Whatever Happened to Diane Carey?

[foravalon]

Vixen said:
^They were fairly popular and made $$$

Not enough to keep them going.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

foravalon said:

Vixen said:
^They were fairly popular and made $$$

Not enough to keep them going.

True.

 

[JD]

I do realize now that my previous post came across alittle more harsh then I meant. I just thought that seemed like a pretty controversial stance for a Star Trek story to use.

 

[trampledamage]

Final Frontier is my favourite novel by Diane Carey - George Kirk and Drake Reed were really enjoyable. I wish we'd had more of their story.

Fire ship I guess I'd rate as her worst for me. I didn't like it - although until it was listed here I hadn't remembered it as being one of her novels.

I've always enjoyed her novels - but then I like sailing novels and I've never noticed the politics.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher said:
We shouldn't be closed to at least listening to alternative viewpoints. Especially in fiction. Even if you think a character's viewpoint is entirely wrong, that character can still be intriguing to read about.

Most definitely. Similarly, just because a particular author writes a character as having a certain political agenda or persuasion (or sexual persuasion?, or any persuasion?), we shouldn't jump to assume that the author also has the same leanings.

 

[Trent Roman]

Sci said:
To be fair, it's not as though the Trek novels are burdened with an overabundance of novelists writing from a relatively conservative political stance, and it was nice to be able to point to Ms. Carey's work when someone would invariably complain of an intentional liberal bias in the novel line.

Uh... why? Being liberal is hardly a bias, and Star Trek's production history makes pretty clear that it's a franchise with progressive, not reactionary, viewpoints. If people are looking for conversative-oriented fiction, they're better off reading authors like Rand, that Bill O'Rielly comic book, or White House press releases.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Sci]

Trent Roman said:

Sci said:
To be fair, it's not as though the Trek novels are burdened with an overabundance of novelists writing from a relatively conservative political stance, and it was nice to be able to point to Ms. Carey's work when someone would invariably complain of an intentional liberal bias in the novel line.

Uh... why? Being liberal is hardly a bias,

I'd say it is. A bias, mind you, isn't necessarily a bad thing, either -- it's simply a point of view. But when you're, for instance, writing from the point of view which holds that homosexuality is a morally neutral thing, then that's certainly one particular bias. It's a good bias, I would argue, but a bias nonetheless.

and Star Trek's production history makes pretty clear that it's a franchise with progressive, not reactionary, viewpoints.

Well, that depends on which part of Trek's production history you're talking about. Ronald D. Moore summed it up pretty well a little over ten years ago when he was posting on AOL about DS9:

Subj: Answers
Date: 4/14/97 3:27:58 PM
From: RonDMoore

<<I am a Conservative and I take great offense at the recent Risa episode that featured the Essentialists. I see this as a direct attack on some of my beliefs. I am troubbled. I love Trek very much, and I have been there watching when then only current Trek were reruns of TOS. Now, Trek is telling me that I don't belong here.>>

There are two points I'd like to make here:

1) I don't think the Essentialists were a direct attack on a particular political party or person. They were representatives of a philosophical point of view, namely the idea that pleasure and fun are to be frowned at and discouraged because of "the dangers out there" and the notion that those hedonistic tendencies will be the ruin of us all.

2) While Trek is not a political platform, neither is it devoid of politcal thought and opinion. Right from the beginning, Trek espoused a particular philosophy of Gene Roddenberry's which was termed "Liberal" back when that word wasn't thrown around as an epithet by radio talk show hosts. The Orginal Series' view on things like civil rights, feminism (at least as far as go-go boots & space babes would allow), social equality, environmentalism, war & peace, and tolerance were very much influenced by the political thought of mid-60s American Liberalism.

Granted, Gene's vision also had elements of Conservatism thrown in as well, like a robust military presence (say Starfleet isn't the military all you want, it fails the duck test -- looks like, walks like, sounds like, etc.), a strong keep-the-government-out-of-the-individual's-lives view, and the lack of women as starship captains (sorry, couldn't resist). But the dominant philosophy was a more Liberal one and Gene carried that view with him into the creation of TNG, which is filled with Liberal influences. DS9 is more complex and its characters have a wider range of philosophies than TOS ever did, ranging from Odo's latent fascism to Bashir's almost bleeding heart, but our heritage is in Gene's view of the 23rd/24th centuries, and that means it's full of the dread "L" word.

As writers, we also have our own views and political leanings and yes, we do indulge them on occasion (anyone who watches "Rejoined" and thinks I'm a Conservative isn't paying attention), but again, this isn't a platform for those views as much as it is a forum for the discussion and debate of ideas.

Sometimes we take a position and sometimes we don't, and that decision is exclusively ours to make. In the end, it's either entertaining or it isn't, and to quote a famous maxim of the Business, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."

So while I think it's fair to say that overall, Trek's politics tends to be more liberal, I also think it's fair to point out that there are elements of conservatism that are represented in Trek, too. So it's nice to have, in terms of authors, more of an ideological balance. I'm not saying that Trek books should start espousing a fundamentally conservative viewpoint, mind you -- but it's nice to present more than one political POV both in the books and amongst the authors. (And I am also, mind you, not accusing Pocket of lacking diversity in either area; Diane Carey was simply the most obvious example of a relatively conservative Trek author back in the day.)

