I find the meta-genome to be brilliant. And there is far more to it than just the DNA code. The conduit and living crystal concepts are fascinating and fairly original to me.
The State of Star Trek Literature
- Thread starter Sxottlan
- Start date
^ Well, in just two posts, you've guaranteed that I'm never taking you seriously again.
These are things you have said:
1) The title "Rough Beasts of Empire", a literary allusion, is not a valid Star Trek title.
2) A character getting stabbed is "fantasy/horror".
3) A character getting stabbed is something you can read in "any other book of any other genre".
4) Dayton Ward's name is bland. As if that's an insult.
5) His blurbs are just as bland. As if he has anything to do with them, or that means anything about the books themselves.
6) "big Mack truck" is an acceptable nickname for someone.
7) Two of my favorite Trek developments ever - the Meta-genome and the Typhon Pact - are D- ideas.
8) A thoroughly legitimate sci-fi idea that TNG used, the Dyson sphere, is implied to be the same.
9) In order to disagree with you, someone must be "a scientist", also mentioned rather dismissively.
10) That you are more aware of what "Joe Q. Public" likes than anyone else, a hilarious claim on multiple levels.
11) That you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of tie-in novels. As a property becomes less popular, sales always go down.
12) That you are unaware that the adaptation of the recent movie DID make it to the best-seller list.
That's an amazing amount of inane to be contained in two posts. Just amazing.
These are things you have said:
1) The title "Rough Beasts of Empire", a literary allusion, is not a valid Star Trek title.
2) A character getting stabbed is "fantasy/horror".
3) A character getting stabbed is something you can read in "any other book of any other genre".
4) Dayton Ward's name is bland. As if that's an insult.
5) His blurbs are just as bland. As if he has anything to do with them, or that means anything about the books themselves.
6) "big Mack truck" is an acceptable nickname for someone.
7) Two of my favorite Trek developments ever - the Meta-genome and the Typhon Pact - are D- ideas.
8) A thoroughly legitimate sci-fi idea that TNG used, the Dyson sphere, is implied to be the same.
9) In order to disagree with you, someone must be "a scientist", also mentioned rather dismissively.
10) That you are more aware of what "Joe Q. Public" likes than anyone else, a hilarious claim on multiple levels.
11) That you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of tie-in novels. As a property becomes less popular, sales always go down.
12) That you are unaware that the adaptation of the recent movie DID make it to the best-seller list.
That's an amazing amount of inane to be contained in two posts. Just amazing.
Yeah, I think these have been two of the biggest WTF posts I've ever seen on this board.
Exactly what makes them so horrible. I like the meta-genome. The Gorn are lizards, so it's pretty much a given that they'd have eggs. I actually think the idea of a group of antagonistic races creating their own mini-Federation was a great idea, and opens up lot of very interesting story possibilities as we see the two groups compete.
I don't think I could possibly disagree with you more here. I've found the whole concept of the meta genome and the Shedai, and all of the stuff related to them to be very interesting. And besides it's not the like whole story is reliant on the meta-genome itself being itself being interesting, it's just a launching pad for the more intersting personal and interplanetary conflicts. As for the NYT list, I don't see where that has anything to do with the quality of the concepts in the books. Just because something isn't popular doesn't mean it isn't good, and just because something is popular doesn't mean it is good.
Agreed. I don't get the objection there. There's a grand tradition, going all the way back to TOS, of using literary quotes for Trek titles:
"By Any Other Name," "Whom Gods Destroy," "The Conscience of the King," "Dagger of the Mind," etc.
"Rough Beasts of Empire" sounds like a Trek title to me.
Excuse my irrelovance but I'm a Klingon on these boards and I'm sorry that I wasn't aware the literary reference, but it still sounds like a horror title to me. I'd like to see the Klingons move past that warrior shit and focus on more intelligant nazi type shit for a change. Kor was even more intelligant than Kirk in some ways noting how alike we are as a species suggesting a common anscestry. Understanding such a thing could solve alot of problems before they start. Yes, they're still slimy but they can't be all evil. Good Klingons would be great.
And this is science fiction, can't the Gorn have little Gorn babies. Trying to make Star Trek hard science fiction is just stupid. It should at least concentrate on being popular as well. I'll bring the grade up to a c- or a b-. I must have been thinking about that giant space drill, but Spock getting stabbed is not exactly thought provoking.
Joe Q
And this is science fiction, can't the Gorn have little Gorn babies. Trying to make Star Trek hard science fiction is just stupid. It should at least concentrate on being popular as well. I'll bring the grade up to a c- or a b-. I must have been thinking about that giant space drill, but Spock getting stabbed is not exactly thought provoking.
