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What was the 1st Trek novel you ever read?

I've been reading Trek since I was in single digits. I quickly got bored with the kids' library because the words were too short, and wandered into the adult library instead. (They really shouldn't have let me borrow that Xaviera Hollander book at my age! The sort of book that will put hair on your palms)...

But once I got past that novelty, I ventured into my natural home away from home, the sci-fi section, back when it was worthy of the name. (Nowadays they have a sci-fi shelf!) It was back when Trek was published in hardcover in the UK, except for my first ever Trek book, which was indeed in the kid's section and a paperback. It was an anthology, Star Trek II Short Stories by William Rotsler.

My first Trek novel could have been Shadow Lord by Laurence Yep, except I was a lot more discriminating at age 9 going on 10 than I am now. One chapter was enough and it was returned to the library, and remained unread until I bought it for myself.

It could have been The Final Reflection, but at that age, as the movie characters weren't in it, I felt cheated. It too was returned to the library unread, although it didn't stay that way for long once I got into the flow of things.

My first Trek novel, read through from beginning to end, twice in two days, the one that cemented an obsession, and will forever remain one of my favourites... Killing Time by Della Van Hise, the unrated cut. The one with all the slashfic left in. I actually got in trouble at school later on, as I chose it for a book report instead of the 'literature' they expected.

In quick succession followed Pawns and Symbols, Dwellers In The Crucible, Uhura's Song, Yesterday's Son, The Covenant Of The Crown, Mutiny On The Enterprise, The Entropy Effect, Corona, Web Of The Romulans, The Abode Of Life, The Klingon Gambit, The Tears Of The Singers, Mindshadow, The Prometheus Design, and Triangle

God I miss those Star Trek hardcovers. It really felt as if you held something of value in your hands, and you could relish reading them. It also explains why my favoured Trek Lit comes from the eighties.
 
God I miss those Star Trek hardcovers. It really felt as if you held something of value in your hands, and you could relish reading them. It also explains why my favoured Trek Lit comes from the eighties.
Uhm -- huh? None of the titles listed were hardcovers. And the first Star Trek hardcover wasn't published until 1988, so your equating of Trek hardcovers to the 80s is a weak link....
 
Yeah, those were all originally mass market paperbacks, but many of those books were reprinted in hardcover editions by Gregg Press for the library market, and I think most of them were also reprinted by the Science Fiction Book Club.
 
The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane. Still one of my favorites.



Back when I managed a Waldenbooks, I received an unproofed galley of TWS from my Pocket Books rep, which I greatly enjoyed reading long before the novel came out. A great book, one that would've made a great Trek film, IMO.
 
The first one I read was TNG #2 The Peacekeepers when I was about ten. It made such an impact I didn't pick up another Trek novel until Unity a few years ago :lol:
 
God I miss those Star Trek hardcovers. It really felt as if you held something of value in your hands, and you could relish reading them. It also explains why my favoured Trek Lit comes from the eighties.
Uhm -- huh? None of the titles listed were hardcovers. And the first Star Trek hardcover wasn't published until 1988, so your equating of Trek hardcovers to the 80s is a weak link....

I'm wondering if he remembers them as hardcover because many companies provided hard cover editions of paperback books for libraries, which seems to be where his exposure came from. I remember many paperbacks in a kind of hardcover binding that were originally paperback. I even recall seeing some Trek books like that.

Kevin
 
I got into Star Trek through the movies in 1991. My parents showed me TVH, then I went on to watch TFF, went back to watch the first three movies, and I couldn't wait for TUC.

My parents bought me TWOK and TSFS for my 12th birthday, and I watched them back-to-back. At some point before my birthday, maybe a month or two, I found a novelization of TSFS on sale I asked for it. That was the first Star Trek novel I read.

The first Star Trek novel I read that wasn't an adaptation was Spock's World. I think I was 11 or 12.
 
Yeah, those were all originally mass market paperbacks, but many of those books were reprinted in hardcover editions by Gregg Press for the library market.

Yep. Galaxy Bookshop in Sydney got them in - a few of each title - but since most people had already bought them in MMPB, those hardcover editions were sitting around for many years.
 
God I miss those Star Trek hardcovers. It really felt as if you held something of value in your hands, and you could relish reading them. It also explains why my favoured Trek Lit comes from the eighties.
Uhm -- huh? None of the titles listed were hardcovers. And the first Star Trek hardcover wasn't published until 1988, so your equating of Trek hardcovers to the 80s is a weak link....


