Weirdest Trek novel

[Timewalker]

On the subject of DS9 novels, Fallen Heroes had me literally yelling at the book, "Don't go in there, don't touch that, you're gonna die!" and hoping they wouldn't...

But of course they did, and then I'd yell, "You <censored> idiot!"

Why don't characters ever listen to the readers?

 

[CT_Phipps]

DS9: "Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found)" by Terry J. Erdmann and Paula M. Block felt super weird to me when I read it, and it hasn't bubbled up on my reread list yet. It's a DS9 story from the perspective of a Ferengi apprentice, and delves into the backstory of Vulcan Love Slave. I don't mean weird in a bad way, just feeling really unusual.

I love this novel because it's so out there. Quark must acquire some highly sought after porn.

 

[Avro Arrow]

One of her science fiction novels, Black Fire (Simon and Schuster) was on the bestseller list and was chosen the best Star Trek novel published in the first 25 years of Star Trek.

Chosen by whom, exactly?

I kid. I seem to remember liking Black Fire when I read it... but I was a kid. No idea how much I might appreciate it today.

 

[Steve Roby]

I did enjoy Black Fire, though. It's fun, and I met Sonni Cooper when she and Bjo Trimble were the co-Guests of Honor at Calgary's annual science fiction convention one year in the '80s.

I'm going to guess that wasn't in 1985. because that was the year I had a summer job in Calgary and went to a big SF con where Poul Anderson, as I recall, was the GoH. I did get a few good Trek books in the dealers' room, though.

Chosen by whom, exactly?

Funny how often people leave that part out.

I kid. I seem to remember liking Black Fire when I read it... but I was a kid. No idea how much I might appreciate it today.

I was a university student still, I think. As I recall, I found it a preposterous but entertaining romp.

 

[Timewalker]

I'm going to guess that wasn't in 1985. because that was the year I had a summer job in Calgary and went to a big SF con where Poul Anderson, as I recall, was the GoH. I did get a few good Trek books in the dealers' room, though.

Okay, this is... surreal. It's not often I run across people online who I either met or might have met in offline, pre-internet life.

I was at that convention, and met Poul Anderson and his wife. Karen Anderson joined us in Saturday night filking and taught us some of the songs they do in their region in California.

I also remember this cute story Anderson told us about his daughter, when she was a young child. Apparently there was a time in school when the kids were asked to tell the class what their parents did for a living. At that time Anderson was (in addition to his regular writing) involved in a literacy program at a prison.

So as I recall the story... Little Astrid Anderson stood up in class and said, "My daddy is a writer. He often goes to jail."

And... *goes to bookshelf, checks, BINGO!* I have in my hands the book he signed. Vault of the Ages. I'm currently reading one of his Time Patrol collections, about to get into my umpteenth re-read of "Delenda Est."

Did you also meet Greg Bear (Anderson's son-in-law), who was also at one of the Calgary SF cons? That would have been a few years later. He wrote a Star Trek novel, and that's the book I got him to sign.

 

[Steve Roby]

I didn't actually meet Anderson except for almost bumping into his entourage in a hotel hallway. I was only there for a few hours. I met Greg Bear once, though it was at a con here in Ottawa. It would have been maybe 1990, as I got a signed hardcover edition of his short story collection Tangents.

I often say Canada's a small country, as long as you don't have to drive across it. I was in an Ottawa pub a few months ago chatting with someone at the bar who turned out to be from Calgary and it turned out we had acquaintances in common. I only lived in Alberta from 1975-80 (Edmonton) and the summer of '85 in Calgary.

 

[Greg Cox]

This is where I brag about editing a couple of Poul Anderson collections for Tor Books back in the day: Kinship with the Stars and The Armies of Elf-Land.

And, as it happens, he was a guest at the first SF convention I attended, back in the early eighties: VikingCon 1 in Bellingham, WA.

 

[Cicero]

Why don't characters ever listen to the readers?

That was the most frustrating part of the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

 

[Timewalker]

But you are the character in the CYOA books! It's just that you either make really good decisions or really stupid ones.

A very long time ago, I tried to write a Star Trek CYOA-style book. It's a lot more challenging than it seemed at first, juggling story threads and coming up with ideas for those abrupt endings. I never finished it, but might try again, just for the fun of it.

 

[JD]

I don't think I could ever write a Choose Your Own Adventure book, there's no way I could ever keep all the different story branches straight. I don't know how many CYOA writers use outlines, but if any of them do, I'd hate to think what they must look like.

 

[Timewalker]

It would look similar to the charts and diagrams I use when I play a Fighting Fantasy gamebook with 400 or more paragraphs, some of which lead to others by very convoluted routes (as in you have to solve a puzzle or remember a particular detail to go to another paragraph even when the text doesn't prompt you). Arrows every which way, showing which paragraphs lead to which others, and sometimes it's color-coded as to which order to do them in, which to definitely go to, which to avoid, etc. And that's only the paragraphs I've actually been to.

I co-admin a Fighting Fantasy FB group and earlier today someone posted a map he'd done based on one of the gamebooks. I was relieved to see it, because the difficulty of mapping that one with a pencil and graph paper is one reason why I never managed to finish it.

So as a FF gamer needs a guide, so do the people who write these sorts of books (whether gamebooks or the simpler CYOA, which don't get into combat and puzzle-solving). Some of the early editions of the FF books contained errors, making them unsolvable without cheating because you really HAVE to get to some paragraphs, but there's no way to reach them. Those errors were fixed in later editions.

Btw, there's a FF gamebook loosely based on Star Trek. It's called Starship Traveler.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I don't think I could ever write a Choose Your Own Adventure book, there's no way I could ever keep all the different story branches straight. I don't know how many CYOA writers use outlines, but if any of them do, I'd hate to think what they must look like.

I've seen it all mapped out on index cards, laid out on a wall or floor.

I bet someone has created a writing app for this by now.

 

[David cgc]

I've seen it all mapped out on index cards, laid out on a wall or floor.

I bet someone has created a writing app for this by now.

A computer blog I follow just had an article on the flowchart software one author used for his CYOA-style books. I was pretty interested since I have a few ideas for branching-narrative games and I'd like to know what kind of tools could help me plot them out and keep track of branches and dependancies.