What was your first Star Trek book?

[PKS8304]

I got into Trek a little later in the game, end of season 6 to be exact. Towards the end of the summer before Season 7 started I was shopping at the mall for back to school with my Mom and noticed a novelization of "Descent" in front of Waldenbooks.
I picked it up, excited I could read part 2 and not have to wait any longer to see what happened, there was still like a month til Season 7 started.

Once I read "Descent", my Mom took note how much I enjoyed reading Star Trek and a few months later for my bday she bought me a handful off TNG novels, the first novel that wasnt a novelization that I read was "Strike Zone" by Peter David

 

[Hugh Cambridge]

For me it was "the galactic whirlwind", it was shot but good

 

[F. King Daniel]

"The Price of the Phoenix", when I was 8 or 9 - I almost never read Trek again! Then some enjoyable YA Starfleet Academy novels, "Capture the Flag" and "Worf's First Adventure". My next dip into grown-up Trek was the awful Next Gen novel "Grounded".

I don't remember what my first good proper Trek novel was.

 

[Greg Cox]

Probably one of the James Blish collections way back when. My local library had some of them.

 

[Defcon]

Enterprise: The First Adventure by Vonda McIntyre sometime in the early nineties. (Technically it is/was my brother's book, but he never finished it, so I "adopted" it).

The first ST novel I bought myself was Q-squared a few years later in the mid-nineties.

 

[Sho]

Phew, that's actually a pretty tough question, quite hard to remember.

Well, actually not that hard: I do know for sure that my first Trek book was the TNG Technical Manual .

Thinking about novels though, that one's a lot more difficult, but maybe you guys can help me out ...

I think it was one of the early TOS books. It had a number on it, but that might not mean much, because it was a German translation (the first 30 or so Trek novels I read as a young teenager were in German since I simply couldn't read a word of English yet - my TNG Tech Manual was German, too).

It involved the Enterprise happening upon a Dyson Sphere-like world, except it was disguised as an asteroid, if memory serves. I think it turned out to be a generational ship in the end. There were a bunch of species warring inside it (or maybe just tribes of the same species) that had a preindustrial vibe yet had advanced technology all the same. Our heroes were first taken captive, then later ended up mediating the conflict. There was a B plot of the Enterprise on the outside trying to contact the away team and struggling with tech difficulties caused by the alien ship, I think with Scotty in charge aboard.

(I bet the actual plot is substantially different; should be funny to figure out just how much my memory apparatus twisted things up there.)

I do remember well how I got it, though: I was visiting a Star Trek convention in Berlin in the mid to late 90s, I believe it was a Galileo 7. My first con. I used my allowance to buy a bunch of novels on the trade floor, just picking by the covers and back blurbs. Ishmael was among them, and Crossroad, and a TNG omnibus that had a really nifty "Rendezvous with Rama" type story (I love "figure out alien artifact" fiction) set in a giant transporter multiplexer/forwarder complex. Ah, good times ...

 

[Christopher]

My first was a used copy of Star Trek Log Three. It was also the first adult-readers novel I ever read. I was 6 or 7 at the time.

For me it was "the galactic whirlwind", it was sho[r]t but good

Wow, goes to show how the novel market (along with audience perception) has changed in the past few decades. In fact, The Galactic Whirlpool was the second-longest Trek novel Bantam ever published. Only The Fate of the Phoenix and the two New Voyages anthologies had higher page counts. I still think of TGW as a fairly hefty novel because I first became aware of it in the context of the Trek novels of the '70s and early '80s, and by the standards of that time it was above average length.

I think it was one of the early TOS books. It had a number on it, but that might not mean much, because it was a German translation (the first 30 or so Trek novels I read as a young teenager were in German since I simply couldn't read a word of English yet - my TNG Tech Manual was German, too).

It involved the Enterprise happening upon a Dyson Sphere-like world, except it was disguised as an asteroid, if memory serves. I think it turned out to be a generational ship in the end. There were a bunch of species warring inside it (or maybe just tribes of the same species) that had a preindustrial vibe yet had advanced technology all the same. Our heroes were first taken captive, then later ended up mediating the conflict. There was a B plot of the Enterprise on the outside trying to contact the away team and struggling with tech difficulties caused by the alien ship, I think with Scotty in charge aboard.

