Hi all. I'm currently reading "What Lay Beyond, IN THE QUEUE", and I came across this: "To Janeway’s utter amazement, her bridge was visited a second time by Leader. She felt its thoughts in her head again, and knew that the rest of her bridge crew did as well." What is meant by "Leader"?!
Leader is a character from Gateways: No Man's Land, the book to which "In the Queue" is an epilogue. All the segments of What Lay Beyond are epilogues to the six previous books in the Gateways miniseries, so it's not fully comprehensible if you haven't read the previous books. This was a controversial choice.
Hi all. I'm currently reading "Gateways 2, Chainmail", and I came across this: "Shucorion had always been around when Keller needed him. It never occurred to him to notice whether the other guy got enough sleep. “Crickets,” he grumbled. “This whole day stinks like low tide... second time in one day, I find him crinkled up on the deck, half dead . . " What is meant by "Crickets"?!
even though the author was prone to some .. strange tangents.. i did appreciate the 'everyman' feeling of many of the characters she created with unexpected interjections like that. everything was so offbeat in her books that it makes reading 'regular' Star trek characters feel a little paler. i'm sure this was a contributing factor in the rise of popularity (in what were, honestly, some "run-of-the-mill" story concepts) for Carey ... the eccentricity was also the downfall — if i recall correctly, the way she wrote novelizations over scripts by some of the series showrunners and interjected oddball things was not well received and this was the end of her Trek career
Now that I think about it, in the movie of The Right Stuff, Vice President Johnson, when denied a live TV interview with Annie Glenn, hollers "GLADIOLAS!"
It wasn't so much as "oddball" as criticizing and insulting the scripts within the novelization. "This place was right out of a cheesy pulp novel," "'Doesn't he know what "literally" means?'" and so on. Diane Duane wrote a post on her Tumblr recently about writing Star Trek novels, and touched on how to thread the needle when it comes to being subversive, criticizing, or "fixing" the parent property, and that it was usually better to be overt and clear about what you were doing with your editors/licensors than trying to be sly and sneaking in your opinions, specifically mentioning that she knew authors who had been blackballed for the latter. I wouldn't be surprised if she was talking about Carey, at the very least.
if you make it big and are picked up on as one writer out of many who gets to do those novelizations, and then you sabotage the entire deal -- i'd say that's a pretty "oddball" thing to do!
Hi all. I'm currently reading "Gateways 7 - What Lay Beyond", and I came across this passage: "Aimless wandering would mean the Resonator might be days away from discovery. He doubted the Alpha Quadrant would wait for days. As it was, he feared the days here already meant suns had gone nova. The worst part was, he had no way of knowing." Does anyone know what is meant by the underlined phrases? Thanks in advance.
From a brief reading of the context before and after the quoted passage and my memory of the story as a whole, here is my take: Picard needs to find the Resonator to stop the Gateways crisis. He needs some kind of plan to find it that is faster than just searching the Iconian setting at random. He has no way of knowing what kinds of disasters are occurring in the Alpha Quadrant at that point in time, but he senses time is running out.
Hello. I'm currently reading "Star Trek - Gateways 2 - Chainmail". I can't understand what does "sphinx" refer to in the following context: "“I didn’t want to broadcast all over the frigate that we’re going back. The boarding party is fitted out and we’re ready to reengage the tomb ship. I’ve got four men, plus me, no Blood, no non-Starfleet.” Keller glanced up at the tactical post, where Zoa sat picking at her weapons alignment programs. “And no sphinx?” “No, thanks.” She picked up the recon helmet. “Her IQ and her breast size are the same.” “I dunno . . . Zoa’s pretty good backup.” At her expression he gave up before starting, and instead surveyed her plump body in the service suit and harness. “You look fetching in that rig.”" PLZ HELP!
Definitely not the "really mysterious" guy who can cut guns in half with his mind. ("When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you can head off your foes with a balanced attack!")
Hi @flylikeeagle and @Didi , Welcome to the board! As you can see, I have merged your various threads requesting clarification about the meaning of certain passages in the books into a single thread. We don't really need to have individual threads for each question. In the future, please post any further inquiries of this nature into this thread, rather than starting a new one. Also, @flylikeeagle , I notice on your last two posts, you have been cross-posting your questions to other forums (Fan Fiction for one, and General Trek Discussion for the other). Cross-posting the same post to multiple forums is considered a violation of our spamming rules. Since these posts are about what things mean in various Star Trek books, in the future, please only post questions like this here in the Trek Literature forum, and don't cross-post the same question to other forums. Thank you for your co-operation.
Why Keller keeps calling Shucorion "Shadow"? "Another tap. “Shadow, go below and make sure the warps are powered up and the Blood core’s stable. I want to be able to increase speed without any overloads.”" From "Gateways 2 - The Chainmail".