TNG book recommendations?

[Greg Cox]

Note that Explorer didn't just publish TNG stories, but explored most flavors of Trek: TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOYAGER, etc. Even a couple of DISCO stories near the end. And this is reflected in the three hardcover collections Titan published, each of which features stories from all across the franchise -- including a fair amount of TNG tales.

Full disclosure: I wrote multiple stories for the magazine, including at least two TNG stories: a Dixon Hill holodeck mystery and a solo adventure for Doctor Pulaski.

I miss writing for and reading that magazine.

Meanwhile, I just remembered The Sky's the Limit, an exclusively TNG anthology, published on the occasion of the show's 20th anniversary. Edited by Marco Palmieri.

 

[JD]

Good Reads ratings aren't that great. I finished up The Book of Lost Hours for book club today, and it was rated 4.09. I'd give the book 2/5.

If I read a short story by a Trek author and enjoy it, I'm more likely to read their novels. I'd suggest this to the original poster. A lot produced short stories for a Star Trek magazine. It's a good way to find authors to read.

And reading anthologies in general is how I'm discovering authors to read too.

Thanks for the tip. It what way have they changed? What background would I need to know going into them?

Probably the biggest change was brought about by the big crossover trilogy Destiny. If you plan on reading Destiny, which is absolutely fantastic, I would avoid this spoiler
A few years after Nemesis, the Borg launched a massive invasion of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, that left entire planets wiped out, and I think possibly billions dead. They were eventually defeated with the help of the race they originally split off from, and in the process the entire Collective was transformed and disappeared.

I assume Riker and Troi are gone (on the Titan) and Data is still dead?

Yes and Yes.

Has B4 become a staple character?

No, he is pretty much written off right after Nemesis.

Has Worf come back, or is he still off on DS9?

Worf was already back before Nemesis. The events that brought him back to the Enterprise were covered in the A Time To.. series, which fill is set between Insurrection and Nemesis and explores some of the new developments in Nemesis, like Worf being back and Troi and Riker's marriage.

Come to think of it, besides Picard, La Forge and Crusher, who's left on the Enterprise?

And Worf, the books fill out the rest of the cast with new characters and also brought back a few other characters from the TV series.

That is a great suggestion. I do the same with non-Trek fiction to find authors I like, so it make sense to apply that strategy here as well. Are there any TNG anthologies you can recommend? Or can you point me to where I can find reprints of stories from the magazine?

The Sky's the Limit is a TNG only anthology that was released to celebrate the show's either 20th or 25, I can't remember which, anniversary.

The Amazing Stories is an anthology of TNG and Voyager short stories that were originally released in The Amazing Stories magazine.

There are also several themed anthologies that include TNG stories
Enterprise Logs features stories of every ship named Enterprise from old sailing ships through to the Enterprise-D. NOTE: This was written in 2000 so it doesn't include the NX-01 or any of the other Enterprises introduced since then.
Tales of the Dominion War features stories about what the non-DS9 characters were doing during the Dominion War and includes several stories including TNG characters.
Seven Deadly Sins has 7 novellas focused on the biblical Seven Deadly Sins, and the Gluttony/Borg story stars a character introduced in a TNG episode, and the Sloth/Pakled story is a full on TNG story with the whole cast.
If you're interested in alternate universes there's The Myiriad Universes series which features several

As I was reading through older threads in this forum I saw a post that said Peter David's dialogue sounds like it's out of a comic book. I realize that's just one person's opinion, but it scared me a bit. Now that the idea has been planted in my head, I'm afraid I'll be predisposed to be judgemental of David's dialogue.

Peter David was also a comic book writer, so he did tend to bring that kind of style to his Star Trek novels at times.

 

[Greg Cox]

Seven Deadly Sins has 7 novellas focused on the biblical Seven Deadly Sins, and the Gluttony/Borg story stars a character introduced in a TNG episode, and the Sloth/Pakled story is a full on TNG story with the whole cast.
If you're interested in alternate universes there's The Myiriad Universes series which features several

I wrote that Sloth story about the Pakleds. I always joke that the other writers got assigned the "fun" sins like Lust and Wrath and such, and somehow I ended up with Sloth.

"Hey, who should we get to write the Sloth story?"
"Maybe Greg? He'd be perfect for it!"

 

[bdub76]

I wrote that Sloth story about the Pakleds. I always joke that the other writers got assigned the "fun" sins like Lust and Wrath and such, and somehow I ended up with Sloth.

"Hey, who should we get to write the Sloth story?"
"Maybe Greg? He'd be perfect for it!"

You could have always turned in a story about alien:

 

[Therin of Andor]

There was a magazine called Star Trek Explorer that recently stopped. They put out a bunch of anthologies.

