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TOS: Federation by J. & G. Reeves-Stevens Review Thread (Spoiler!)

Rate Federation

  • Outstanding

    Votes: 24 72.7%

  • Above Average

    Votes: 7 21.2%

  • Average

    Votes: 2 6.1%

  • Below Average

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Poor

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    33
Defcon

Defcon

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TOS: Federation by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Federation_zps1f3b1b0f.jpg
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Blurb:
At last, the long awaited novel featuring both famous crews of the starships Enterprise in an epic adventure that spans time and space. Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) are faced with their most challenging mission yet - rescuing renowned scientist Zefram Cochrane from captors who want to use his skills to conquer the galaxy.



Meanwhile, ninety-nine years in the future on the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), Picard must rescue an important and mysterious person who safety is vital to the survival of the Federation.



As the two crews struggle to fulfill their missions, destiny draws them closer together until past and future merge - and the fate of each of the two legendary starships rest in the hands of the other vessel...


___________________________

I don't have a review for this one, but in my opinion it was/is massively overrated (as are most of the Reeves-Stevens stuff to be honest). Overall I always thought it was an averagely written story trying to be epic.
 
Love this one. I remember as a kid this being notably the longest book I'd ever read for a while, and being so happy about it. Re-read it recently and it still stacks up, despite a little early-TNG weirdness. The fight between the Ent-D and the warbird is still all time classic awesome.
 
What Generations should have been... :cool:

Although completely incompatible with the canon, this book holds up very well and is well-worthy of re-reads. It does get a little long somewhere in the middle, but not a problem when compared as part of the complete work.

One of my favorite books!
 
I skipped this when it was first released, as I was not familiar with the Reeves-Stevens' work. For some reason, I just expected the quality to be on the same level as most other early-90s novels, back when Pocket was churning them out almost daily.

After seeing this high on many "best-of" lists, I recently picked up the hardcover from paperbackswap.com. I still haven't read it, but plan to soon.
 
:techman:This is one of my favorite novels by the Reeves/Stevens. Their one and only Tos novel Memory Prime is really good too.
 
A fantastic book, although I found the ending
where the ships blink at each other
rather lame.
 
I'd love them to take another pass at this one in current novel continuity.

Won't happen...
 
Outstanding book, second only to The Final Reflection in treklit for me.

All three eras are written well, with Cochrane's being particularly good. The antagonist is great, and hey, I love that ending. Anything more would have been too fanservicey, this struck just the right note. I love Cochrane's initial reaction to the transporter too.

I'd like the grigari to show up in modern treklit at some point.
 
My first Trek audiobook and favorite novel! Remember reading it for the first time and being impressed at how truncated the audio version was. Love both versions nevertheless.
 
I'm with Defcon on this; did not enjoy nearly as much as others did.

(That said– I love Millennium and really enjoyed Prime Directive. The Shatnerverse novels were good for what they were, if a little hit-or-miss.)

I read it recently because it came so highly recommended. I definitely enjoyed the Cochrane story, and the TOS story was alright too. But the TNG stuff was just bad. (I'll reflect a little more on that below, in response to Thrawn.)

It definitely felt like it was trying to be epic, but I didn't feel that. Perhaps because it tried to cover ground that was later covered in First Contact and Enterprise, I don't know. What really got me was were the efforts to tie the story's events back to the larger theme of "the Federation." I just didn't feel it. Perhaps, as I said, it's because we got a much more in-depth analysis of what the Federation actually is in Deep Space Nine and Enterprise (to say nothing of later novels), but it just seemed like a big leap from the story's events to "we're doing this because Federation."

The events of the story are basically compelling, I just didn't care for the novel's self-referential attempts to aggrandize them.

I actually set the book aside for a couple of months right at the climax, because I just wasn't that excited about it.

Thrawn said:
Re-read it recently and it still stacks up, despite a little early-TNG weirdness.
Click to expand...

Yeah, see, when I started reading it, I thought, "Oh, okay, this must've been written around '90 or '91, maybe '92." You know, it would've been drawn up during the first or second season, and written somewhere around the middle of the show's run. That's why things seem a little wonky.

Then something tipped me off (a reference to Gul Madred perhaps?) and I went and looked it up.

It was published in November of '94, the same month Generations was released, six months after "All Good Things" aired.

So it's a little harder to rectify as "early-TNG weirdness" (though I realize the novel was certainly written much earlier than '94).

But yeah, none of the TNG characters feel right at all. They don't really feel like characters, to be honest. Reading the TNG scenes felt like watching a show where the camera is kept really really tight on each of the character's faces, with no wide shots to take in the scene, with only occasional, boring shots of the floor thrown in for variety. Like:

WORF FACE
RIKER FACE
WORF FACE
PICARD FACE
FLOOR
DATA FACE
PICARD FACE

Does that make any sense to anyone? It just all felt very zoomed in and constrained.
 
I remember really loving this book when I read for the first time as a kid. I desperately wanted Generations to be this exactly! I haven't read it in forever as I think I gave it to a used book store forever ago. Gonna have to find a copy and re-read it one of these days :techman:
 
I look forward to listening to the episode soon. Coincidentally, I just started a reread of this book, which is one of my all-time favorites. You can tell that the authors have a fondness for the works of D.C. Fontana from TOS.

It's been about 15 years, and I am still irked that the book cover has the "Great Book! Great Price!" printed on it. Would it be so hard to take that out for the Kindle version? Yes, I realize that it would take X amount of work for no economic gain, but it just makes the product feel cheap and commercial. It's like the banner advertising the BMX bike giveaway on the top of some landmark Marvel issues like the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga.
 
Smiley said:
I look forward to listening to the episode soon. Coincidentally, I just started a reread of this book, which is one of my all-time favorites. You can tell that the authors have a fondness for the works of D.C. Fontana from TOS.

It's been about 15 years, and I am still irked that the book cover has the "Great Book! Great Price!" printed on it. Would it be so hard to take that out for the Kindle version? Yes, I realize that it would take X amount of work for no economic gain, but it just makes the product feel cheap and commercial. It's like the banner advertising the BMX bike giveaway on the top of some landmark Marvel issues like the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga.
Click to expand...
if you're looking at the anniversary reprint that's eminently fixable there's enough similar art opposite to clone in a coverup. idk how to get it onto your kindle though, but that's the kind of art cleanup i do all day long
 
Enterpriserules said:
We picked this as our 350th episode of Literary Treks!

lt-350-th-wide.jpg
Click to expand...

I finished the book and the podcast. It was great to hear your thoughts. There was a lot of time stuff to keep track of, but I think that Kirk wrote the letter post-TMP and touched the Guardian for the last time post-TUC, so the Guardian was not helping Kirk for the letter but giving him a glimpse of cosmic awareness.

I give it 5 out of 5 subspace event horizons.
 
Smiley said:
I finished the book and the podcast. It was great to hear your thoughts. There was a lot of time stuff to keep track of, but I think that Kirk wrote the letter post-TMP and touched the Guardian for the last time post-TUC, so the Guardian was not helping Kirk for the letter but giving him a glimpse of cosmic awareness.

I give it 5 out of 5 subspace event horizons.
Click to expand...

I think you are right about the letter but I just felt like since the Guardian is outside of time in many ways that it could still have impacted the letter. It is a very metaphysical, spiritual reading of course :)
 
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