Underappreciated TrekLit

[Tracy Trek]

I remember liking Deep Domain quite a bit, also.

War Drums by John Vornholt was one of the adventure of the week TNG novels that came out during the run of the series. I don't remember exactly why I enjoyed it so much, but do remember it featured Worf and Ensign Ro. It also had some resemblance to the "Birthright" two-parter, which must have been coincidental since that had not aired yet when the novel came out.

I like all of Vornholt's Trek novels. I feel he describes the alien worlds and cultures so well. War Drums is very much a favorite. Someone also mentioned The Lost Years (or Lost Era). I like those as well. Covenant of the Crown also.

Another one that might be underappreciated, but I like very much is Ishmael. I mentioned it to someone on another Trek message board, they thought it sounded quite strange. Because of it being a crossover with another TV series.

Edited to add. After reading all of the comments in this thread, I see someone mentioned Ishmael.

 

[RogueVasad]

I like pretty much any book showing the Kobyashi Maru except for Trek 2009's showing of it but my favorite has to be the TOS The Kobyashi Maru novel especially the Scotty and Sulu stories.

I can just imagine the instructors off screen during Scotty's run

Spoiler: Scotty's Kobashi Maru

Scotty's parents had pressured him into going to command school even though he wanted to go to engineering school. One of his instructors found out the whole story and put Scotty in command of a Kobyashi Maru run to find an excuse to transfer him from command to engineering.

The problem is Scotty cuts through the Klingon fleet like a chainsaw through paper. (17 Klingon cruisers destroyed before the sim dropped a wave of 15 on him and finish him.)

Eventually the best official excuse they could come up with to transfer him is that he cheated because the tactic he used to destroy 9 of the cruisers was one which would work in a simulator but not in reality. (Scotty had actually been involved in testing the tactic when it was a viable theory so he knew it didn't work in reality but he also knew that the simulation program would believe that the tactic would work.)
So Scotty gets his transfer and happily goes off to engineering school.

I always thought it was stupid that between Sulu's Kobyashi Maru and the Starfleet Academy game novelization his response had been made an automatic failing grade.

I also loved the Kobyashi Maru sections of Stone and Anvil and Sarek and I've always hoped we would get to see Picard and less likely Sisko face it someday. (Since Sisko was trained as an engineer I doubt he took it or at least wasn't in command if he did.)

 

[Christopher]

I also loved the Kobyashi Maru sections of Stone and Anvil and Sarek and I've always hoped we would get to see Picard and less likely Sisko face it someday. (Since Sisko was trained as an engineer I doubt he took it or at least wasn't in command if he did.)

Good point. It always bugged me that there were two different Strange New Worlds stories about Nog taking the Kobayashi Maru test as a first-year cadet on the engineering track, when it's meant for command-track cadets in their final year. (Although I liked the SNW version of Kirk's KM "cheat" even better than the Julia Ecklar version.)

 

[Tracy Trek]

Does anyone know which additions of Strange New Worlds have these Kobayashi Maru stories in them?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

(Although I liked the SNW version of Kirk's KM "cheat" even better than the Julia Ecklar version.)

Weren't there a couple of different versions of Kirk taking the test in SNW?

I've never read those stories, but as I understand it, one has Kirk reprogramming the computer to make it possible to rescue the ship, but not definite. I like that twist, and it seems very in character for Kirk to change an unfair test into a fair one.

 

[stardream]

IIRC Sulu ignored the distress call, Chekov blew up his own ship and didn't Scotty do something that only works theoretically but not in real life?

 

[Christopher]

Does anyone know which additions of Strange New Worlds have these Kobayashi Maru stories in them?

The Nog Kobayashi Maru stories are "The Bottom Line" by Andrew Morby in SNW III and "Best Tools Available" by Shawn Michael Scott in SNW VI. The Kirk one is "A Test of Character" by Kevin Lauderdale in SNW VII.

Weren't there a couple of different versions of Kirk taking the test in SNW?

