What pet peeves do you have about trek books?

[rahullak]

^@ Daddy Todd
Perhaps. But we could give an in-universe explanation and say that the characters find it easier to relate alien beverages and food to stuff they already know. So Tarkalian Tea might not taste anything like tea or even made from anything like tea (it could be called Tarkalian coffee and still not be wrong). It's just easier for the characters to keep track of the hundreds of foods of hundreds of worlds to form such humanized words for them.

It's like Klingons calling our Earl Grey tea, weak pathetic human raktajino, or the Ferengi calling our Rum hew-mon knock-out drink or something.

 

[Christopher]

The prototypical example comes from "Where No Man.." when Mitchell hands Dehner what is clearly a papaya, but calls it a "Kaferian apple."

I find usages like "Tarkalian Tea" annoying. Why not make up an entirely alien word? Raktajino would be infinitely less interesting if it was simply called "Klingon coffee."
...
It sometimes comes across just a bit lazy -- it saves having to drop an infobomb somewhere indicating "raktajino is a lot like coffee, only stronger" if you just call it "Klingon coffee" in the first place.

That's not lazy, it's efficient. That kind of "infobomb" is often awkward and unnatural to work into dialogue, a distraction from the stuff in the story that's actually important. Giving something a name that explains what it is by analogy is a much more economical way of getting the exposition across.

Besides, there's plenty of precedent in real life for people naming exotic things by analogy to more familiar things. For instance, "herbal tea" isn't tea at all. Tea is the name of a specific species of plant or the beverage brewed from its leaves. Beverages brewed from other types of plant are technically called tisanes. But we still call them mint tea and chamomile tea and ginseng tea and so forth, even though they aren't actually tea. Saying "Tarkalean tea" is no different.

Other examples include the pineapple, which is a double analogy: the fruit was named for its resemblance to pine cones, which were originally called pineapples because they were the "fruits" of the pine tree. "Apple" has long been used as a generic term for the fruit of any tree, which is why lore and vernacular refer to Adam and Eve eating an apple even though that fruit was never mentioned in Genesis and was unknown in the place and time it was written. So again, there's plenty of precedent for using "apple" to refer to an exotic fruit.

Then there's the turkey, which was named that because of its resemblance to a pheasantlike bird that lived in Turkey. And the bell pepper, which is actually a chile but was named "pepper" by Christopher Columbus because of his mistaken belief that he'd reached the East Indies and discovered a new variety of the spice pepper. Not to mention the guinea pig, the sea lion, the bearcat, the seahorse, etc.

So really, it would be far more unrealistic if human beings didn't go around naming alien plants, animals, foods, and beverages after Earth equivalents.

 

[Daddy Todd]

I never knew raktajino was supposed to be "the Klingon analog for coffee" until Odo described it as "Klingon coffee" in Trials and Tribble-ations. I didn't even realize it was supposed to be KLINGON. It was just raktajino, something they drank a lot on DS9.

To me, as a regular viewer, it didn't matter; it was background noise in the day-to-day life of the space station.

I found raktajino, like jumja sticks or hasperat, to be something that added to the verisimilitude of the series. My mind never worried about what any of those things were; they were raktajino and hasperat and jumja sticks - just as coffee is coffee, burritos are burritos, and popsicles are popsicles.

I like having a special, perfect word to describe a unique object, rather than a smaller number of words which are modified. Taken to extremes, that starts to feel like newspeak. Doubleplusungood!

Going back to the DS9 examples, "Klingon coffee" and "Bajoran wraps" and "Bajoran lollipops" would have been less satisfying to me as a viewer. I'm glad they invented new words, and just started tossing them around without a lot of worry about defining them in clunky dialog. We were told all we needed to know about them when it was important to a story.

The examples I find annoying are cases where it makes no difference to the telling of the story if I call it a "Kaferian apple" or simply call it a "kaferia." I find it contributes to the realism to simply make up a name, and use it as if everyone already knows what it means. "Phaser" is more pleasing to my ear them "phase pistol." And "kaferia" would have more of a tang of alienness than "Kaferian apple." (And the possibility that "Kaferian" is derived from some word in a human language -- it sounds vaguely Arabic to me, but I'm not experienced beyond Romance languages, so I could be wrong -- shouldn't invalidate the argument. The purpose of the usage was to convey "alienness" to a mid-60's TV viewer in the USA or Canada, no matter the actual origin of the word.)

