When/If Trek Lit reaches 2387

[F. King Daniel]

Better with status quo than unnecessary destruction. I mean, it's the homeworlds of those species.

It's only unnecessary in the same way that everything in fiction is unnecessary. The destruction of Romulus motivated Nero's path of destruction which shaped the new universe for forthcoming Trek movies.

And I have no doubt whatsoever that (unless Bad Robot run interference on the use of their movie's concepts) Romulus' destruction will be a springboard to some excellent novels.

Remember, the Typhon Pact novels are written with the foreknowledge of Romulus' fate.

What will happen next? Will they blow up Earth too and turn Trek into some NuBSG doom and gloom?

Of course not. DC Comics destroyed Earth-2 years ago

 

[Lynx]

It's only unnecessary in the same way that everything in fiction is unnecessary. The destruction of Romulus motivated Nero's path of destruction which shaped the new universe for forthcoming Trek movies.

Which is another problem. I'm not too fond of this new universe. I preferred the good old one

And I have no doubt whatsoever that (unless Bad Robot run interference on the use of their movie's concepts) Romulus' destruction will be a springboard to some excellent novels.

I doubt that. They won't be as good as the old ones.

Remember, the Typhon Pact novels are written with the foreknowledge of Romulus' fate.

My luck that I haven't read those.

 

[Lynx]

What will happen next? Will they blow up Earth too and turn Trek into some NuBSG doom and gloom?

Only in the copies you buy.

Good one!

 

[RPJOB]

^So first you use science to justify your position about Star Trek, then when you're told that science actually doesn't support your desired conclusion, you say it's pointless to use science to justify a position about Star Trek. Ohhhh-kay.

And since when does science support most of what Star Trek does?

I'm saying that you could use a generally appropriate science term such as metallicity and perhaps toss in a another technobabble phrase and BOOM! You explain why the Romulans have fewer habitable planets. Same as Trek has always done.

Perhaps you would explain then how Warp Drive works using real science. Don't forget to include the dilithium crystals. Or perhaps you could explain the transporter. Or the universal translator. Or Crusher's magical blue healing ray. Explain any of those using nothing but real science and I'll concede your point.

If I want real space science I'll watch a lecture by Neil Degrasse Tyson. If I want Action/adventure/sci-fi with vaguely plausible sounding science I watch (or read) Star Trek.

Would it be better if Star Trek were based on real science? Sure but it would be pretty depressing to find out that last weeks crew has been dead for centuries as the Enterprise arrives at a new star system.

 

[rfmcdpei]

It's only unnecessary in the same way that everything in fiction is unnecessary. The destruction of Romulus motivated Nero's path of destruction which shaped the new universe for forthcoming Trek movies.

Which is another problem. I'm not too fond of this new universe. I preferred the good old one

The destruction of Romulus in the Prime timeline is something the Trek novelverse has to deal with, since it's ultimately derivative of filmed Trek.

 

[rfmcdpei]

^So first you use science to justify your position about Star Trek, then when you're told that science actually doesn't support your desired conclusion, you say it's pointless to use science to justify a position about Star Trek. Ohhhh-kay.

And since when does science support most of what Star Trek does?

I'm saying that you could use a generally appropriate science term such as metallicity and perhaps toss in a another technobabble phrase and BOOM! You explain why the Romulans have fewer habitable planets. Same as Trek has always done.

1. Trek as a whole isn't hard SF, but at the least its science usually aspires towards a certain amount of versimilitude. (With some writers in the novelverse it comes closer than others, Christopher being the signal example.) Star Trek science at least has to sound non-arbitrary.

2. All this came out of a discussion of Romulan-colonized planets. There's no need to explain why the Romulans have fewer colonized planets per given cubic volume of space than peer civilizations, though, since there's no reason for there to think in the first place that there are fewer Romulan-colonized planets per given cubic volume of space apart from the relatively lower profile of the Romulans in filmed Trek compared to the Cardassians or even the Klingons.

 

[Sci]

^So first you use science to justify your position about Star Trek, then when you're told that science actually doesn't support your desired conclusion, you say it's pointless to use science to justify a position about Star Trek. Ohhhh-kay.

And since when does science support most of what Star Trek does?

I'm saying that you could use a generally appropriate science term such as metallicity and perhaps toss in a another technobabble phrase and BOOM! You explain why the Romulans have fewer habitable planets.

Except there's no reason to think Romulans have fewer planets. You're looking for an explanation without a cause.