Nope, SNW has only the one Kirk story. The only other prose version of Kirk's KM (as far as I know) is the one in Ecklar's novel, which was also used by Howard Weinstein in DC Comics' Star Trek Vol. 2 #73.

I've never read those stories, but as I understand it, one has Kirk reprogramming the computer to make it possible to rescue the ship, but not definite. I like that twist, and it seems very in character for Kirk to change an unfair test into a fair one.

That's the Lauderdale version. That's one reason I prefer it to the Ecklar version, where he programs it to guarantee a win.

 

[RogueVasad]

Pretty much

Sulu didn't actually ignore it he passed the message on to a Starbase so they could contact the Klingons and get an ok for a rescue op. He just refused to risk a full scale war over one ship which shouldn't have been where it was to begin with.

Scotty didn't use that trick until after he had taken out two earlier waves of Klingon Cruiser.

Chekov blew his ship but of the stories his was least focused on the Kobyashi Maru. His was more focused on the exercise he that took part in shortly after the Maru.

 

[David cgc]

I've never read those stories, but as I understand it, one has Kirk reprogramming the computer to make it possible to rescue the ship, but not definite. I like that twist, and it seems very in character for Kirk to change an unfair test into a fair one.

It also fits better with what was said in TWOK. Kirk "reprogrammed the simulator so it was possible to rescue the ship," and while David interpreted that to mean he cheated, Kirk was insistent that he just "changed the conditions of the test." In the Eckler version, he could've been asleep in his chair, and so long as one of his "crew" mentioned his name, he'd win. Even Kirk-'09, who was making a statement by cheating as brazenly as possible, still needed to put in more effort during the actual sim.

Diane Carey has an interesting take on the Eckler version in the novelization of the Starfleet Academy game. While the game itself played it straight (you hail the Klingons, and when they find out you're you, they're so impressed they allow you to go about your business unchallenged), Carey had it so that when the main character tried to repeat Kirk's method, Kirk re-reprogramed the simulator so the Klingons would still attack, but each ship would become so preoccupied with being the one to kill a legendary Starfleet captain that they'd stop coordinating and could be tricked into tripping over each other. And then he slipped in the Klingon equivalent of the Excelsior as reinforcements in case the main character realized he could turn the Klingons against each other, so it wouldn't be too easy.

Oh, and speaking of, I don't see Carey's Starfleet Academy novelization mentioned a lot. It had a lot of fun stuff that expanded on the game like the above. There was also fun scene where Kirk, Sulu, and Chekov are testing a simulation based on "The Changeling," so he shanghais the main character and his helmsman to complete the bridge crew. However, since Kirk "needs" Spock and Scotty for the encounter to feel right, he as Sulu play Spock and Chekov play Scotty, with the cadets taking the place of Sulu and Chekov. Sulu busting Chekov's chops as Spock and Chekov trying to make his thick Russian accent into a thick Scottish accent were pretty funny, while the cadets have absolutely no idea what to make of all their in-jokes.

 

[Christopher]

I recall the Starfleet Academy game novelization being entertaining, but it had some significant editing problems, and some of its scenes appear to be out of order. I don't remember the specifics, but it's something along the lines of a couple of characters already being acquainted in one scene and meeting for the first time in a later scene. But I think it was more confused than that, because some elements of the scenes required them to be in one order while other elements required them to be in the opposite order. As if they were flipped in sequence and partially rewritten to fit the new sequence, but with some details being missed. I remember being unable to figure out the correct sequence of events in that part of the book. (I think the mixed-up portion involves some kind of track meet or similar outdoor event in one of the affected scenes.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I like pretty much any book showing the Kobyashi Maru

I'm interested to know how Quintin Stone (the Mac Calhoun prototype from "A Rock And A Hard Place") managed to defeat the simulation without reprogramming it...

And there was the Piper version as well:

Spoiler: novel

She managed to turn the sim against itself by messing around with a tricorder, which I always thought was rather anticlimactic and silly. Then again, that's a pretty good description of Piper novels anyway, since Piper is the most blatant Mary Sue I have ever seen...