Joe Q
As opposed to "The Devil in the Dark" or "Wolf in the Fold"?
TOS always had a healthy dose of horror to it. Salt vampires, Jack the Ripper, killer androids, spooky ancient ruins, etcetera. That's part of what made it so fun.
By coincidence, I was just watching "The Man Trap" again. That's got strong horror elements to it.
Last edited:
So, Joe Q, you want the Klingons to move from Space Barbarians to Space Nazis?
*blink blink*
Please tell me I misunderstood?
*blink blink*
Please tell me I misunderstood?
Do Klingon's have Purple Tiger's Blood now? Warlocks perhaps?
13) You misspelled "irrelevance" as "irrelovance".
14) For some reason, you think horror books are often about "Empire"s.
15) You imply Klingons are in that book, when they aren't.
16) You say Klingons aren't "good", when they have been since TNG started.
17) You think Gorn having Gorn babies would be more popular than Gorn having Gorn eggs, for no reason at all.
18) You want Klingons to be more like Nazis.
19) We're mentioning that one again: You want Klingons to be more like Nazis.
20) And then, just before complaining the Klingons are lame, you call yourself one?!
I just... I can't...
Last edited:
I'm aware of very few horror movies dealing with the issue of how imperial regimes function. "Rough Beasts of Empire" is the sort of phrase I'd associate with Kipling, not Craven.
You have no fucking clue what you're talking about. There have been plenty[/] of "good" Klingons, and plenty of Klingon-centered stories that aren't all about mindless warmongering.
Sure, but every other damn species does that. Why not do something different?
Well, Joey, if you had actually read the book, I think you would have found the explorations of imperial politics found in Rough Beasts of Empire to be fairly thought-provoking. Saying that about Spock being stabbed at the beginning of the novel is a bit like saying, "Some old guy saying 'Rosebud' and dying isn't exactly thought-provoking."
Advertising is important. Overshadowing Trek with other genres is going to work? They're already in deep space, two hundred years from now, that's deep enough for me. There are other lighter ways to be complex and even thought provoking than weighing it down with heavy prose. TOS wasn't a stupid show because it expressed complex things in simple ways.
O.k., I'm out of here. Money less spent as they say. Won't be back.
O.k., I'm out of here. Money less spent as they say. Won't be back.
I've finished the Typhon Pact books and overall, I liked them. There were some rough patches, but pretty good overall.
There are some threads left hanging that I am quite interested in how they turn out.
I do not want spoilers, but I've returned to New Frontier with Dark Allies and I'm wondering if the last two NF books have the same sort of feel as the first eight NF books.
There are some threads left hanging that I am quite interested in how they turn out.
I do not want spoilers, but I've returned to New Frontier with Dark Allies and I'm wondering if the last two NF books have the same sort of feel as the first eight NF books.
Trek dabbled in the supernatural and the occult.
As opposed to "The Devil in the Dark" or "Wolf in the Fold"?
TOS always had a healthy dose of horror to it. Salt vampires, Jack the Ripper, killer androids, spooky ancient ruins, etcetera. That's part of what made it so fun.
By coincidence, I was just watching "The Man Trap" again. That's got strong horror elements to it.
Exactly. Which is why you're critizing Trek for incoprotrating non-existing "horror or fantasy" stuff doesn't even make sense. Even of someone being stabbed was somehow related to those two genre's specifically (), it wouldn't be totally unheard of for Trek to incorporte elements of those genre's in it's stories.
), it wouldn't be totally unheard of for Trek to incorporte elements of those genre's in it's stories.
Ummmmm, why? Have you even watched or read anything past TOS? The Klingons have been good guys a whole hell of alot longer than they were bad.And I'm sorry, but I find what the Klingons are today, a hell of a lot more interesting than "space nazi's", which has got to be one of the most unoriginal ideas in sci-fi at this point.
Why shouldn't the Gorn lay eggs, they are lizards, after all? As a general rule Trek does try to be at least somewhat realistic when it comes to this kind of stuff, so it only makes sense that it's lizard races would behave like real lizards do. Oh, and I found alot of the events set off by Spock's stabbing to be rather thought provoking. Here's an idea, how about you try reading more than a few pages of a book before you start criticizing it.
Actually that doesn't make any sense at all. There's no reason to assume that aliens would fall into the same taxonomic categories as Earthly life forms. That's as illogical as assuming that alien planets would have the same continents and rivers and mountain ranges as Earth. Just because an alien species happens to bear a surface resemblance to a Terrestrial category of life, it doesn't follow that the specifics of its biology or behavior would correspond to that category.
Even on Earth, one can't always make blanket generalizations about species based on their broad appearance. Some dinosaurs gave live birth. For that matter, so do many actual lizards.
