the state of the Borg in Trek Fiction?

[sonak]

Greetings. I hope you are all doing well. I've often thought the Borg Trek fiction books are among the best, with "Vendetta" of course setting the standard. But "The Return," "Resistance," and "Before Dishonor" are all good too. Then came "The Destiny Trilogy," and my question is basically two-fold: Are there Trek books featuring the Borg that I've missed, and is "the destiny trilogy" still the current word as far as there not being more Borg books being planned because that trilogy ended up with the break-up or liberation of the Collective?

I hope that this isn't wildly out-of-date and there've been like 5 borg books after "the destiny trilogy" because that would be kind of embarrassing.

 

[Bishop76]

Nah, you're pretty much up to date - the Borg are gone, hopefully for good.

 

[Christopher]

But "The Return," "Resistance," and "Before Dishonor" are all good too. Then came "The Destiny Trilogy," and my question is basically two-fold: Are there Trek books featuring the Borg that I've missed, and is "the destiny trilogy" still the current word as far as there not being more Borg books being planned because that trilogy ended up with the break-up or liberation of the Collective?

You didn't mention Greater Than the Sum by yours truly, which bridges the gap between Before Dishonor and Destiny. There's also the DS9 novel Mission Gamma: Lesser Evil by Robert Simpson, and the duology Homecoming/The Farther Shore by Christie Golden, following up on Voyager's series finale. And I there's a Corps of Engineers installment called "The Light" which deals with a crashed Borg cube, though I'm pretty sure it's only available in eBook form at the moment.

As for books (such as The Return) that are not part of the current main novel continuity, the Borg figure in Probe by various authors (though it's credited to Margaret Wander Bonanno) and Engines of Destiny by Gene DeWeese. They have a cameo in DS9: The Siege by Peter David (no relation to the DS9 episode of that name). And they probably play some role in the Star Trek Online tie-in novel The Needs of the Many by Mike Martin, though I don't know how big a role.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

As for books (such as The Return) that are not part of the current main novel continuity, the Borg figure in Probe by various authors (though it's credited to Margaret Wander Bonanno) and Engines of Destiny by Gene DeWeese. They have a cameo in DS9: The Siege by Peter David (no relation to the DS9 episode of that name). And they probably play some role in the Star Trek Online tie-in novel The Needs of the Many by Mike Martin, though I don't know how big a role.

Excepting the ST:O novel, there's no reason why any of these books you've listed don't fit with the "current main novel continuity." Even The Return fits without much difficulty; it gives a plausible reason for the Borg's sudden attack in First Contact. (I wanted to incorporate The Return into the "History of the Borg" article I wrote a few years ago for Star Trek Magazine, but Paul said it was off-limits; hell, I managed to fit most everything else credibly into a coherent narrative.)

The only real issue with these other books is the antiquity of the Borg Collective; Destiny posits that the Borg were first created only six thousand years ago. Vendetta has the Borg active as far back as two billion years ago, if I remember correctly, and the Borg are ancient in other books as well. This isn't impossible to reconcile; when the Borg assimilated the Mantilis survivors, Sedin's personality lodged itself in the Collective's hive mind through simple force of will, and this possibly created the Borg Queen personality.

And yes, I'm aware of the thematic resonance of Destiny representing both the alpha and the omega of the Borg (an argument that either Sci or Thrawn has put forth, as I recall), but for myself I'll continue to believe that Destiny doesn't tell the whole story of the Borg's origins, just one significant facet in their development.

 

[JD]

I haven't read it yet myself, but nobody has mentioned "Revenant", the Borg novella in Seven Deadly Sins. It takes place just before Destiny, but was actually written after it.

 

[Christopher]

Excepting the ST:O novel, there's no reason why any of these books you've listed don't fit with the "current main novel continuity."

Well, my point was simply that those books aren't integrated into the main continuity to the extent that the others are. But The Return is part of the Shatnerverse, whose later books do directly contradict the main novel timeline. As for Engines, I think it has some inconsistencies with Scotty's portrayal in other novels, though I don't recall exactly. And The Siege ends with the Rio Grande being blown up, making it inconsistent with canon and, well, the laws of nature (the Rio Grande is indestructible).

 

[Bishop76]

And The Siege ends with the Rio Grande being blown up, making it inconsistent with canon and, well, the laws of nature (the Rio Grande is indestructible).

 

[sonak]

But "The Return," "Resistance," and "Before Dishonor" are all good too. Then came "The Destiny Trilogy," and my question is basically two-fold: Are there Trek books featuring the Borg that I've missed, and is "the destiny trilogy" still the current word as far as there not being more Borg books being planned because that trilogy ended up with the break-up or liberation of the Collective?

You didn't mention Greater Than the Sum by yours truly, which bridges the gap between Before Dishonor and Destiny. There's also the DS9 novel Mission Gamma: Lesser Evil by Robert Simpson, and the duology Homecoming/The Farther Shore by Christie Golden, following up on Voyager's series finale. And I there's a Corps of Engineers installment called "The Light" which deals with a crashed Borg cube, though I'm pretty sure it's only available in eBook form at the moment.