Star Trek short story collections by Ian McLean, on Flickr

Star Trek Explorer Presents... "The Short Story Collection", "'Q and False' and Other Stories", "'The Mission' and Other Stories", and "'A Year to the Day That I Saw Myself Die' and Other Stories".

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm afraid I'll be predisposed to be judgemental of David's dialogue.

Well, I love Peter David's writing style. It is humour with a delightful twist.

 

[Cicero]

I was a bit surprised to see All Good Things... rated so well. Do you think that's just spill over from fans loving the televised episode, or does the novelization stand on its own as decent literature?

Reviews make it sound like that's the case, but I only read Unification, Relics, and Descent.

While I'm new TNG fandom, I've been a lifelong hardcore Doctor Who fan. For the most part, Doctor Who's novelisations (not a typo -- "s" because it's British) are viewed fondly for nostalgia and simple fun, but not considered to be on the same level the original fiction. There are exceptions of course (towards the end of the novelisation range they made a concerted effort to improve their quality), but overall they're considered inferior. That may have biased me into assuming the same is true for Star Trek novelizations.

It largely is, but some novelizations make their episodes better—Relics, Emissary, and The Way of the Warrior, aside from the lack of the latter's root beer scene. One was also an expansion by the writer of the teleplay (Jeri Taylor's Unification).

 

[Atomic_Monkey]

Reviews make it sound like that's the case, but I only read Unification, Relics, and Descent.

What did you think of those three? Have you read any of the movie novelizations?

It largely is, but some novelizations make their episodes better—Relics, Emissary, and The Way of the Warrior, aside from the lack of the latter's root beer scene. One was also an expansion by the writer of the teleplay (Jeri Taylor's Unification).

It's the same with Doctor Who novelisations. For a lot of them, it was as if the author was simply watching the televised episode and describing what they saw on screen in very matter of fact terms. Nothing new was added, and the prose was uninspired. But there were exceptions where the author added depth to the characters or plot, and/or they upped their prose, and that was more likely to happen when the writer of the teleplay wrote the book. Also, the earlier novelisations were aimed towards children because they believed that was their target audience, but once it became apparently teens and adults were major consumers the writing became more sophisticated.

 

[Christopher]

It's the same with Doctor Who novelisations. For a lot of them, it was as if the author was simply watching the the televised episode and describing what they saw on screen in very matter of fact terms. Nothing new was added, and the prose was uninspired.

Novelizations are based on scripts, which is why they often differ from the final aired episodes. Just watching the episodes wouldn't necessarily provide an adapter with full names and spellings, background information, and so forth. Also, most novelizations are meant to come out around the same time as the things they're adapting, so they have to be written before release, although that doesn't apply to most of the Doctor Who adaptations, many of which came out decades after the fact.

Then again, Alan Dean Foster's adaptations of the animated Star Trek often changed the official spellings in ways that fit the pronunciations, so either he had access to the episodes in addition to the scripts, or there were pronunciation guides provided to him.

 

[Atomic_Monkey]

Here are three books I'm considering adding to my queue. Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about them?

Ship of the Line -- I believe this is the story where Picard first takes command of the E?

Resistance -- As I understand it, this is the second book post-Nemesis, but it's the first time Picard goes back to the repaired E and puts together a new crew to replace Data, Riker and Troi?

Shadows Have Offended -- This is set during the TNG TV era, but it's a more modern book, right?

 

[Atomic_Monkey]

Novelizations are based on scripts, which is why they often differ from the final aired episodes. Just watching the episodes wouldn't necessarily provide an adapter with full names and spellings, background information, and so forth. Also, most novelizations are meant to come out around the same time as the things they're adapting, so they have to be written before release, although that doesn't apply to most of the Doctor Who adaptations, many of which came out decades after the fact.

Sure, I'm aware of that. When I said it's "as if" the author was watching the episode and describing what they saw on screen, I meant it figuratively, not literally.

 

[Christopher]

Ship of the Line -- I believe this is the story where Picard first takes command of the E?

Nominally, though it's largely about Morgan Bateson and the Bozeman crew adjusting to jumping into the 24th century, yet it has some bizarre inconsistencies with the specifics established in "Cause and Effect" and other TNG episodes. (For instance, it portrays the area where the Bozeman was lost as a well-patrolled stretch of the Federation/Klingon frontier instead of a region still uncharted in the 24th century, and it gives the Bozeman an all-male bridge crew even though the episode showed two women on its bridge.)

Resistance -- As I understand it, this is the second book post-Nemesis, but it's the first time Picard goes back to the repaired E and puts together a new crew to replace Data, Riker and Troi?

Yes and no. The first post-NEM TNG novel, Death in Winter, shows Picard on the E-E in the early chapters and at the end, but it's still under repair and most of the novel takes place elsewhere. That was a standalone hardcover, released two years before the TNG "relaunch" proper began with Resistance, so it doesn't establish any new characters for the E-E crew.