 

[RPJOB]

Except there is at least a hint that they have fewer colonies. The number of Romulan planets listed on Memory Alpha and Beta, is much shorter than that for the Klingons. Does that by itself mean that they have fewer colonies? No, it does not. Does it mean that they cannot have fewer colonies that the Klingons? Nope. If it were shown at some point that the Romulans really do have fewer colonies that the other major races there's nothing in canon that would prevent that interpretation. I'm just looking at the evidence and seeing where it could lead, not necessarily where it's likely to. Some stick to the middle of the road, I like to find the edges.

 

[Sci]

Except there is at least a hint that they have fewer colonies. The number of Romulan planets listed on Memory Alpha and Beta, is much shorter than that for the Klingons.

No one is contesting that your hypothesis is consistent with the available evidence. But that's not the same thing as actually having evidence in support of it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It's only unnecessary in the same way that everything in fiction is unnecessary. The destruction of Romulus motivated Nero's path of destruction which shaped the new universe for forthcoming Trek movies.

Which is another problem. I'm not too fond of this new universe. I preferred the good old one

That's what the novels are for! The old universe lives on.

And I have no doubt whatsoever that (unless Bad Robot run interference on the use of their movie's concepts) Romulus' destruction will be a springboard to some excellent novels.

I doubt that. They won't be as good as the old ones.

I've been reading Trek most of my life, I've read a high percentage of whats out there. And I'm loving the current crop of novels. Some are up there with the best ever. Some suck, but some sucked back then also.

Remember, the Typhon Pact novels are written with the foreknowledge of Romulus' fate.

My luck that I haven't read those.

You're the one missing out. The post-Nemesis Romulan arc has been my favourite.

 

[F. King Daniel]

About Romulus: IIRC, Duane's Rihannsu books painted a picture of a resource-poor Romulan Empire, made up of many conquered farming world's occupied by only a few thousand Romulans.
But, the novels since have given us highly populated Romulan worlds.

The destruction of Romulus does not mean the end of the Romulan people, whether there are thousands left (for all-important symmetry with the Vulcans of the new universe) or millions. But, due to the highly centralized nature of the Romulan government, it may well mean the fall of the Romulan Empire. The film would seem to support this - "He called himself Nero, last of the Romulan Empire"

In Star Trek Online, Achernar III eventually became the home to a new Romulan government. Maybe the novels will found a Second Romulan Empire there or elsewhere once the immediate chaos dies down.

 

[Jarvisimo]

But, due to the highly centralized nature of the Romulan government, it may well mean the fall of the Romulan Empire.

Im curious, what makes you think that the Romulan government is high centralised? In some senses, it would seem that the Klingon government is highly centralised (especially on the tv series), yet they have governors, house militaries, military orders and so on that suggests a high degree of non-centralisation, a la the Roman or Mongol empires. Could it not be the same with the Romulans/Rihannsu?

 

[F. King Daniel]

But, due to the highly centralized nature of the Romulan government, it may well mean the fall of the Romulan Empire.

Im curious, what makes you think that the Romulan government is high centralised? In some senses, it would seem that the Klingon government is highly centralised (especially on the tv series), yet they have governors, house militaries, military orders and so on that suggests a high degree of non-centralisation, a la the Roman or Mongol empires. Could it not be the same with the Romulans/Rihannsu?

Star Trek Nemesis. One room full of people is killed, a new guy walks in (who's not even Romulan) and takes over.

 

[Skywalker]

But, due to the highly centralized nature of the Romulan government, it may well mean the fall of the Romulan Empire.

Im curious, what makes you think that the Romulan government is high centralised? In some senses, it would seem that the Klingon government is highly centralised (especially on the tv series), yet they have governors, house militaries, military orders and so on that suggests a high degree of non-centralisation, a la the Roman or Mongol empires. Could it not be the same with the Romulans/Rihannsu?

Star Trek Nemesis. One room full of people is killed, a new guy walks in (who's not even Romulan) and takes over.

Maybe after that, the Romulans realized how stupid that whole idea was and decided not to do it again.

 

[Christopher]

Empires tend to be centralized by their nature; the whole purpose of an empire is to draw on the resources, wealth, and population of a number of different territories in order to serve the interests of a single central state or city (known as the metropolis). So take away the metropolis and the centripetal force that holds the empire together is gone.

On the other hand, a large enough empire needs multiple centers of power in order to maintain control, and if you take away one center, only the part of the empire that's directly governed by it will fall. The Roman Empire had two centers of control, Rome in the west and Byzantium/Constantinople in the east, and when Rome fell, the Western Empire fell with it, but the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire continued to survive for another millennium. There's also the fragmentation of Alexander's and Genghis's empires into smaller regional empires run by the dynasties of their generals and falling at different times.

