^You know, I'm not a fan of Star Wars but I have the oddest feeling that when this comes up on a Star Wars forum, they say the Star Wars books are better.
Why the sudden lack of new releases?
- Thread starter hbquikcomjamesl
- Start date
Per year, there are more Trek books than SW books, even now. In Trek's heyday, there were WAY more Trek books than SW books
Sure but they'd be wrong.
The SW books haven't been all that great since the New Jedi Order ended.
Per year, there are more Trek books than SW books, even now. In Trek's heyday, there were WAY more Trek books than SW books
Not just that, but I recall a "Starlog" interview where someone discussed how George Lucas suddenly noticed how healthy the Pocket ST license was, and that he'd made a huge misjudgment in letting ST have the chunkier piece of the media tie-in pie for too long.
For a long time there were no new "Star Wars" novels (1984-1991). They had done "Splinter of a Mind's Eye", a Han Solo trilogy and a Lando Calrissian trilogy - and then nothing for a looooong time. Then the SW book juggernaut got kickstarted and they even poached some best-selling ST luminaries, such as AC Crispin and Vonda McIntyre.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_novels_by_release_date
Trek can have Vonda McIntyre back. The Crystal Star was one of the absolute worst SW books I have ever read.
Interesting. Having scanned many of the Amazon reviews, it seems most of the complaints tend towards it being too standalone, and too much focus on child characters. Even some of the people who hated the plot still liked aspects of the author's work. While it gets many 1-star reviews, there are also some 4-star reviews. With so many SW novels out there now, reviewers are reminding newcomers that it's not an essential read in a long, ongoing saga.
Sounds familiar.
Didn't I read that the novel was a rejected DS9 script in its original form? As a McIntyre appreciator, I'm now a bit curious. But my ST "to read" pile still overfloweth.
A DS9 script, you say? That's curious, because one of the big complaints I had about Crystal Star was that one of the two (largely unconnected) storylines in the book simply did not feel 'Star Wars'. If a franchise can be compared to a character, this was one book that was really out of character (much like Luke, for the entire novel). And yet, from what I recall of the story, I don't think it would have fit any better in a Star Trek setting, even with DS9's greater latitude for mysticism. Obviously it might have changed significantly from the original script proposal, but inserting that story in a Trek setting would have created a cognitive dissonance akin K.W. Jeter's Warped, I suspect. There was something almost Lovecraftian about it. If I had to pick a franchise, I'd say as a story it would be more in tune with something like Babylon 5, from what little I've seen of it.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
I have never read "Warped" but it certainly doesn't seem to be very popular. Is it THAT bad?"Warped".
Brrr...
It is as its name suggests.I have never read "Warped" but it certainly doesn't seem to be very popular. Is it THAT bad?"Warped".
Brrr...
Very warped.
I really have to reread Warped one of these days to try to figure out why so many people hate it. I didn't think it was great, but I liked it. But then I was already a Jeter fan and a fan of Philip K. Dick, the main influence on Warped.
Maybe the rest of us aren't used to reading stuff like Dick in an ST setting?
TV Trek ripped him off often enough that it shouldn't be too hard to get into. DS9's "Whispers" was PKD's "Impostor," and Trek certainly played with PKD's two main themes -- what does it mean to be human, how do we know what's real -- often enough.
^ Except they provided rather different answers. My sense of why Warped didn't work wasn't so much Dick(ian?) themes, but rather how radically opposed Dick and Trek are in outlook, tone and storytelling.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
That makes two of us. I don't even remember when I read it, but it had to be at least 1997. Or earlier.
I have made two separate sincere efforts to get through Warped, and I couldn't make it either time.
I remember very little about Warped. I remember liking it but it didn't leave too much of an impression on me if I can't recall anything about it except liking it. What was so bad about it?
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