Shadows Have Offended -- This is set during the TNG TV era, but it's a more modern book, right?

It's a 2021 release set just prior to "All Good Things...".

 

[Cicero]

What did you think of those three? Have you read any of the movie novelizations?

I didn't enjoy Unification for a lot of the same reasons that I had problems with the episodes, but Relics was one of my favorites (that said, I haven't revisited it since high school). Descent was a mixed bag, much like the actual two-parter.

The only movie novelization I've read was The Wrath of Khan. It had so much additional material involving the staff on Regula I that watching the film again for the first time after reading it was slightly jarring. But all three of Vonda N. McIntyre's novelizations are widely praised.

I've also heard good things about J. M. Dillard's The Undiscovered Country, which apparently adds context involving Carol Marcus and connects the story to The Final Frontier.

Ship of the Line -- I believe this is the story where Picard first takes command of the E?

I haven't read it, but by reputation it's either severely disappointing, so bad it's good, off-kilter in a very thoughtful way, or all of the above. Diane Carey's TOS books are more well-liked (Best Destiny and Dreadnought! influenced the first two reboot films).

 

[bdub76]

Novelizations are based on scripts, which is why they often differ from the final aired episodes. Just watching the episodes wouldn't necessarily provide an adapter with full names and spellings, background information, and so forth. Also, most novelizations are meant to come out around the same time as the things they're adapting, so they have to be written before release, although that doesn't apply to most of the Doctor Who adaptations, many of which came out decades after the fact.

I would say the 7th Doctor novelizations are really an exception to this rule. I feel like they add more to each story. It's as if the writers wanted to write four episode serials instead of three.

And this brings back another memory of a novelization. The ending of the first Karate Kid novelization is different from the film. It has material from the second film before it even came out. This was a welcome surprise to me as a kid reading these. It made me want to read more novelizations, so that I can find Easter eggs.

 

[KRAD]

The Way of the Warrior, aside from the lack of the latter's root beer scene.

The root beer scene was added late in the production process because the episode ran short. It wasn't in the script that Diane adapted. (I wrote the back cover copy for that novelization, and I got the same script Diane did, and there was no root beer scene, so I was rather surprised to see it when I watched the episode....)

 

[Atomic_Monkey]

I would say the 7th Doctor novelizations are really an exception to this rule. I feel like they add more to each story. It's as if the writers wanted to write four episode serials instead of three.

I agree. Some of the 1st Doctor novelizations were exceptions, too. Because some of his stories were the last to be novelised, they benefited from being published at a time when there was an emphasis on quality.

 

[Greg Cox]

The root beer scene was added late in the production process because the episode ran short. It wasn't in the script that Diane adapted. (I wrote the back cover copy for that novelization, and I got the same script Diane did, and there was no root beer scene, so I was rather surprised to see it when I watched the episode....)

I was once hired to write the jacket copy for the novelization of one of the TNG movies -- Insurrection, maybe -- but wasn't allowed to read the top-secret script, so I had to vamp and write something completely vague:


"Never before has Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the valiant crew of the USS Enterprise faced a challenge like the one before them now . . . ."

Or words to that effect.

 

[Desert Kris]

As I was reading through older threads in this forum I saw a post that said Peter David's dialogue sounds like it's out of a comic book. I realize that's just one person's opinion, but it scared me a bit. Now that the idea has been planted in my head, I'm afraid I'll be predisposed to be judgemental of David's dialogue.

To be honest, I came to Peter David first in prose form, when I spotted the Guardian of Forever on the cover of his TNG novel Imzadi. It was a great read when I was younger, full of action and adventure, an exploration of Riker and Troi's relationship starting, and a look one version of TNG's future that I found fun (but also with melancholy about the outcome of some things).

Peter David was always good at painting great visuals that one wouldn't see in television or in the movies in the 1980s or 1990s, and he was able to do it quick without overly long paragraphs of description, he was good at getting to the point. His dialogue always grabbed me for being funny or genuinely dramatic (some readers might fairly say melodramatic, perhaps), demonstrative of the character speaking the dialogue, and well-thought out.

I haven't read a lot of his comics until recently, and I've found him just as agreeable a comic book writer. I never felt like his writing in one storytelling form to be overly demonstrative that he's better in other forms.
A more striking example of a writer benefiting in a different form of storytelling (in my opinion) is Diane Duane, whose earlier novels seemed a bit verbose. A couple times in Duane's books she would have a sentence that became a run-on sentence because she kept on going on digressions. When I filtered out the digressions I found that the original thought of a paragraph-long sentence was incomplete! Her writing was much more focused in comic form for a couple stories she wrote for the ongoing DC TOS comic series at the time.

Here are three books I'm considering adding to my queue. Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about them?

Ship of the Line -- I believe this is the story where Picard first takes command of the E?