 

[Jarvisimo]

I guess my problem is that I study other, non-centralised empires - late medieval empires including the HRE, France & England where centralisation existed in part, but which was balanced by a wild lack of connected authority structures - such that authorities in these empires existed, but which had little actual connection to the lower authority figures in those empires and who relied on governor-esque figures to rule in absentia, and consequently had little impact on the economic fruitfulness and political power-structures of those regions. Indeed, 'central' authority in the HRE changed geographically, and did not affect the autonomous nature of the provinces that made up the empire. A good book on later medieval French poltical history, for example, would be Graeme Small's Late Medieval France, with the historiographic idea of centralisation dealt with in short stead in chapter one, but I'm not so familiar with Imperial history outside of art historical literature. Although a good coverage of the non-centralisation of the Empire can be found in Snyder's chapter on Bohemian art in Northern Renaissance Art.

Equally despite the fall of Rome, the republican empire and the imperial empire were for the longest periods fundamentally non-centralised in how the regions were ruled and how they were maintained. We talk of Rome, and think of its fall, and ignore how for centuries its provinces were ruled and controlled.

The consequent strength of some early medieval regions could be said to be the continuation of imperial trappings - and certainly the strength of episcopal jurisdiction in the centuries after was the continuation of imperial power of a sort. The fall of 'Rome', or rather Ravenna which was by then the seat of the western empire, did lead to the western empire splintered, yes. But the empire also continued in the church which survived its western imperial collapse, in some often vital province-states.

 

[Jarvisimo]

And other non-centralised empires from my period are Angevin and Plantagenet England, as well as Capetian and Valois France.

 

[Christopher]

^That's true, but once Rome fell, the structures that remained weren't considered to be the "Roman Empire" anymore. So if Romulus fell, there would still be Romulan political institutions in place, but they might not be known as the Romulan Star Empire anymore and might be considered to be something different from what had come before, even if they actually inherited a lot of the pre-existing structure. I'm sure the short-lived Imperial Romulan State drew heavily on the existing imperial infrastructure for governing the regions it controlled, but it was still regarded as a new and separate state.

 

[Fer]

The film would seem to support this - "He called himself Nero, last of the Romulan Empire"

Yeah, but he was also seriously unhinged. I could try to attack Russia while calling myself The Last American Patriot, but it doesn't mean I am. It just means that's how Nero thought of himself in his mind.

 

[rfmcdpei]

About Romulus: IIRC, Duane's Rihannsu books painted a picture of a resource-poor Romulan Empire, made up of many conquered farming world's occupied by only a few thousand Romulans.

Many of the outer worlds were thinly populated, though the populations involved seemed to be on the scale of hundreds of thousands. Many others weren't: Artaleirh, in The Empty Chair, had at least three major cities which reminded Kirk of San Francisco.

]But, the novels since have given us highly populated Romulan worlds.

This is a shift that occurred within Duane's own series.

The first two books described a Romulan empire only a century old, founded after the Carrizal's contact with the Romulans in the Eisn system and the subsequent Romulan War. The Romulans settled two dozen worlds within their sphere--what they called the Empire, what the Federation called the Romulan Neutral Zone--but not all of these colony worlds were successful, and the Romulan state was still substantially smaller than either the Federation or the Klingon Empire.

This changed. The Neutral Zone, for starters, was identified in TNG as a buffer zone between the spaces of the Star Empire and the Federation. More, the Romulans were explicitly identified as being a power roughly on par with the Klingons or the Federation. In the second pair of books, this led to Duane shifting her description of the Empire, with characters distinguishing between first- and second-generation colonies ("overspill" colonies, she called them) and identifying client worlds (presumably conquered planets). The Empire's colonies were more substantial: Artaleirh was strong enough to lead a revolution in Romulan space, while the planet Ysail had been colonized for centuries (much longer than the Romulans' history of starfaring in the first two books).

This shift has led to a transformation in the depiction of the Romulans in the current universe. At one point, the Romulans were described as being substantially weaker than the Federation, at best trying to keep up, with a shorter history of starflight than the humans and many fewer and more fragile colonies. That's been reversed, most explicitly in the Romulan War novel: the Romulans have been starfaring much longer than humanity, and it takes multiple powers to keep the Romulans from conquering humanity (first the Haakonans in the rear area to keep the Romulans distracted, then an Andorian-Tellarite-Vulcan fleet at Cheron).