I had the same reaction as you guys. It's the same reason I hate PAD's works--total nonsense, no respect for what the series was actually like.
What are you least favorite Star Trek novels?
- Thread starter mattburgess
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I had the same reaction as you guys. It's the same reason I hate PAD's works--total nonsense, no respect for what the series was actually like.
I seem to remember reading an interview wherein David Mack said that it was his idea to bring in the Borg, about which the editors were initially dubious after having done several Borg novels already. David said that in his opinion, bringing back the Borg in Resistance and Before Dishonor, reviving Star Trek's 300-lbs.-gorilla, meant that they had to be finally dealt with once and for all.
For me I thought The Sword of Damocles was a bore, I still read it entirely. Do Comet's Dream? is number two, with a the TNG novel Masks and the TOS novel Shadow Lord as a tie. Ship of the Line was just a mess.
This is correct. The only "brief" I was given by Marco and Margaret was the image of the downed Columbia from SotL and a request for an epic trilogy. I was the one who suggested that because they'd let the Borg out of their cage, they had to be dealt with, once and for all (at least in regard to this prose continuity).
Gotta put my vote in for How Much for Just the Planet? I wanted to jab long pointed sticks in my eyes after I finished it.
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Thanks.
So what is it about The Genesis Wave? I get the impression the whole story is wrapped up in two books, so why are there two more books??
IIRC, the first two sold extremely well, so John Vornholt pitched a third, or was asked to pitch a third. The best thing about Book 3 is the stunning cover. The story was dull, dull, dull.
"Genesis Force" (as in Four) seemed to be a pilot of another original-to-books ship and crew, this time with a motley collection of powerful individuals learning to work together. I'm sure I recall John Ordover describing it as the first in a possible series, then suddenly it was always meant to be a single book. I really disliked the main plot - until Worf and Alexander showed up. I found the young male and female guest protagonists very uninspiring, but some of the Admiral's crewmembers were interesting.
Ha! I've never noticed that before - on the inside of my Genesis Wave 1 book it advertises Genesis Wave 2 as being "The thrilling conclusion."
Then I read the blurb on the back of Genesis Wave 3, and it sounds SO tacked-on-at-the-end. "They thought the danger was over, they were wrong!" Dun dun duuuuuuuuun!
Then I read the blurb on the back of Genesis Wave 3, and it sounds SO tacked-on-at-the-end. "They thought the danger was over, they were wrong!" Dun dun duuuuuuuuun!
You realize the book was written by John M. Ford, the guy who wrote the influential and respected The Final Reflection, as well as a lot of material for FASA's Trek role playing game? He had a lot of respect for Star Trek, enough to think that you could do things a lot more interesting than telling another generic five year mission planet of the week story. How Much for Just the Planet? doesn't work at all if you insist on each book slotting neatly into a predictable chronology of predictable adventures, but if you read it on its own terms, it's a hilarious love letter to the show by someone who had a pretty good understanding of it.
As I recall, Ordover originally said something about Genesis Force being an ongoing series about a team of people turned by the Genesis Wave into mutant superheroes.
Ah, okay. I figured I was probably misremembering something.
Steve Roby: Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave...
My memory matches yours.
Ordover's reasoning was this -- we already have shapeshifters (Odo, Chameloids) and telepaths (Vulcans, Betazoids) in Star Trek. Creating an X-Men-like team is the obvious next step.
Seems to me that's very poor reasoning on somebody's part.
Just because some aliens have different abilities is no reason to form an Xmen-style Starfleet Team.
I get what else he's written--and that makes it all the more disappointing when someone like that slips. I'm not expecting everything to be predictable, but I don't want to pick up a Star Trek novel and find it to be nothing but a substanceless parody. He had plenty of room to be inventive without doing that.
In a lot of ways this is what happened to PAD. He began as a quality writer (Vendetta was actually very good) and then took a side trip into out-of-character absurdism that has never ended.
^ His very first TNG novel, Strike Zone, is far more "a side trip into out-of-character absurdism" than anything else he ever wrote in Trek. After that, the rest seems restrained.
And his famous TNG novels are all still fairly far-out on the weird scale; the planet being eaten at the beginning of Vendetta would fit perfectly in a NF novel (as, in fact, similar scenes have), not to mention Q's antics in Q-In-Law and Q-Squared (as well as Trelane in the latter) are both wackier and sharper than the show is sometimes.
And his famous TNG novels are all still fairly far-out on the weird scale; the planet being eaten at the beginning of Vendetta would fit perfectly in a NF novel (as, in fact, similar scenes have), not to mention Q's antics in Q-In-Law and Q-Squared (as well as Trelane in the latter) are both wackier and sharper than the show is sometimes.
I think the issue with PAD is that when he started out, his Trek novels tended to balance absurdity with strong drama. These days, though, his absurdities tend to go up against a hybrid of strong drama and strong melodrama, and the combo doesn't work as well for many people.
But he didn't slip, and it's not a substanceless parody, it's a witty blend of genres and styles. (I've read all seven of Leah Rewolinski's Star Wreck novels, so I know a substanceless parody when I see one.) IMHO, of course. And I say that as someone who finds a lot of PAD's stuff self-indulgent and unfunny.
Yeah I know there's four, I just haven't read the last one yet.
I love Masks, it's one of my favorites. What didn't you like about it?
I enjoyed that book. I didn't find it funny, but i loved that it was so utterly surreal. And I loved the messed-up dysfunctional crew of that little survey ship with the insane computer.
That said i can see how people could hate it, especially if you were expecting a 'standard' Trek story.
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