Trek Lit: the fast food franchise of Lit

[Ktrek]

I have to say that for me personally the books I enjoy most are the post series books that move the stories forward. My biggest disappointments have come with the TOS line of books for the last several years. It's not that there have not been some gems (From History's Shadow & No Time Like The Past come to mind), but overall the TOS line I find predictable and boring. The Seekers line is not doing it for me either the way Vanguard captured me. That might change with future novels but thus far to me they were, as Nathan says, meh. The DS9 relaunch seemed to had lost it's way for a little bit but is back on track and I'm enjoying the series again as much as I did when the relaunch first started. I keep buying and reading and even though I may not enjoy every single book released I do enjoy enough of them to keep me reading and hoping that the next book will be as great as some of the best Trek I have read.

Trek is escapism for me and always has been. I like the positive view of the future and it lifts my spirit when there is so much negative in life. Most TV shows and books seem to take a bleak and dark look on life, but Star Trek always has that glimmer of hope even when it too seems to be dark at times, but never fully so.

I would agree with Nathan about many of the numbered books. It is hard to go back and re-read them. They might have been fun 20 years ago but not now, with a few exceptions. The characters in the early books are more two dimensional and the restraints of the reset button keep any sense of real danger being there. If I look at the list I would say well over 50% of them are unreadable for me today and only about 10% would I even want to.

In any case those are my thoughts on this subject.

Kevin

 

[stardream]

I gave all of my Trek books away not long ago and it was a considerable library. It was built up over the years by me and my two brothers. We came to the point where we ran out of room and we realized that we were not rereading these books. There were exceptions here and there of course. So we got rid of them and I have since bought the kindle editions of my favorites which amounted to less than ten books.

I never though of them as anything more than pure escapism. I read them in waiting rooms. Its what I read at the end of the day when I'm winding down. They are fun.

It took me a while to get into the relaunch...maybe because I got sidetracked with other fandoms but I am back and finding that I am enjoying them a lot more than I thought I would.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

In The World of Star Trek, David Gerrold wrote, "Star Trek is the McDonald's of science fiction. But I prefer filet mignon."

 

[Mage]

I never though of them as anything more than pure escapism. I read them in waiting rooms. Its what I read at the end of the day when I'm winding down. They are fun.

Exactly that. I read them at work, during lunch. Or on a sunday afternoon and I want to turn my brain off.

Having said that.... Some TrekLit has touched me more than some 'actual' literature.

 

[trampledamage]

Having said that.... Some TrekLit has touched me more than some 'actual' literature.

Don't get me started on how bad some of your actual literature is!

 

[Therin of Andor]

Even if someone told me that a particular episode or novel was a trainwreck, I'd still have to watch or read it, 'cos it's a Star Trek I haven't seen or read.

"Hey, I think the Titanitc is a great ship, but it has a hole in its hull."

But the pool is still full, after all those decades under the sea!

 

[JoeZhang]

Since I'm mentioned in the OP, my full words on this were:

Its a hard one - Fast-food franchise fiction is always going to have its stinkers simply because of the way its done but I doubt its much higher than author initiated fiction.

 

[Idran]

Well that was a bit of a snip.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Also only if when you say "average", you're talking about median; most people intend the mean. Take a look at, say, {1000,1000,1000,1000,1}. Mean is 800.2, and you've got one number below the average in that group. Or alternatively, {1000,1,1,1,1}; mean is 200.8, you've got four out of five below the average.

All you can really say about the mean is that there's always at least one below or equal to the mean and there's always at least one above or equal to the mean. Beyond this, the number of values above or below the mean depends entirely on the distribution, and there's not really any reason to think quality is a distribution where the mean and the median match.

Well I always take it as median, I'm not sure what recent studies say.And of course there's "average for what - for trek, for literature in general, for some form of objective judgement".

Here's some semi-scientific figures based on the ratings on goodreads.com.

Looking at modern scifi in general (2010-now) - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/75182

mean of 3.84
median of 3.89
97/205 (47%) below mean

Looking at Space Opera across all time (only 2 trek books in there): https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1127

Mean 3.89
Median 3.89
153/303 (50%) below mean

The "Best Star Trek Books" - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1970

Mean 3.74
Median 3.76
119/247 (48%) below mean

The "DS9 relaunch" (including Dark Passions? I've not read it but the other 33 books seem fair enough on a quick glance)

Mean 3.83
Median 3.81
19/35 (54%) below mean

TNG relaunch https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/41516.Star_Trek_The_Next_Generation_Relaunch

Mean 3.82
Median 3.76
17/27 (63%) below mean

Both relaunches combined
Mean: 3.83
Median: 3.79
35/62 (56%) below mean

I think (and I'm by no means a statistician) this would tend to tend to imply that people who vote for ratings on goodreads find
1) trek books generally slightly worse than comparable scifi books
2) more recent trek (the DS9 and TNG relaunch series) rate more favourably than trek in general
3) Trek has a higher percentage of really good books that stand out from the rest of the group

But given that this is based on a self-selected group I wouldn't take the results too seriously.

 

[Paul Weaver]

And one more list

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/12462 - Star Trek Books That Dont Actually Suck
Mean 3.74
Median 3.76
Below-Mean 73/152 48%

Personally I think that the only good book is one that I read. I've tried to read "good books", scifi and non-scifi, but all that leads me to do is waste time flitting from website to website. Since getting back into trek less than 3 years ago I've read something like 150 books, which is about 140 more than I'd read in the previous 15 years. For me, trek lit is brilliant.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Below-Mean 73/152 48%

If every Trek book only had a 50-50 chance of being "good", Trek readers would have abandoned them decades ago. That they still appear on bestseller lists seems to indicate they are still pleasing the 1-2% of avid fans who buy them regularly.

 

[Idran]

Below-Mean 73/152 48%

If every Trek book only had a 50-50 chance of being "good", Trek readers would have abandoned them decades ago. That they still appear on bestseller lists seems to indicate they are still pleasing the 1-2% of avid fans who buy them regularly.

That's not what that statistic means; it would only indicate that if the mean was precisely at the level that means "good". That's the number of books that are below the mean of this set, not the number that are below the mean score of all books.

In this case, the mean of the set was at 3.74 out of 5, and skimming the page, all those below average still appear to have an average rank of above 3 out of 5, and the majority of them are above 3.5 out of 5. That is, the half that are below the average of this set are still ranked as above average in a universal sense; without doing the math, it looks like the standard deviation would be somewhere around the 0.2-0.3 range.

Though even if your interpretation was right, I'm still not sure I'd agree with the conclusion drawn from it. A 50/50 chance of being good is still fairly reasonable odds; they might not have ended up as popular, but I don't think they'd have been abandoned.

 

[Christopher]

Besides, it's not like it's a binary choice between monolithic values of "good" and "bad." A below-average book might still be considered "okay," moderately entertaining if not especially memorable. You might have to get a considerable amount below 50% before it actually starts becoming "bad."