Warpath Aftermath

[Smiley]

tenmei said:
I'm not sure I count some of the novels you mentioned, Smiley, as DS9 Relaunch.

Not all of them are relaunch titles, and I never claimed otherwise. DS9 is bigger than just the relaunch, and the books set before and during the series can set up events and character motivation for the post-series books.

Even looking just at the relaunch, there has been at least one title per year, with the exception of FS.

 

[flandry84]

This is an interesting topic for Pocket books,methinks.

It seems to me from a glance at this forum that the DS9relaunch and Vanguard are whats exiting treklit fans at this time,yet there are precious few installments of either series on the horizon.
Before any one says it,yes I understand turnaround times and author concerns.And yes,the other series need attention too,but surely only one or two books per year is killing storyline momentum .

 

[The Nth Doctor]

flandry84 said:
It seems to me from a glance at this forum that the DS9relaunch and Vanguard are whats exiting treklit fans at this time

That's not really a fair assessment (even if you looked at several months worth of threads) because, as already noted in this thread, the schedule is crowded resulting in a focus of only a few titles at a time. For instance, I can assure you there's still plenty of interest in New Frontier but there aren't any threads about it because there hasn't been a book in the series in over a year (the Mirror Universe entry aside).

 

[Smiley]

"Killing storyline momentum?" Most single-author series have one or fewer books published during a year, and readers have coped with that just fine. I think we've been spoiled by the 1999-2005 period of Trek books, when we had two paperbacks a month and high quality to boot. Now, there are fewer books per year, but the writing is very strong, and the length is almost that of two books from years past.

 

[Christopher]

tenmei said:
This got me thinking - and I took a look at the release schedule.

'SEASON 8' *

2001 - Avatar Book 1, Avatar Book 2, Section 31: Abyss, Gateways: Demons of Air and Darkness, Gateways WLB: Horn and Ivory

2002 - Mission Gamma: Twilight, Mission Gamma: This Grey Spirit, Mission Gamma: Cathedral, Mission Gamma: Lesser Evil

2003 - Rising Son, Unity

'SEASON 9' *

2004 - WoDS9: Cardassia, WoDS9: Andor

2005 - WoDS9: Bajor, WoDS9: Trill, WoDS9, Ferenginar, The Dominion

2006 - Warpath

2007 - NONE

2008 - Fearful Symmetry


It is somewhat annoying that we got 'Season 8' in three years, and the run of 'Season 9' is taking four years and counting (although it feels like we're building up to the season finale atm, so maybe not too much more counting).

I'm no fan of the "season" model for the books, but if it were followed, I'd argue that "Season 8" would actually end with The Dominion: Olympus Descending, because that brings us to the end of 2376 and Warpath kicks off 2377. Unity was more like the big February-sweeps two-parter.

Warp Coil said:
I'm definitely disappointed, too. I can see how things are becoming more complicated as there are more and more series to juggle. Since Pocket is now only releasing one mass-market per month (aside from re-prints), it seems like most will only get one novel per year.

But you're overlooking the fact that Pocket is publishing more and more trade paperbacks to supplement the monthly MMPBs. And not just short-story anthologies, either. For instance, July and August 2008 will feature not only Fearful Symmetry and Greater Than the Sum, but the Myriad Universes duology containing six short novels. That's eight separate novels in two months. Okay, six of them are about half-length or so, but that still adds up to a lot of material.

 

[tenmei]

I'd argue Unity as the finale of the season. I mean, does a season of story have to equal a year of time? Not really.

Unity was the big event that all of the previous stories had been leading up to.

WoDS9 takes a bit of a pause, but introduces some new stuff and takes a lot of the characters in new directions - the progression is towards the arrival of this new race of aliens that keep getting mentioned.

Eeek, just did took a quick look at NF and saw that it's been running for ten years now. It's a shame we've not got a NF tale this year - for the tenth anniversary.

