Vanguard controversy

[donners22]

phrog said:

Mysterion said:

donners22 said:

Do you seriously think that the fanbase is any more mature or 'grown up" than it has been in the past? It strikes me more as Trek losing some of the things that made it distinctive, instead throwing familiar characters (indeed, these days, often unfamiliar characters) into stories in the style that could come from any other series.

Sure, because seeing the same people doing the same thing the same over and over and over and over...and over again, is very entertaining over the long-run.

IMO, a big part of what Star Trek has always been is, in addition to telling good stories, is challenging the perceptions of the viewer. Look at some of the best epsidoes of TOS. Off the top of my head, "Arena". The conventional sci-fi plot would have been for Kirk to kill the Gorn and move on victorious. ST turns that perception on it's ear by having Kirk not do that, and then rub in the Metron's face.

Not trying to speak for the entire fanbase, and didn't mean to imply such in my earlier post.

for myself: My tastes have grown and expanded over the years, and I enjoy the fact that at least someaspects of Star Trek are also maturing and growing in new (and sometimes unexpected) directions. I don't think this makes it less "Star Trekish", I think it makes Star Trek more interesting and diverse, just like the universe it is telling stories about.

YMMV.

Agreed. I find the continually expanding diversity and maturity being shown in the Trek fiction to be encouraging and after taking a look through this entire thread now, my interest in Vanguard has gone from basically nothing to a point where I am definetly interested in reading at least the first book to see if I like it. DS9 remains my favorite television series due to it's mature take on the universe and dealing with moral grey areas and controversial topics. I've always felt like that's what good Trek is about.

I don't dispute that at all. Indeed, DS9 is my favourite series and In the Pale Moonlight my favourite episode. My only complaint is about gratutous violence and sex which is unnecessary and irrelevant to the story, hence my annoyance at the Mirror Universe books. I would regard a novel such as A Stitch in Time as one for mature readers, but that didn't mean it had to have graphic violence and trashy sex scenes like the books I referred to.

With regard to the Vanguard books, as I said, I took a quick glance through them and was neither offended nor interested borrowing them. I don't know what in this thread has made them suddenly so attractive to you, but I trust it is more than the mere fact that it contains references to a lesbian relationship. That does not suggest to me that the book is any more or less mature in overall theme than any other.

 

[donners22]

Kevin Dilmore said:
I freely and openly admit that I've more grazed this thread than read it, but one remark has spurred me to comment.

FatherRob said: My only real concern with Vanguard is that I could never in good conscience let an eight or ten year old read the book, which saddens me, because I remember picking up my first Star Trek novel in a small bookstore in Muncie, Indiana when I was about 7. Most modern Trek books, well, I wouldn't let my kids read them until they were teens.

That's a sadder commentary on Trek than any percieved promotion of 'lascivious' lifestyles or whatever you want to call them.

I've been a big Robert A. Heinlein fan my whole life. I'm not exactly sure what started me down that road, but I'm thinking it was back in grade school and seeing my older next-door-neighbor come home from school with a paperback of Tunnel in the Sky. I wanted that book, so I went to the library but it wasn't on the shelf. So, I grabbed another Heinlein book, thinking it must be a good one because there were multiple copies on the shelf. It was Stranger in a Strange Land. I took it to the desk and the librarian looked at it and looked at me and said, "I think you might like something different." And she directed me to Between Planets. Wow, did I love that book. And I read a mess of his other books but didn't try Stranger until I was in high school. In retrospect, I'm glad I got her advice when I did.

I don't think Stranger in a Strange Land being a bad fit for me in grade school should be construed as a sad commentary on how Heinlein's writing and thematic choices had changed from 1951 (when Between Planets was published) to 1961 (when Stranger was published). Both are great books, but one's better suited to a younger reader and the other to a more mature reader.

