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TOS "relaunch"

DigificWriter

Vice Admiral
Admiral
Hi, all. I know there's not an official 'relaunch' continuity for TOS, but was wondering something: if you were going to sit down and try to create a 'relaunch' continuity for TOS Lit, what novels would be part of it?
 
I'd include everything from the Vulcan's Noun trilogy onwards, picking earlier novels here and there, and excluding Inception.
 
After asking the question, I sat down and decided to use that Lit-Verse Reading Guide, as well as a list of release dates, to try to come up with my own 'relaunch', and put together the following preliminary idea (listed in release date order for now):
New Earth novels (2000)
Eugenics Wars novels (2001)
Janus Gate novels (2002)
Errand of Vengeance novels (2002)
Gemini (2003)
Vulcan's Soul novels
To Reign in Hell (2005)
Ex Machina (2005)
Errand of Fury novels
Burning Dreams (2006)
Mere Anarchy novels (2006)
Excelsior: Forged in Fire (2007)
Troublesome Minds
Unspoken Truth
A Choice of Catastrophes
Cast No Shadow
The Rings of Time
That Which Divides
Allegiance in Exile
Devil's Bargain
The Weight of Worlds
The Folded World
The Shocks of Adversity
From History's Shadow
No Time Like the Past

Thoughts?
 
If you're reading Vulcan's Soul, you should include the other Vulcan's Whatever novels too.

And New Earth is highly optional; the only connection is that it spawned the one-more-novel "series" Challenger, so either read New Earth along with the Gateways Challenger entry or drop New Earth completely. It's not that great, you're not missing much.

Oh, and throw in Inception. At least I think so. Cute little piece of continuity fluff; lots of people didn't like it, but I thought it was great.
 
Agreed with Thrawn about New Earth.

If you're going to include The Eugenics Wars (and why wouldn't you, right?), which features a heavy dose of Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln, I'd also recommend adding Assignment: Eternity to the list.
 
If you're reading Vulcan's Soul, you should include the other Vulcan's Whatever novels too.

And New Earth is highly optional; the only connection is that it spawned the one-more-novel "series" Challenger, so either read New Earth along with the Gateways Challenger entry or drop New Earth completely. It's not that great, you're not missing much.

Oh, and throw in Inception. At least I think so. Cute little piece of continuity fluff; lots of people didn't like it, but I thought it was great.

I was planning on adding Chainmail and its novella follow-up, but will put Inception, Shadows on the Sun, Vulcan's Forge, Vulcan's Heart, and Assignment: Eternity on there as well.
 
I would think a must read would be DTI: Forgotten History. Also if you are reading Forged in Fire, it is pretty closely related with The Captain's Daughter and The Lost Era: The Sundered.
 
Chainmail is amazing, and I defy anyone who says otherwise. Challenger and Chainmail are Diane Carey's best post-1990 work.
 
I actually agree with you completely. Rated that one 9.5/10, one of my top 25 Trek novels ever. I'm still not entirely sure getting to it is worth all the rest of New Earth, which is some seriously mind-numbingly repetitive nonsense.
 
What about The Last Roundup, In the Name of Honor, The Case of the Colonist's Corpse, The Children of Kings, and Garth of Izar?
 
In order: never read it, should have been included (now that you mention it), really shouldn't be, really shouldn't be, and really shouldn't be.
 
This is pretty cool. I'm also in the process of reading a bunch of TOS that I missed; for me, it's just all the 20th/21st century ones (Eugenics Wars / Khan, From History's Shadow, Assignment: Eternity, Rings of Time, not necessarily in that order) plus the DTI books which I haven't read yet to tie into the time travel, and then all the standalones from the last couple years. Blame Greg Cox; No Time Like the Past was so much fun that I decided to catch up on his whole back catalog, and that spun out into this project :)
 
I actually agree with you completely. Rated that one 9.5/10, one of my top 25 Trek novels ever. I'm still not entirely sure getting to it is worth all the rest of New Earth, which is some seriously mind-numbingly repetitive nonsense.

Oh, yeah, there are some terrible New Earth books. Or rather, identical ones. I would recommend anyone reading the series just read Wagon Train to the Stars, Rough Trails, and Challenger. They'll respect the Kauld as villains a whole lot more, for starters.
 
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