NF 'Season 1'

1997 - House of Cards, Into the Void, The Two Front War, End Game
1998 - Martyr, Fire on High, Once Burned
1999 - The Quiet Place, Dark Allies

NF 'Season 2'

2000 - Excalibur: Requiem, Excalibur, Renaissance, Excalibur: Resurrection,

2001 - Gateways: Cold Wars, What Lay Beyond: Death After Life, Being Human

2002 - None

2003 - Gods Above, Stone and Anvil

NF 'Season 3'

2004 - After the Fall
2005 - None
2006 - Missing in Action
2007 - None
2008 - ????

 

[David Mack]

Babaganoosh said:
Geez, I'm sorry I opened my big YAPPER already.

Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I was just joking, hence my comment about setting sarcasm detectors to eleven. I didn't mean to inflict that degree of angst.

 

[JD]

tenmei said:
I'd argue Unity as the finale of the season. I mean, does a season of story have to equal a year of time? Not really.

Unity was the big event that all of the previous stories had been leading up to.

WoDS9 takes a bit of a pause, but introduces some new stuff and takes a lot of the characters in new directions - the progression is towards the arrival of this new race of aliens that keep getting mentioned.

Eeek, just did took a quick look at NF and saw that it's been running for ten years now. It's a shame we've not got a NF tale this year - for the tenth anniversary.

NF 'Season 1'

1997 - House of Cards, Into the Void, The Two Front War, End Game
1998 - Martyr, Fire on High, Once Burned
1999 - The Quiet Place, Dark Allies

NF 'Season 2'

2000 - Excalibur: Requiem, Excalibur, Renaissance, Excalibur: Resurrection,

2001 - Gateways: Cold Wars, What Lay Beyond: Death After Life, Being Human

2002 - None

2003 - Gods Above, Stone and Anvil

NF 'Season 3'

2004 - After the Fall
2005 - None
2006 - Missing in Action
2007 - None
2008 - ????

Same here. Although I tend to think of it more in terms of story arcs instead of seasons.

As for the amount of time between books, I really can't complain. It's deffinitely better than alot of series, I mean look how long it took for the las HP book to come out. And then I've heard that there was like a 20 year gap or something between the books in The Clan of the Cave Bear series. I've never actually read those, but I just know that it was a big deal when the last one finally came out. So yeah, I really don't think we should complain about not getting one book in each series each year.

 

[OmahaStar]

David Mack said:

Babaganoosh said:
Geez, I'm sorry I opened my big YAPPER already.

Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I was just joking, hence my comment about setting sarcasm detectors to eleven. I didn't mean to inflict that degree of angst.

Don't worry, David .. Not everyone from Omaha is intolerant of sarcasm. Some of us even enjoy sarcasm.

 

[Christopher]

tenmei said:
I'd argue Unity as the finale of the season. I mean, does a season of story have to equal a year of time? Not really.

Unity was the big event that all of the previous stories had been leading up to.

WoDS9 takes a bit of a pause, but introduces some new stuff and takes a lot of the characters in new directions - the progression is towards the arrival of this new race of aliens that keep getting mentioned.

Yes, WoDS9 introduces new threads, but it also resolves lingering threads from the earlier books. Yes, Unity brings things to a climax, but so does Olympus Descending. Which just goes to show how useless it is to try to force the books to conform to a "season" model when they are not at all designed to follow such an arbitrary pattern. So how long it's been since Unity has no bearing on whether the books are coming out at a reasonable pace. It's a totally artificial standard.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

tenmei said:
Eeek, just did took a quick look at NF and saw that it's been running for ten years now. It's a shame we've not got a NF tale this year - for the tenth anniversary.

NF 'Season 1'

1997 - House of Cards, Into the Void, The Two Front War, End Game
1998 - Martyr, Fire on High, Once Burned
1999 - The Quiet Place, Dark Allies

NF 'Season 2'

2000 - Excalibur: Requiem, Excalibur, Renaissance, Excalibur: Resurrection,

2001 - Gateways: Cold Wars, What Lay Beyond: Death After Life, Being Human

2002 - None

2003 - Gods Above, Stone and Anvil

NF 'Season 3'

2004 - After the Fall
2005 - None
2006 - Missing in Action
2007 - None
2008 - ????

