The Past Decade of Trek Lit

[Thrawn]

^ Glad you gave Kill/Heal a chance, and that you enjoyed them. I remain proud of those, all these years later, along with my Treklit solo prose debut, SCE: Wildfire.

Honestly, despite many other amazing novels that I've also loved, Wildfire remains my favorite of yours.

 

[David Mack]

Thanks. It was a deeply personal work, full of veiled autobiographical material. I also wrote it in the emotional aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which as a New Yorker I witnessed first-hand on the street. Consequently, it's got a lot going on in a very limited number of words.

 

[BobtheGunslinge]

^ Glad you gave Kill/Heal a chance, and that you enjoyed them. I remain proud of those, all these years later, along with my Treklit solo prose debut, SCE: Wildfire.

I just wanted to tell you that Wildfire is what brought me back into Trek Literature after more than a decade. I bought the book because I saw it at a used book store for cheap and it had a Sabre on the cover! When Fleet Captains (the board game) came out, I decided to try the book to keep my interest up for the game...and ended up getting into Trek Lit in a big way (without having even gotten around to playing the game). The story was very well done.

 

[Mr Light]

Just finished A Time for War and Peace by KRAD...

this was a weird book in that it wasn't a single story but a large series of vignettes that took place right before Nemesis. I enjoyed it, but I was disappointed there wasn't a subplot about Shinzon and Romulus. I was looking forward to getting that situation fleshed out as well. I was also expecting Die Hard Worf to last longer than it did and maybe be the primary story, but given the threat level involved I guess that wouldn't make much sense

Was the hologram Kahless thing established in a previous book? And I'm assuming this isn't the first appearance of Nan Bacco, since they reference her meeting the crew before?

 

[Christopher]

I was disappointed there wasn't a subplot about Shinzon and Romulus. I was looking forward to getting that situation fleshed out as well.

See Dave Mack's "Twilight's Wrath" in Tales of the Dominion War.

And I'm assuming this isn't the first appearance of Nan Bacco, since they reference her meeting the crew before?

Actually it is her first appearance. Not every prior meeting of characters is actually depicted in a story (cf. Leila Kalomi, Areel Shaw, Philippa Louvois, Lenara Kahn...)

 

[Markonian]

If I'm not mistaken, Leila Kalomi meets Spock for the first time in TOS: Inception. Their evolving acquaintance from the first meeting to the goodbye was well-handled, Imho.

 

[Christopher]

The point is that in her earliest appearance on television in 1967, she was a newly created character who was nonetheless presented as someone Spock had known years before. So just because the main characters already know a guest character, that doesn't necessarily mean the character appeared in an earlier story. A prequel published over 40 years later doesn't count.

 

[KRAD]

this was a weird book in that it wasn't a single story but a large series of vignettes that took place right before Nemesis. I enjoyed it, but I was disappointed there wasn't a subplot about Shinzon and Romulus. I was looking forward to getting that situation fleshed out as well.

Our goal was to set up the Enterprise crew for Nemesis. In the movie, the Romulan coup was a surprise that came out of nowhere, so there really wasn't anything to set up. I can honestly say that the notion of doing any setup of Shinzon was never at any point discussed by any of the eight people involved in the creation of the miniseries (the two editors and the six writers).

I was also expecting Die Hard Worf to last longer than it did and maybe be the primary story, but given the threat level involved I guess that wouldn't make much sense

That was fun, but there wasn't a need to stretch that out over the whole book. Besides, I had other fish to fry.

Was the hologram Kahless thing established in a previous book? And I'm assuming this isn't the first appearance of Nan Bacco, since they reference her meeting the crew before?

No, the hologram Kahless was all me, though I was using that particular subplot to build on stuff established in The Left Hand of Destiny (and also reconciling Kahless going on walkabout at the end of that duology with his chronologically later appearance as Klingon emperor in Christie Golden's Voyager novels).

As for Bacco, that was, indeed, her first appearance, though I retrofitted her into the backstory and aftermath of the Gorn Crisis graphic novel by Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, and Igor Kordey (which has actually been the basis of most of the 24th-century Gorn stories....), which included an attack on the Federation colony on Cestus III.

 

[Mr Light]

Why the decision to make the new Federation President a sympathetic helpful character? Authority figures usually serve to add tension, not relieve it

 

[Christopher]

No doubt because Bacco was inspired largely by Jed Bartlet on The West Wing. Or maybe Keith was just tired of the cliche of the obstructionist, inept authority figure.

 

[Sci]

No doubt because Bacco was inspired largely by Jed Bartlet on The West Wing. Or maybe Keith was just tired of the cliche of the obstructionist, inept authority figure.