I'm so sorry...I would say avoid this one! It has a great cover, but it's a crushing disappointment as a novel. And I usually like many of Diane Carey's other, earlier books! Her TOS books Dreadnaught and Battlestations are very fun. Although it seems less universally praised, I'm very fond of her Final Frontier giant novel.

Diane Carey seemed to have a bias/preference for TOS characters and situations. The worst part about Ship of the Line is that her preference for TOS is there in a TNG book, at the expense of TNG characters and situations. She doesn't respect Picard, she gives him a character arc where he's supposed to grow and learn from Captain Kirk in a holodeck re-visitation of a very familiar TOS episode. The running theme seemed to be that the "soft" vibe of TNG needs to toughen up with a more TOS vibe. TNG characters are surrounded by TOS characters and situations, when the book's promised focus is the beginning of the TNG movie Enterprise's voyages.

To compare Careys depiction of the maiden voyage of two Enterprise starships, Kirk's Enterprise and the later ship introduced in the First Contact movie: Final Frontier is full of respect, reverence and awe for TOS's Enterprise. Her depiction of the First Contact Enterprise is dismissive of the ship as "very pretty" and focuses on situations that read like criticisms of TNG-era Star Trek, and stifling it with TOS characters and situations.

Resistance -- As I understand it, this is the second book post-Nemesis, but it's the first time Picard goes back to the repaired E and puts together a new crew to replace Data, Riker and Troi?

I really like J.M. Dillard's prose, and really enjoyed her novelizations of the fifth and sixth TOS movies. Her first original number ST TOS novel is a favorite of mine, though I feel mixed about her other two. As much as I like her prose her TOS novel Demons was disappointing. I think she did a good job with the TOS novel The Lost Years, really enjoyed her exploration of TOS characters right after the 5-year mission, and she does some worthwhile universe-building for Vulcan culture, IMO. I have seen mixed reviews for Resistance; beyond that I haven't actually read that one and can't fairly comment.

 

[DonIago]

One thing that's really stuck with me from Imzadi, perhaps unexpectedly, is the part of the book which talks about how, when people are complaining about their problems, they often are just looking for support, not advice; that in fact, if they are looking for support and only receive advice, it can make them feel like they're not really getting what they need from the interaction.

I think it made me a bit more aware of both how I'm responding to people when they complain about things (I've even said "Do you want support, or advice?") and how people I'm trying to express my own frustrations to are responding to me...because it really can be frustrating as hell when you just want someone to listen for a few minutes and they instead seem driven to offer advice, especially if you've explicitly stated your needs at the time.

 

[JD]

Reviews make it sound like that's the case, but I only read Unification, Relics, and Descent.



It largely is, but some novelizations make their episodes better—Relics, Emissary, and The Way of the Warrior, aside from the lack of the latter's root beer scene. One was also an expansion by the writer of the teleplay (Jeri Taylor's Unification).

The novelization of Far Beyond the Stars is a massive expansion on the episode. I haven't read it, but I've owned it for a while and flipped through it, and it's basically Benny Russell's entire life story with stuff going all the way back to his childhood, instead of just the stuff leading up to his breakdown that we got in the episode.

Here are three books I'm considering adding to my queue. Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about them?

Ship of the Line -- I believe this is the story where Picard first takes command of the E?

Almost everything I've heard about this one is negative, and as someone who prefers TNG to TOS, I have no interest in reading it.
If you're interested in the Enterprise-E era stories set before Nemesis, I'd recommend the Slings & Arrows e-book miniseries. It starts with the crew already established on the E, and I think it was consistent with Ship of the Line, but I've read them and they range from good to great.
They are:
A Sea of Troubles: The crew has to deal with a Changeling infiltrator on board
The Oppressor's Wrong: Shows how Daniels from First Contact and Insurrection joined the crew, and what the Enterprise crew was up deal during the DS9 episodes Homefront and Paradise Lost.
The Insolence of Office: Explains why Geordi switched from his VISOR to his eye implants, and is a follow on Luwaxan's pregnancy in the DS9 episode The Muse.
The Sleep of Death: Explores Crusher's feelings about the EMHs
A Weary Life: Will Riker has to deal with Tom Riker joining The Maquis.
Enterprises of Great Pitch & Moment: Deals with the war with the Klingons
As you can tell most of these deal with what the Enterprise-E crew was doing during the fourth and fifth seasons of DS9, so if you haven't watched those yet and you want to, you might to wait because they might spoil the episodes.

Resistance -- As I understand it, this is the second book post-Nemesis, but it's the first time Picard goes back to the repaired E and puts together a new crew to replace Data, Riker and Troi?

When this one first came out it got kind of a mixed reaction, but since then I've read some stuff from the author JM Dillard that I've liked, so I am planning to read it when I get to point in my current read through of the Enterprise-E era stories.