I don't think my 13-year-old daughters ought to read the Vanguard books. They would not get as much out of them as an older reader might. As for my 17-year-old daughter, I'm okay with it (she's read a few Chuck Palahniuk books, for crying out loud). As a parent, I inquire as to my girls' reading selections, and I direct them elsewhere on the occasions when I think they ought to be. If my daughters wanted to check out some of my comic books, I wouldn't show them much from my current pile and I sure wouldn't offer them Watchmen no matter how much I admire it. I might even have them try Silver-Age stories first, to be honest.

So, should you run across a younger reader looking to check out Star Trek in print, direct him or her to something less gritty than Vanguard. Even if you steer a kid all the way back to a Bantam-era novel, that's cool. But don't point to the Vanguard books as evidence that today's Star Trek fiction as a whole is inappropriate for younger readers. It's not fair to a great deal of other recent titles and the efforts of other writers.

Kevin

An interesting point, and a reasonable and a responsible attitude to take. Unfortunately, it is a difficult one in practice.

For instance, I read 112 books during the school year at the age of 10. I know that, because I still have my school reading log. That was in the early 90s, and among those were many Trek novels.

Now, my mother is a Star Trek fan, but she did not have the time to assess each one of those novels. Since my school library had no Trek books, I had to borrow them from public libraries, where the staff likely had little to know knowledge of the contents of each book.

I think the situation would be much the same for a young Trek reader today. While I would want to shield such a reader from "gritty" novels, how am I (or any other guardian) to know which is "grittier" than another? A quick glance at the blurb and even the four pages dedicated to the Vanguard series in the Fiction Companion did not make them stand out as particularly unsuitable to me. In the absence of any ratings system for novels and personal knowledge of the books in question, it is extremely difficult to suggest that parents or library staff could advise children as you were once advised.

Nor, indeed, is there anything to tell me that, after a day in court hearing evidence from real victims of crime, that I would open a Star Trek book to find descriptions of rape and graphic killing. I actually avoided bringing a Forgotten Realms book to try and prevent reading that sort of thing. Admittedly, a Mirror Universe book was not the best substitution, but I did not reasonably expect some of the things I read there.

Incidentally, at the age of 11, I read Laurie Garrett's doomsday tome The Coming Plage. It featured graphic depictions of people dying from the likes of Ebola and Lassa Fever, and references to homosexual practices in relation to the spread of AIDS that I still don't quite understand today (and don't want to). I didn't blink an eye at that. A scene in a Star Trek novel, Warped, almost made me sick. The context and appropriateness of material is just as important as the material itself.

 

[phrog]

With regard to the Vanguard books, as I said, I took a quick glance through them and was neither offended nor interested borrowing them. I don't know what in this thread has made them suddenly so attractive to you, but I trust it is more than the mere fact that it contains references to a lesbian relationship. That does not suggest to me that the book is any more or less mature in overall theme than any other.

Not at all, hah. If I wanted that I'd hunt down crappy fan fic. Moreover, it is interesting to me because it has generated this level of discussion and is obviously dealing with things.. or at least portraying things.. that get people's attention for good or bad. The flawed main character aspect is also one I'm a sucker for.. and I'm interested as to how it's handled. Combine that with positive things I've heard otherwise, and a concept that's at least intriguing and I'm interested enough to pick it up.

It'll go right into my stack after the Titan books I think. Heh.

 

[foravalon]

donners22 said: ...A scene in a Star Trek novel, Warped, almost made me sick. The context and appropriateness of material is just as important as the material itself.

What was the scene?

 

[donners22]

^

I happen to be a cat lover, so if you're familiar with the book, you can probably guess.

 

[foravalon]

umm nope, a transporter accident perhaps?

 

[Holytomato]

"gratutous violence and sex"

Suppose I bought the latest Vanguard book and the Bible; and I was worried about the above.

I would have to return both to the bookstore. FYI

I've been reading about sex and violence since I was 8 years old. I've never had an abortion nor have I become murderer nor a pedophile.

