buhwaaaahh?

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Good luck, CaptainSarine!

I'd love to do something like this. One of these (days?) (months?) years, I'm going to read/watch my way through all the episodes, films and novels that make up the "Novel Verse" continuity (at least, what I personally judge to be the Novel Verse continuity). I've got this wide-eyed notion that I'm going to do it in internal chronological order, starting with First Contact viewing one (there'll be a second later on), all the way through to The Cold Equations or whatever comes after it. It will be lengthy, alarmingly subjective, redundant in places, and awkward. It will also be glorious.

 

[JD]

I'm seriously considering starting back with the DS9 Relaunch and going through the Relaunch era from there. It won't be for quite a while though, because I've got a ton of stuff to catch up on before I start.

 

[CaptainSarine]

^None of the novels are canon at all; the term refers solely to the shows and films. The original core material is canon, derivative works from other sources are apocrypha. Many fans use the word "canon" when they're actually talking about continuity. I think the latter is what you're referring to here -- the fact that a lot of early novels had their own idiosyncratic takes on the Trek universe and don't quite fit with the others.

Christopher, I stand corrected. Yes I did mean continuity rather than canon. It is interesting to see how many of the early novels definitely seem to happen in a kind of parallel universe to the films and shows.

And then there's Shadow Lord which isn't so much an idiosyncratic takes as it is buhwaaaahh?

Haven't gotten to that one yet! I'll have to see what you mean when I do.

 

[Use of Time]

Wow, this is awesome because I just started something similar last week. I am working my way through all of the on screen Trek and starting over on all the novels. I am not reading them in order because I only have about 40 books total right now. However, there are three local used bookstores loaded with Trek. I'll have to fill in the missing pieces through internet shopping. It is going to be a long but fun road. Good luck. I am currently reading Into the Nebula which ironically, was written by the recently passed Gene DeWeese.

 

[WarsTrek1993]

Anyone else ever tried something like this? Or interested in reading along?

Joel

I'm doing a Star Trek read-through at the moment, too. My next novel is TOS: Shadows On The Sun. (Almost to the intro of Generations!!).
After that it's the prologue of Relics.

 

[Plaristes]

I look forward to reading your posts as each novel is read. :-)

 

[indianatrekker26]

i started this recently myself, about a month ago. I started reading them in publication order. Got from #1 The Motion Picture up to Yesterday's Son, before taking a breather, and reading some star wars.

 

[Kopernikus]

How long, on average, does it take you to read one Star Trek novel?

Depends entirely on the size, but generally in one day I can get through one. No longer than two or three days. This is a long term project.

Wow even if I read nothing but Trek this would take me about two decades.

Like I said above, long term project, though I hope in two or three years I can get through them.



I'm following the publication order. I would have liked to do a chronological order but difficult to work out exactly where everything fits... I'll post tomorrow the first ten or twenty books and hopefully my first review of The Motion Picture.

Give yourself an extra few weeks for Probe, that bastard is a tough read...

Thanks for the advice!

Just finished rereading The Captains' honour and I had forgotten just how downright strange some of it was.
Funny how wrong some assumptions made by the authors look in hindsight.
Anyhow,best of luck with your quest.

Thanks! I'm on to The Klingon Gambit at the moment and some of it is quite... !

Regarding the Chronological Order: This Blogger here is trying to do exactly that:
http://killie-booktalk.blogspot.de/p/star-trek-reading-challenge.html
But in the end it doesen't matter in which order you read them. I guess you could even read them sorted alphabetically by author or title, it would still be one hell of a challenge. After all, we're talking about 566 books at the moment, that's more than most people read in their entire life...
I for myself don't follow a strict order, except that I usually switch between a newer and an older novel. And since there are so many other interesting things to read, I usually manage to read only about 20 to 25 Trek-Books per year, amounting to 345 read novels since I started collecting about 12 years ago.

 

[Timewalker]

As an interesting FYI for anyone reading Sonni Cooper's novel Blackfire: Some of the material that didn't make it into the novel was published in a fanzine called Infinite Diversity, vol. 5. I was fortunate enough to find this 'zine on eBay, and am very much looking forward to reading it. I've no idea at all what may have been left out of the novel, or why. I would guess it was some combination of that material didn't fit into the story somehow, or it would have made the book too long... anyway, just mentioning this in case anyone else wants to read the rest of the story.