As for books (such as The Return) that are not part of the current main novel continuity, the Borg figure in Probe by various authors (though it's credited to Margaret Wander Bonanno) and Engines of Destiny by Gene DeWeese. They have a cameo in DS9: The Siege by Peter David (no relation to the DS9 episode of that name). And they probably play some role in the Star Trek Online tie-in novel The Needs of the Many by Mike Martin, though I don't know how big a role.

thanks, but are these books actually featuring the Borg are are they just books with either Borg cameos or have the Borg as a background plot point?

(as an analogy, are they like that Voyager episode where they just have that Borg corpse at the end?)

And I thought Probe was a sequel to TVH that came out like twenty years ago. It actually has the Borg in it?

 

[Bishop76]

You do know that the Borg have been around for over 20 years, right? Hinted at in season 1 TNG and first appearing in season 2 in 1989. Probe was written about 2 or 3 years after that.

 

[Christopher]

thanks, but are these books actually featuring the Borg are are they just books with either Borg cameos or have the Borg as a background plot point?

The Borg play a major role in Engines of Destiny, Homecoming/The Farther Shore, and particularly Greater Than the Sum, as well as in "Revenant," which JD mentioned. They figure significantly in Lesser Evil. "The Light" is more about their technology than the Borg themselves, as I recall. Probe has them more as a background element, and as I said, they only cameo in The Siege.

And I thought Probe was a sequel to TVH that came out like twenty years ago. It actually has the Borg in it?

Not in it, but referenced indirectly. The Probe was described as having a past encounter with a machine civilization that the readers, but not the TOS-era characters, would recognize as the Borg. Maybe it's stretching to put that on the list, but I was picking out titles from the Borg article on Memory Beta and that was one of them.

 

[craig keith]

And The Siege ends with the Rio Grande being blown up, making it inconsistent with canon and, well, the laws of nature (the Rio Grande is indestructible).

Haha Indeed, Maybee instead of god trying to nick the Enterprise, He should have tried the Rio Grande

 

[F. King Daniel]

Probe described an attack by tens of thousends of "mites" (the Probe's term for humanoids) in a "sharp edged, cubical bubbles" which caused massive damage some millenia past.

In The Needs of the Many, the Borg are mentioned as a current threat during Seven's interview. In the DTI chapter Janeway's death and the Borg invasion are described as the biggest and most obvious difference between the STO timeline and the Destiny one.

I haven't read it myself, but I think...

Spoiler: The Delta Anomaly

a Borg scout lands on Earth and causes trouble in the STXI prequel young adult novel The Delta Anomaly

...there's no reason why any of these books you've listed don't fit with the "current main novel continuity"

If "Balance of Terror" and "Minefield", "Relics" and "Generations", and "True Q" and "The Q and the Grey" are all meant to be part of the same continuity, I don't see why a few conflicting novels can't be too.

 

[sonak]

OK, So thanks to all for your help on other books with the Borg, but as to the second question: there's still no plans to bring back the Borg yet?


don't epic Borg stories sell better?

 

[DonIago]

IMO the Borg coming back now would do Destiny a serious disservice.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

IMO the Borg coming back now would do Destiny a serious disservice.

And could possibly drive a ton of readers away.

 

[Bishop76]

Not only would the Borg coming back to Destiny a disservice, but it would do the fans a disservice. I have no idea how Borg based books sell, but by the time they finally got rid of them, the Borg had been messed up and declawed and defanged and overused so badly, so many times that it was nice to see them come in all brutal and bad-ass one last time, really fuck up the Federation, and then go out the way they did.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Not only would the Borg coming back to Destiny a disservice, but it would do the fans a disservice. I have no idea how Borg based books sell, but by the time they finally got rid of them, the Borg had been messed up and declawed and defanged and overused so badly, so many times that it was nice to see them come in all brutal and bad-ass one last time, really fuck up the Federation, and then go out the way they did.

 

[Christopher]

OK, So thanks to all for your help on other books with the Borg, but as to the second question: there's still no plans to bring back the Borg yet?

The plan was to bring their story to a definitive end. Where's the point in doing that if you just undo it a brief while later?

Besides, the Borg are still around in Star Trek Online and the comics.

don't epic Borg stories sell better?

Epic stories, if well-done, can sell well, but it's not like the Borg are the only villains in the entire Trek universe. There's a wealth of other ideas to draw on. And given that we've only just recently had Destiny, the single most epic Borg story ever, any attempt to follow it up so soon with another "epic Borg story" would just feel anticlimactic and imitative.

 

[Stevil2001]

As for Engines, I think it has some inconsistencies with Scotty's portrayal in other novels, though I don't recall exactly.

Engines of Destiny is part of Scotty's backstory (and forwardstory) in The Future Begins, and I don't recall any (in)significant deviations.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

OK, So thanks to all for your help on other books with the Borg, but as to the second question: there's still no plans to bring back the Borg yet?

The plan was to bring their story to a definitive end. Where's the point in doing that if you just undo it a brief while later?

Yes, but look, Christopher, at how many "final ends" the Daleks have had.

Or Galactus. Or Dr. Doom. Or Brainiac.

But mainly the Daleks.

I've no doubt there will be more Borg stories. They may be set before Destiny. They might even be set after Destiny.

I don't expect a Borg story within the next two or three years, but it will happen and the Borg will be back. Just like the Daleks.