As a reader, I took it as KRAD wanting to do a story about good leadership, both to contrast with Min Zife (very definitely a story about bad leadership) and, I inferred, to express the optimism that the Federation is supposed to stand for in Star Trek.

 

[KRAD]

Why the decision to make the new Federation President a sympathetic helpful character? Authority figures usually serve to add tension, not relieve it

Not always. And it's a well Trek has dipped into waaaay too often. But that's far from the only purpose authority figures serve, especially in a franchise that's supposed to be about humanity being better.


Also I'm quoting both Christopher and Sci, who are both absolutely right in what they say:

No doubt because Bacco was inspired largely by Jed Bartlet on The West Wing. Or maybe Keith was just tired of the cliche of the obstructionist, inept authority figure.

As a reader, I took it as KRAD wanting to do a story about good leadership, both to contrast with Min Zife (very definitely a story about bad leadership) and, I inferred, to express the optimism that the Federation is supposed to stand for in Star Trek.

 

[Mr Light]

So I've been reading the books surrounding Nemesis and I really love how it feels like a single running storyline that's important to the characters and the universe. Back in the day when the shows were airing the novels were standalone out of necessity but I love how it's one big saga now.

I read "Death In Winter" then I went onto "Articles of Federation", but a few pages into it I found out I missed something vitally important in the first Titan novel, so I had to go back and read that!

Reading Articles of the Federation... really makes me wanna go back and watch The West Wing again

I'm almost tempted to re-read the Destiny trilogy right away, now that I actually know who all the people in it are!

 

[JD]

If you can, you should. I have a feeling that it is even better when you've followed the characters in the books leading up to it. I'd already read the books leading up to it before it came out, so I can't say for sure though.

 

[Mr Light]

Yeah when I read the Destiny trilogy it was pretty confusing because I was reading about thirty or so characters that I'd never heard of before And it felt like I was reading the second book of a series because they kept referencing all these recent encounters with the Borg.

 

[roseake]

I'm thinking of reading Death in Winter and onwards, although I haven't fully watched TNG yet. I'm very familiar with the main characters and the general plot, would I be at a disadvantage to just start reading if I haven't seen the whole series? And would you guys recommend Destiny? I've heard awesome things about it.

 

[Mr Light]

Destiny was an amazing ultimate Trek apocalypse story and a definite high point. I read that first before anything else though and it was confusing because there's like 30 characters in it and most of them were new to me.

When I went back I started with the last three books of the "Time To" series and they were all excellent and very important to the TNG mythos.

 

[Enterpriserules]

I do think that if you want to get back into the Trek lit world then the reading order from Trawn and The Trek Collective is the way to find your way back in. You can also check out Literary Treks, we talk about the books and comics as well as interview authors.

I think, personally, the best place to start is the "A Time To..." series and continue on from there. It just sets up so much of the 24th century, then you can branch off into Titan (since it seems like you have read most of the DS9r.)

 

[JD]

I'm thinking of reading Death in Winter and onwards, although I haven't fully watched TNG yet. I'm very familiar with the main characters and the general plot, would I be at a disadvantage to just start reading if I haven't seen the whole series? And would you guys recommend Destiny? I've heard awesome things about it.

I would at least recommend watching the movies first since they are closer chronologically to the books, and DiW and a lot of the books that came out around it follow up on the events in the last TNG movie, Nemesis.

 

[Mr Light]

I've been reading a lot lately...

"Articles of the Federation": Star Trek does West Wing. Despite not featuring any action or Starfleet ships it was entertaining and I liked it. Looking back on it, this really was just like the 1990s esque West Wing in that it depicted a brief peaceful and prosperous time in history right between the end of a major war (Cold War / Dominion War) and a vast tragedy that would erase that nativity (9-11 / Borg War). I can't even imagine how much extra work KRAD had to do for this book, inventing vast casts of political characters and back story and forms of government

Minor nit: I found no purpose to scenes where random characters watch newscasts. The newscasts themselves were important, but not the people watching them. I suppose it was to sell the average being's POV in the Federation, but I just found it unnecessary.

"Q&A": the 'ultimate' Q story. I really loved how it tied together every single Q appearance on the tv shows and showed that he had a master plan all along for the good of humanity. I much prefer actually serious Q to goofy for no reason Q.

I have to admit that I found the ending to be very anti-climactic though. The entire purpose of every Q appearance was to prepare humanity/Picard for this confrontation with these god-like beings who will destroy the universe... but it's all just over so fast and there's no larger consequences to the story. Picard basically walked into a white room and laughed and that was the entire story. I'm not sure exactly what more I would have done but it just really needed something MORE to sell the importance of this story.

I just started "Singular Destiny".... no opinion yet