Others may disagree, and that's fine. This is MY pet peeve, after all. No amount of logical argument about why my emotional response is "wrong" is going to convince me.

 

[Daddy Todd]

Oh, and for every example Christopher proffers, I can find a counter-example.

The French call it a pomme de terre. Does that mean that the state of Idaho should reissue their license plates with the legend "Famous Dirt Apples" instead of "Famous Potatoes"?

 

[Myasishchev]

and the inane chatter that make up everyday conversation among two (or more) people -- in other words, the things you call "naturalism" -- have no place in a novel's dialogue.

Indeed. Some of us are often told it has no place in BBS posts as well.

I prefer characters talking in novels like real people would.

No, you really wouldn't. You need to spend a day as an observer in a navy vessel's bridge, or a corporate boardroom, or a teachers' staffroom, and you'll hear naturalistic dialogues - and extraneous pauses, obscure in-jokes, technical language, contractions and random trivia - that simply do not progress a storyline with the speed needed to hold the attention of anyone without deeper insights into the workings of such environments.

What's wrong with contractions? This may be a radical position, but as far as I'm concerned, virtually every type of writing should use contractions

Obviously, I don't follow this precept (I'd find myself "on the sidewalk," so to speak) when writing in a scholarly or professional capacity. However, I find uncontracted phrases to be stilted and a bit artificially distant, especially in dialogue, but also in the descriptive prose. Contracted phrases should be the default, in my opinion, with uncontracted phrases used to carry across certain effects (gravity, hesitancy, "I-am-a-robot" scenes, and so forth).

(And the possibility that "Kaferian" is derived from some word in a human language -- it sounds vaguely Arabic to me, but I'm not experienced beyond Romance languages, so I could be wrong --)

No, you're right. But as a head's up, I wouldn't run around using that Arabic root word in South Africa.

 

[Gangsta_Author]

I don't mind recaps as it reintroduces good stories to new readers. But, photoshop'ed covers need to stay in the realm of e-books / fan fic.

The only other nitpick I have is the fact I'm a fan of Morgan Bateson. Chances are slim of a recurring post-Nem Trek Lit re-appearance of this character & his crew after "Ship Of The Line" by Diane Carey despite the fact Paramount-Viacom / Pocket Books' editors have given every ~other~ Captain / X.O. / Engineer ever seen or heard about on-screen, their own spin-off.

 

[Nardpuncher]

I just thought of another pet peeve -- something that seems common in Trek lit.

It's the use of some common English noun along with an alien-sounding modifier, in place of creating a wholly alien name for something.

The prototypical example comes from "Where No Man.." when Mitchell hands Dehner what is clearly a papaya, but calls it a "Kaferian apple."

I find usages like "Tarkalian Tea" annoying. Why not make up an entirely alien word? Raktajino would be infinitely less interesting if it was simply called "Klingon coffee."

It sometimes feels like it's done deliberately, to create a warm familiarity when introducing something alien. Look! Worf may be a big, angry alien, but he drinks Klingon coffee! So he's just like us! Only a nasty, nasty alien would drink something called raktajino.

It sometimes comes across just a bit lazy -- it saves having to drop an infobomb somewhere indicating "raktajino is a lot like coffee, only stronger" if you just call it "Klingon coffee" in the first place. (This is a fictitious example I just made up -- nobody has ever referred to raktajino as "Klingon coffee," as far as I know.)

I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head, and it's not a big enough deal to actually force me over to the bookcase to look some up, but I have the memory of growing impatient with the practice in some recent Treklit titles.

I want to point out that it's not a deal-breaker by any stretch, just something I find mildly annoying when overused.

Those lines like "Why captain, you have the tenacity of a Denelbian Swamp Monkey!" are quite silly.
It's like someone said elsewhere about when they list famouse people (be they scientists, writers, warriors or politicians) they'll say the first two from Earth history then one random alien from before their time but after ours. Like: "Captain, you'll be remembered as one of the greatest warriors, along with Alexander, Nelson and Q'F'kPa'Olg!"