 

[JD]

All of this discussion of the Starfleet Academy game and novelization reminds me that I've been meaning to ask if the game is any good. They have it on G(ood)O(ld)G(ames).com and I've been thinking about trying it. So would those of you who've played it recommend it?

 

[RogueVasad]

I liked it though in some ways I prefer the much different SNES game of the same name. The SNES game has less shooting and more options for negotiating and ethic choices (For example in one mission you are receiving several distress calls but you only have time to answer one and have to choose which to answer.)

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Nope, SNW has only the one Kirk story. The only other prose version of Kirk's KM (as far as I know) is the one in Ecklar's novel, which was also used by Howard Weinstein in DC Comics' Star Trek Vol. 2 #73.

Huh. That's weird. I could've sworn that the SNW descriptions I read in the Lit Companion described more than one Kobayashi Maru story for Kirk.

I've never read those stories, but as I understand it, one has Kirk reprogramming the computer to make it possible to rescue the ship, but not definite. I like that twist, and it seems very in character for Kirk to change an unfair test into a fair one.

That's the Lauderdale version. That's one reason I prefer it to the Ecklar version, where he programs it to guarantee a win.

Yeah. Breaking the rules to make it so that a win is possible but not a foregone conclusion seems much fairer and more honorable. And a solution that I can see the Academy brass being much more sympathetic towards. As far as I'm concerned, that's what happened.

I didn't really mind ST '09 Kirk going about it in a different way, though, as he was cockier guy than the "stack of books with legs" we were told about in TOS.

 

[RogueVasad]

New Kirk is basically every exaggeration of a negative trait Prime Kirk supposedly had come true IMO. It's like someone gave a sterotypical high school jock command of a starship.

 

[stardream]

New Kirk is basically every exaggeration of a negative trait Prime Kirk supposedly had come true IMO. It's like someone gave a sterotypical high school jock command of a starship.

I like New Kirk but I also agree with this.

 

[Christopher]

But New Kirk is supposed to be immature. He's much younger than the Kirk we know, and the films are about his maturation process, his growth into a wiser, less arrogant, and more disciplined commander. It's an extended origin story, because everything in movies has to be an origin story these days.

 

[trampledamage]

That was a quick deke into a discussion of New Kirk vs Old Kirk, let's get back to under-appreciated TrekLit before we get lost.

 

[Mage]

That was a quick deke into a discussion of New Kirk vs Old Kirk, let's get back to under-appreciated TrekLit before we get lost.

I'm re-reading Peaceable Kingdoms, and like most, at first I felt it was an underwhelming end to The Fall. But now, I'm finding there are some very interesting character developments and a slow but steady turn towards a smaller, more horrible form of evil compared to what we usually see in TrekLit.

Instead of the big bad baddies that are usually so incredibly in your face, the threat is not just from within, but from a culture and a race that are normally considered a victim. Good are bad are sometimes very black and white in Star Trek, and here it's more nuanced, more cancerous almost. Sure, we are readers are quickly aware that Ishan is up to no good, but the Federation isn't. And that's what so insidious here.

It's not untill this last novel that we find out out how awfull a man Ishan really is, and how far he went to justify what he thought was right. Not only now, but back in 2369.

And ultimatly, after years and years of fighting against horrible threads from out there, it turns out that what can truy brings us down, is what we bring forth ourselves. I'm sure a lot people will not see it like this, but considering the 'great leaders' so many of us have either elected or just followed in our lives, it's easy to see how things can go bad so fast.

Although still flawed in writing and pacing, when it comes to the subtle undertones, Peaceable Kingdoms is certainly quite underappreciated if you ask me.

 

[David cgc]

All of this discussion of the Starfleet Academy game and novelization reminds me that I've been meaning to ask if the game is any good. They have it on G(ood)O(ld)G(ames).com and I've been thinking about trying it. So would those of you who've played it recommend it?

You can't really go wrong for six bucks. I liked it, and I've heard the sort-of sequel Klingon Academy was even better (same premise, style, and time-period, but as a Klingon). It might be worth it just for the video cutscenes with parts of the original cast reprising their roles in both games.