(I bet the actual plot is substantially different; should be funny to figure out just how much my memory apparatus twisted things up there.)

That's Joe Haldeman's second Bantam novel, World Without End. Although "Dyson Sphere" is the wrong term for it -- it's more of a Bernal sphere, a small spherical habitat around an artificial sun. A Dyson sphere is unimaginably vaster, and there is one featured in the Bantam novel The Starless World by Gordon Eklund, which is what I thought you were talking about until I saw the "disguised as an asteroid" bit (although it wasn't really disguised since it had visible engines and other structures -- maybe you're thinking of Yonada from "For the World is Hollow and This Title is Really Long").

 

[C.E. Evans]

Aside from a couple of Gold Key comics as a kid, it was actually the TMP photostory--it was very much like a comic book (complete with word balloons), except featuring actual stills from the movie instead of drawn illustrations.
http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/iss/400w/276/18972762/18973162_1.jpg

 

[Sho]

"World Without End" is the one, thanks Christopher .

 

[Epsilon IX]

I didn't actually start buying Trek novels until I was 20. The first novel I read from cover to cover was Taking Wing the first in the Titan series. Beforehand I would casually flick through some of the graphic novels at my local library.

 

[Christopher]

Aside from a couple of Gold Key comics as a kid, it was actually the TMP photostory--it was very much like a comic book (complete with word balloons), except featuring actual stills from the movie instead of drawn illustrations.

I still have that one!

 

[Sho]

I realize it's less impressive since I started only in the mid-90s, but I still have every Trek book I ever got or bought, too. The apartment is overflowing on books here, which I guess is not to uncommon among this our crowd ...

 

[Defcon]

and a TNG omnibus that had a really nifty "Rendezvous with Rama" type story (I love "figure out alien artifact" fiction) set in a giant transporter multiplexer/forwarder complex. Ah, good times ...

This one?

If so, that was actually my third Star Trek book IIRC.

I realize it's less impressive since I started only in the mid-90s, but I still have every Trek book I ever got or bought, too. The apartment is overflowing on books here, which I guess is not to uncommon among this our crowd ...

Same here, although I only really started to collect them in the late nineties. I do have the majority of Pocket Books releases in one form or the other (German or English edition), though.

RE: the overflowing

That's why I switched to eBooks last year, which will also give me the chance to read those older releases I don't have one of these days.

 

[Sho]

This one?

If so, that was actually my third Star Trek book IIRC.

Nope, though I own that one, too .

Looks like it was this one: http://www.dippold.org/startrek/tng/9112.PHP

And the story I was thinking of was Gene DeWeese's "The Peacekeepers".

Thanks for linking that site ...

 

[Defcon]

This one?

If so, that was actually my third Star Trek book IIRC.

Nope, though I own that one, too .

Looks like it was this one: http://www.dippold.org/startrek/tng/9112.PHP

And the story I was thinking of was Gene DeWeese's "The Peacekeepers".

Thanks for linking that site ...

Ah, I have those three novels as solo releases.

I have a crude mix of solo issues and omnibus editions in both languages, and I'm sure Therin and/or Steve would get a stroke if they would see it, but I'm content as long as I have the books in one form or the other (although I've stopped to buy German translations almost a decade ago).

 

[Sho]

I have no hope of putting together a respectably complete deadtree edition collection at this point I think, it's just too late in the game and I've pretty much switched to ebooks, too. I love the thought of having one, but I don't really have sufficient drive and determination - my drive is more to have read them (my current interim goal is to finish up on "read every Trek novel released since the turn of the millenium").

Aaanyhow, getting close to a thread hijacking with this tangent I think .

 

[David Mack]

The first that I read? One of the James Blish novelizations, checked out in a stack from my hometown's local library.

Th first that I wrote? The Starfleet Survival Guide.

 

[Galileo7]

As a boy in the '70s, my first non-fiction book was The Making Of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield and my first fiction book was the Star Trek The Motion Picture novelization.

 

[Methos]

pretty sure it was "A Rock and a Hard Place" (TNG)

I wasn't a massive Riker fan at the time, so it took me some time to drag myself through it... looking back it was probably an alright book though... don't even know if i've still got it after all these years

M

 

[Keturah]

John Vornholt's TNG Contamination. I bought it because it had Troi on the cover, and she was my hero in 7th grade. I've read it at least twice since then. A great read!