 

[Sci]

Yes, I read it. And his claim was that it was more work to read. I don't agree with that. Shakespeare is also more work to read. Are we going to rewrite it?

1. Shakespeare wrote scripts, not novels. Shakespeare is not meant to be read. I know high schools across the world have tricked people into thinking his plays are for reading, but they're really not. His plays are meant to be seen and heard, not read.

2. Shakespeare was not writing in the Realism/Naturalism style that is almost universally adopted by novels today; he was writing in a distinctly non-Realistic, presentational style. The comparison of his work to modern Realism/Naturalism is completely invalid.

 

[Myasishchev]

1. Shakespeare wrote scripts, not novels. Shakespeare is not meant to be read. I know high schools across the world have tricked people into thinking his plays are for reading, but they're really not. His plays are meant to be seen and heard, not read.

Word.

 

[Therin of Andor]

What's wrong with contractions? This may be a radical position, but as far as I'm concerned, virtually every type of writing should use contractions

There's nothing at all wrong with them at all. I just mean that someone not knowledgeable of a certain workplace would overhear contractions, specific technical terms, abbreviations and acronyms that may (but certainly not always) be discernible by their use in context. And I don't mean regular contractions (like "don't"), I mean work-specific contractions of terms.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Oh. AMRAAMs, TPS reports, ATCAs and such, then.

 

[Christopher]

The examples I find annoying are cases where it makes no difference to the telling of the story if I call it a "Kaferian apple" or simply call it a "kaferia."

Yes, it would, because then you would've lost the layers of symbolism -- Adam and Eve in the Garden, tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and so forth.

I find it contributes to the realism to simply make up a name, and use it as if everyone already knows what it means.

Oh, and for every example Christopher proffers, I can find a counter-example.

Of course you can, but you're wrong to treat this as an all-or-nothing choice. That's not realistic. In real life, yes, a lot of things have unique names, but a lot of other things are named by analogy to other things. Yes, if everything alien were named by analogy to a familiar Earth equivalent, that would be unrealistic, but it would be just as unrealistic if nothing alien were named by analogy. In real life, people do both those things. In real life, if thousands or millions of different human beings were travelling around the galaxy discovering new things on other planets, they'd use multiple different methods for choosing their names. Some discoverers would try to learn and popularize the local names, some would come up with analogy-based names, some would make up random gibberish or pun-based names, some would name their discoveries after themselves or their loved ones, some would sell the naming rights to corporations, etc. Every possible naming scheme would be used, just as it is in real life. So yes, you would have alien fruits with their own unique names, but you would also inevitably have alien fruits called (Place Name) apples or (Discoverer Name) berries or the like. Yes, you would have alien beverages with unique names, but you would also inevitably have alien herbal infusions being referred to as "tea," because that has become a generic vernacular-English word for infusion-based beverages.

And Star Trek already has a mix of both, just like you would have in real life, so there's nothing unrealistic going on here.

 

[Greg Cox]

2. And strangely, the exposition repeats plot points that just happened a few chapters back.

This is one of my editorial pet peeves, too. Characters should not recount in dialogue events that the reader has already experienced. There is much to be said for constructions like:

"Riker informed Picard of the attack on the planet's surface."

You can then move straight to Picard's reaction without having to recap the previous chapter.

 

[captcalhoun]

I don't mind recaps as it reintroduces good stories to new readers. But, photoshop'ed covers need to stay in the realm of e-books / fan fic.

The only other nitpick I have is the fact I'm a fan of Morgan Bateson. Chances are slim of a recurring post-Nem Trek Lit re-appearance of this character & his crew after "Ship Of The Line" by Diane Carey despite the fact Paramount-Viacom / Pocket Books' editors have given every ~other~ Captain / X.O. / Engineer ever seen or heard about on-screen, their own spin-off.

he was in Destiny. He whupped Borg ass.