I would have to feel insecure already in what I believe in to be afraid of a book.

 

[donners22]

Are you trying to make a counter-point or are you responding to your own imagined argument? You seem to have taken my quote and used it as the basis to say something that has little relation to any point I have made.

I know it's a bit confusing with a few seperate arguments going on at once, but responding to one that doesn't exist only makes matters worse.

 

[Kevin Dilmore]

donners22 said: An interesting point, and a reasonable and a responsible attitude to take. Unfortunately, it is a difficult one in practice.

And I appreciate your thoughtful response as well. And you're right, I was blessed with running into the right person at the right time, and no one should be expected to slap a rating system on prose, and I hardly police everything my daughters read.

In revisiting my post, my much briefer point would have been: Please don't judge all "modern-day" (and I'm not even sure where that timeframe would begin) Star Trek prose against the aims and the storytelling devices of the Vanguard series. It's not too far afield from turning on an episode of "Deadwood" and deciding that all of television is inappropriate for young viewers. I don't want anyone not liking something with which I've been involved and then choosing to avoid similar works by other writers. You'd be missing out on some great stuff.

Kevin

 

[Turtletrekker]

David Mack said:
The metaphor that was intended in Harbinger was for the Dan Rather fiasco, in which a reporter proceeds with a story that, despite being basically true, is undermined by evidence that later is revealed to have been fabricated (possibly by people who wanted the story neutralized). Even though lots of people know the story is still factual, because the "evidence" is tainted, the reporter is robbed of credibility and the botched evidence is used as an excuse to ignore the essentially true nature of the story.

Sorry to dredge up this old thread, but I remembered this post from David Mack when I saw this at Yahoo news. It looks both Rather and Pennington will be redeemed.

 

[David Mack]

Let's just say I'm pulling for both of them.

Thanks for the bump, Turtletrekker!

 

[cbp44189]

I don't know what the problem is with Vanguard, but I think it's an outstanding series. Trek has to get a bit grittier to keep up with the times. It's not a pretty world out there, and although things are supposed to shape up in the future, I'm sure there is still going to be alot of stuff going on in an infinite universe that isn't going to be pretty. I hope the writers of Vanguard continue on their way with the current theme and provide us with exciting new stories.
By the way, it's not as graphic as is being suggested.

 

[foravalon]

Go Dan Go! I wonder, could Pennington sue the Federation? Or is the evidence just too flimsy?

Where's Samuel T Cogley when you need him?





post script: and tangentally, I still want to know what made donners22 so upset about "Warped"...

 

[JD]

If he could prove get absolute proof of what T'Prynn did, then yeah I think he could possibly have a case.

 

[ATimson]

Kevin Dilmore said:
In revisiting my post, my much briefer point would have been: Please don't judge all "modern-day" (and I'm not even sure where that timeframe would begin) Star Trek prose against the aims and the storytelling devices of the Vanguard series.

re: where the "modern day" began--somewhere between 1996 (Invasion!, and New Frontier the following year) and 2001 (Avatar), I'd say.

 

[LiChiu]

Wow, I love these books and I had no idea they were controversial.

 

[foravalon]

well, they're not really that controversial, one poster took an awkward exception to the smallest aspect of one of the books, and a much larger percentage of the posters took exception that person's condemnation of said tiny aspect. It's really much ado about nothing for what originally amounts to a one line remark from a single trek fan from an ideological niche contrary to our norm. But hey, ridiculous as some of us may see it, IDIC right?

 

[captcalhoun]

IDIC is one thing. Freedom of speech shouldn't be used as an excuse to justify being a bigoted ass

 

[foravalon]

well, yeah, but I was trying to be diplomatic. We've gotta have room for forgiveness somewhere, no matter how much someone has their head up their ass. Someone has to just say "stop" after a while and just give someone a hug. we've gotta rise above.

Did Galoka think that the Ulus were too ugly to save?

 

[captcalhoun]

saywhatnow?