If people are looking for conversative-oriented fiction, they're better off reading authors like Rand, that Bill O'Rielly comic book, or White House press releases.

There was no Bill O'Reilly comic book, to the best of my knowledge. There was, however, a extremist conservative Sean Hannity comic called Liberality For All, which was absolutely hysterical.

 

[Corran Horn]

I'd have to say 'Final Frontier' and 'The Great Starship Race' are two of my favorite Trek novels of all time. I'd love to see a book about George's Kirk's last mission.

 

[Jack Bauer]

I can't think of her best novel right now but I did enjoy Fire Ship more than a number of her books. It's not the best but not horrible either.

Her second worst is Ship of the Line. But her worst novel hands down is Red Sector. I don't think I've ever read I novel where I loathed every single page of it. I hated the Stiles character. I wanted to see him die in all manner of horrible ways. He was such a whiny little punk ass I just wanted to smash his face in. I can't remember exactly why I loathed him since I've only read it once when it first came out. But my hatred of the character has always stuck with me.

 

[Holytomato]

Dreadnought! Battle Stations! New Earth/Challenger books, and Final Frontier are some of the best prose Star Trek. Does TOS always have to focus on The Big Three tm?

Oh wait...

Diane Carey is the Anti Christ tm!

Liberlism is the Anti Christ tm!

 

[Therin of Andor]

Jack Bauer said:
I hated the Stiles character. I wanted to see him die in all manner of horrible ways. He was such a whiny little punk ass I just wanted to smash his face in.

You were supposed to dislike him. And, through the course of the novel, he does become "the man who learns better", to quote David Gerrold's writers' workshop lectures.

 

[Jack Bauer]

I dunno. Was I supposed to dislike him or want to see him dead? there's a big difference there.

 

[donners22]

I recall coming across several entries in Voyages of Imagination where authors referred to their political views influencing their stories, and I suspect there are many more who were similarly influenced but didn't admit it. It seems curious to focus purely on Ms Carey on this issue.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Steve Roby said:
As for the politics... well, there's the whole "we hate the socialist United Federation of Planets

Weird. I've always thought the Federation was more a fascist dictatorship. No, really- human-centric despite vague lip serice to the contrary. All those youth-military organisations. Military explorers (Ahnenherbe, anyone?) etc.

Like they'll really let me write *that* one...

And there's the contribution to the Day of Honor crossover series, which is supposed to be about a Klingon holiday, so everyone gets a holodeck lesson about how great the American side in the Revolutionary War was.

I liked that one - after all, Roddenberry always said Kirk was Hornblower in space, so why not?

Don't get me started on Invasion - that series put me off the books for a while... I probably shouldn't criticise, having joined the ranks of the writers, but I did review some them for (I think) Dreamwatch or SFX at the time, so the comments aren't new: First Strike was dull, with *50* pages wasted on a fist-fight with the Klingons. The second book was the same plot but more boring. Time's Enemy was fabulous but had sod all to do with the Invasion arc, and Final Fury was OK but didn't bother making any sense of the setup from the earlier books (nothing was made of the poppets, for example, despite them obviously being leading to something.)

 

[Dancing Doctor]

donners22 said:
I recall coming across several entries in Voyages of Imagination where authors referred to their political views influencing their stories, and I suspect there are many more who were similarly influenced but didn't admit it. It seems curious to focus purely on Ms Carey on this issue.

I suppose it also depends on how blatant those authors were in incorporating their ideology into their work.

 

[Christopher]

Lonemagpie said:
Weird. I've always thought the Federation was more a fascist dictatorship.

If the only exposure you had to America was from JAG, M*A*S*H, Combat!, A Few Good Men, etc., you'd probably think it was a fascist dictatorship too. What we see of the Federation in ST has almost invariably been filtered through the (pseudo)military point of view, and that inevitably creates an unrepresentative picture of the whole.

All those youth-military organisations.

Huh? What youth-military organizations?

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Lonemagpie said:


I liked that one - after all, Roddenberry always said Kirk was Hornblower in space, so why not?

I thought it was Wagon Train to the Stars, wasn't it Nick Meyer who drew the Hornblower analogy.


As for military youth, there's always cannon fodder, I mean Red Squad. An argument for retroactive abortion if ever there was one.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
As for military youth, there's always cannon fodder, I mean Red Squad. An argument for retroactive abortion if ever there was one.

More like an argument for bitch-slapping people when they're stupid. Which is what I wanted Jake to do soooo badly during Valiant...

 

[Lonemagpie]

Oh, it's just my liking for taking a perverse view. Same as I say the Sith and the Shadows are the good guys, and the Jedi and Vorlons the bad...

And Red Squad's already been mentioned, so I don't need to bother

 

[Lonemagpie]

The Laughing Vulcan said:

Lonemagpie said:


I liked that one - after all, Roddenberry always said Kirk was Hornblower in space, so why not?

I thought it was Wagon Train to the Stars, wasn't it Nick Meyer who drew the Hornblower analogy.

Gr said Trek was Wagon Train, but Kirk himself was Hornblower.