 

[JD]

The examples I find annoying are cases where it makes no difference to the telling of the story if I call it a "Kaferian apple" or simply call it a "kaferia." I find it contributes to the realism to simply make up a name, and use it as if everyone already knows what it means. "Phaser" is more pleasing to my ear them "phase pistol." And "kaferia" would have more of a tang of alienness than "Kaferian apple." (And the possibility that "Kaferian" is derived from some word in a human language -- it sounds vaguely Arabic to me, but I'm not experienced beyond Romance languages, so I could be wrong -- shouldn't invalidate the argument. The purpose of the usage was to convey "alienness" to a mid-60's TV viewer in the USA or Canada, no matter the actual origin of the word.)

I'm sorry to nitpick, but this was driving me crazy while I was reading this. Since it's a Kaferian apple, that would probably mean that's it's from a planet or region called kaferia or kafer or something along those lines. So simply calling kaferia wouldn't really work since you'd just be referring to where it's from, not what it is. You'd still need something to differentiate it from other things from that planet/region.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

The examples I find annoying are cases where it makes no difference to the telling of the story if I call it a "Kaferian apple" or simply call it a "kaferia." I find it contributes to the realism to simply make up a name, and use it as if everyone already knows what it means. "Phaser" is more pleasing to my ear them "phase pistol." And "kaferia" would have more of a tang of alienness than "Kaferian apple." (And the possibility that "Kaferian" is derived from some word in a human language -- it sounds vaguely Arabic to me, but I'm not experienced beyond Romance languages, so I could be wrong -- shouldn't invalidate the argument. The purpose of the usage was to convey "alienness" to a mid-60's TV viewer in the USA or Canada, no matter the actual origin of the word.)

I'm sorry to nitpick, but this was driving me crazy while I was reading this. Since it's a Kaferian apple, that would probably mean that's it's from a planet or region called kaferia or kafer or something along those lines. So simply calling kaferia wouldn't really work since you'd just be referring to where it's from, not what it is. You'd still need something to differentiate it from other things from that planet/region.

Useless, pointless info: Kaferia is a planet orbiting Tau Ceti. It has human colonies and apparently a native insectoid species. You didn't need to know that, but I'm being annoying and saying it anyway.

 

[captcalhoun]

i wish Kaferia hadn't been made a planet with a species. i wish it had been a region. that's one peeve i have. on Earth we have Cornish pasties, Yorkshire pudding, California Raisins, Brazil nuts, Black Forest Gateau and the like, yet the literature people seem to like making every alien beverage and food that gets called Blankian Blah or Blanki Blah into an item that comes from a world with a sentient race. why can't we have some alien foods that are from Andor or Vulcan but aren't called 'Andorian ice cream' or 'Vulcan tea'?

 

[Deranged Nasat]

i wish Kaferia hadn't been made a planet with a species. i wish it had been a region. that's one peeve i have. on Earth we have Cornish pasties, Yorkshire pudding, California Raisins, Brazil nuts, Black Forest Gateau and the like, yet the literature people seem to like making every alien beverage and food that gets called Blankian Blah or Blanki Blah into an item that comes from a world with a sentient race. why can't we have some alien foods that are from Andor or Vulcan but aren't called 'Andorian ice cream' or 'Vulcan tea'?

I agree entirely with this. It's a pet peeve of mine too. I like to think that some of the Blankian Blahs we heard on TV are actually like this, so that Circassian figs are from the Circassian Valley on Denobula, say, rather than planet Circassia.

 

[Christopher]

I'm sorry to nitpick, but this was driving me crazy while I was reading this. Since it's a Kaferian apple, that would probably mean that's it's from a planet or region called kaferia or kafer or something along those lines. So simply calling kaferia wouldn't really work since you'd just be referring to where it's from, not what it is. You'd still need something to differentiate it from other things from that planet/region.

I think his point was that if it had just been called "a kaferia" in the first place, if the phrase "Kaferian apple" had never existed, then the word "kaferia" would be known to us only as the name of a kind of fruit and not as a place name at all. Although ending in "-ia" does suggest a place name, so maybe it's not the best example.

(And that's a pet peeve of mine, actually -- alien place names or species names that have Latin-style endings.)

 

[JD]

Ah, I see now.