1999 also had Double Helix: Double or Nothing, 2003 had No Limits, 2004 had Tales from the Dominion War: Stone Cold Truth, and 2005 had Tales from the Captain's Table: Pain Management.

 

[tenmei]

I admit I forgot the Captain's Table and Dominion War novels and No Limits.

 

[ATimson]

Smiley said:
"Killing storyline momentum?" Most single-author series have one or fewer books published during a year, and readers have coped with that just fine.

A given installment in said series will typically have significantly more plot momentum than any given installment in the DS9r.

Not only that, but they also try to avoid leaving significant "cliffhanger" moments between books, instead focusing on making sure that the book is an enjoyable standalone experience. That's something that few Trek books in a series have.

 

[Technobuilder]

Maybe the delayed release of Fearful Symmetry will be a good thing.

Theoretically it means that whichever book was supposed to come after the it in the series should probably be done and ready to go not long after Fearful's release.

 

[Braxton]

tenmei said:
I'd argue Unity as the finale of the season. I mean, does a season of story have to equal a year of time? Not really.

Unity was the big event that all of the previous stories had been leading up to.

WoDS9 takes a bit of a pause, but introduces some new stuff and takes a lot of the characters in new directions - the progression is towards the arrival of this new race of aliens that keep getting mentioned.

Eeek, just did took a quick look at NF and saw that it's been running for ten years now. It's a shame we've not got a NF tale this year - for the tenth anniversary.

NF 'Season 1'

1997 - House of Cards, Into the Void, The Two Front War, End Game
1998 - Martyr, Fire on High, Once Burned
1999 - The Quiet Place, Dark Allies

NF 'Season 2'

2000 - Excalibur: Requiem, Excalibur, Renaissance, Excalibur: Resurrection,

2001 - Gateways: Cold Wars, What Lay Beyond: Death After Life, Being Human

2002 - None

2003 - Gods Above, Stone and Anvil

NF 'Season 3'

2004 - After the Fall
2005 - None
2006 - Missing in Action
2007 - None
2008 - ????

Who's to say that they didn't try? It's disappointing though, no question about that.

I'm just now reading New Frontier. I've had many of the books since they came out but never got around to reading them until now. I've been tracking down the books I need and have been successful in that regard thankfully. I'll have the 16 or so main books in the series soon (I hope) and will have plenty of reading material for a while.

Hopefully a new one will come next year.

 

[ATimson]

Technobuilder said:
Theoretically it means that whichever book was supposed to come after the it in the series should probably be done and ready to go not long after Fearful's release.

Assuming that they didn't slip it to later in the schedule because of Fearful Symmetry's delay.

 

[Christopher]

ATimson said:
Assuming that they didn't slip it to later in the schedule because of Fearful Symmetry's delay.

Well, that can depend on a whole lot of factors. So long as the writer of the next book has the outline for the current one, he, she, or they can proceed simultaneously with the writing of the current one. Any inconsistencies that result can be hashed out in the rewrite phase.

I've often written manuscripts simultaneously with the writing of the ones that came before or after mine in a series -- my SCE story, my Titan novel, my Mere Anarchy story, and now my TNG novel. It's actually pretty common.

 

[ATimson]

Christopher said:
Well, that can depend on a whole lot of factors. So long as the writer of the next book has the outline for the current one, he, she, or they can proceed simultaneously with the writing of the current one. Any inconsistencies that result can be hashed out in the rewrite phase.

I was thinking more in terms of S&S possibly not wanting to release two books in the same series too close together.

 

[Turbo]

I've got a DS9-R question that doesn't deal with Warpath specifically, but...

Spoiler: WoDS9 I (specifically, Andor)

Will we see Shar in Fearful Symmetry or another upcoming DS9-R book?

 

[Turtletrekker]

One of the characters in Kira's vision in Warpath was a representation of Shar, so I'd gather that we will see him again before too long.