Maybe the Laughing Vulcan threw the reference to the hardcovers in after talking baout the paperbacks, not refering to them as hardcovers.
I belive there were two (Spock's World, The Lost Years) that came out in the 80s.
 
The first trek novel(s) I read was Maximum Warp. I got it before going on my school's 8th grade trip to DC in 2001. I wanted something to pass the time on the bus and I had discovered TNG a few months earlier, so when I saw the books at Wal-Mart I decided to give them a try. However, I really didn't read much of them until I got back home. To this day the Maximum Warp duology remains among my favorite Trek novels.
 
God I miss those Star Trek hardcovers. It really felt as if you held something of value in your hands, and you could relish reading them. It also explains why my favoured Trek Lit comes from the eighties.
Uhm -- huh? None of the titles listed were hardcovers. And the first Star Trek hardcover wasn't published until 1988, so your equating of Trek hardcovers to the 80s is a weak link....


Maybe the Laughing Vulcan threw the reference to the hardcovers in after talking baout the paperbacks, not refering to them as hardcovers.
I belive there were two (Spock's World, The Lost Years) that came out in the 80s.

No, they were hardcovers all the titles I listed. As I mentioned, at age 10, all my reading material came from the library. I didn't get pocket money back then. So all the Star Trek that I read were library copies, hence hardcovers. I don't think I actually ventured into a bookshop until I was thirteen. I was more interested in spending money on toys and computer games prior to that.

All those Trek novels that I listed, I first read as large, inviting hardback books, since then paperbacks just felt flimsy. When I started by Trek Lit, I always went for the hardcover copy first and foremost, even if it took up more room on my shelves. There's just something permanent about those books.

There's a list of Special Hardcover editions, both Book Club and Gregg Press at this site...

http://www.well.com/~sjroby/lcars/tosindex.html

Familiar name in the link...
 
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The very first one I read was in fact, the first one ever published, a short novel by James Blish entitled Spock Must Die! Certainly not the greatest thing ever, but it did start a publishing trend that exists to this day.

Me, too. But I apparently remember it more fondly than you do. In fact, I've re-read it fairly recently and still enjoyed it. A truly nerdy pleasure. :)



That's what I'm finding with re-reading Spock, Messiah! All of my early, geeky memories are coming back the further in I get. Certainly not as refined as today's offerings, but at the time, it was all we had.

A special thanks to Christopher for that link to the Bantam site. It's great to see the original covers and a synopsis of each. A nice down Memory Lane.


:techman:
 
Diane Carey's Ghost Ship was my first. I was ten or so, and I'd recently begun watching TNG reruns (I'd caught the first part of Time's Arrow one afternoon when nothing else was on, and then wanted to see the second part, and then... well, you can guess.) I was at the local library for whatever reason, probably with my mom returning books, when I passed by the Youn Adults section and saw something amazing. There were three full shelves of Star Trek books. I decided I'd grab the Next Gen novel marked #1, deciding it was a logical way to start, and checked it out. I remember liking it, but, hey, I was ten.
 
No, they were hardcovers all the titles I listed. As I mentioned, at age 10, all my reading material came from the library. I didn't get pocket money back then. So all the Star Trek that I read were library copies, hence hardcovers.
Oh.

Well.

That's different.

Never mind!
 
My first was one of the James Blish novelizations, courtesy of my elementary school's library. (I actually read all of the Blish books before I saw any TOS episodes, which made for some interesting observations when SciFi started running them.) My first original novel was Rogue Saucer, which is probably why I'm a bit biased towards that book.
 
I can't remember whether I read the early movie novels before it, but the first original Trek novel I ever read was The Abode of Life by Lee Correy about which I remember absolutely nothing!
 
My first Trek novel was a copy of Demons by J.M. Dillard that I got at a gun show my dad took me to. I wasn't really very interested in the guns, but some of the tables had books and coins and neat rocks. So I'd pass the painfully dull wait while he looked at the guns by looking at those. One of 'em had Demons stashed in with a bunch of historical fiction.

That wasn't my first Star Trek book at all, though - that would have been an issue of the DC Comics series.
 
I cant remember because it was over 10 years ago circa 1994/1995 but I think it was Imzadi by Peter David
 
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My first Trek book was DS9 #6 - Betrayal, some time around late 95/early 96. Not a bad one to get me started as I recall.
 
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