Wow to think I almost started to read the Shattner books.

[reech]

Canon. Anyone who refers to it should be loaded into it, and shot out of it.

I actually don't *care* what's canon or not. I enjoy reading a good book, and a good story. If someone retcons or ignores it? So what, it doesn't stop it being entertaining and good fun.

Yes, I do like a sense of coherency in my novels, but hell, I'll settle for well priced, entertaining reads that get me talking and recommending them any day of the week. I'd certainly never avoid something because 'it's not canon'.

 

[Caliburn24]

I'm a fan of the Shatner books. The scene where Spock and Kirk meet each for the first time in The Return hit me with more emotion than anything else I've read in a Trek book.

 

[David cgc]

Nothing wrong with "The Ashes of Eden". A great standalone novel that also enhances "Generations". While the rest of the Shatnerverse is either hit or miss, at least try the one that kicked it all off.

Would be nice if that one (and only that one) got incorperated into the novelverse.

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

I actually enjoyed the characterization and emotion of the Shatner books, as well as the awesome scenes with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. It was more the lack of coherent plot resolution that bothered me.

 

[vegaslover62]

I actually don't *care* what's canon or not.

And anybody who holds this opinion really needs to keep it to themselves because it does nothing but start flame wars. Not like we really need to know in the first place.

 

[Christopher]

I actually don't *care* what's canon or not.

And anybody who holds this opinion really needs to keep it to themselves because it does nothing but start flame wars. Not like we really need to know in the first place.

^No, it's generally more the opposite opinion that starts flame wars. People who don't obsess over what's canon and what isn't are better able to simply enjoy all Star Trek as entertaining fiction, and are less inclined to start arguments based on their (usually mis)understanding of what counts as canon and what doesn't.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Return and Captain's Glory are canon. Everything else is Kirk's Vegan choriomeningitis fever dream

 

[Therin of Andor]

Would be nice if that one (and only that one) got incorperated into the novelverse.

Well, during its original release there was no "Shatnerverse". "The Ashes of Eden" was just the next hardcover novel, although it also had a DC Comics adaptation accompanying it. That concept, of Kirk returning from his 24th century death, wasn't addressed until the sequels, "The Return" and "Avenger", which both featured Kirk resurrection scenes - undoing the death at Soran's hands, as shown in "Generations" - and which some authors deliberately started to refute in some novels.

So by default, "The Ashes of Eden" is part of regular continuity.

 

[Christopher]

That concept, of Kirk returning from his 24th century death, wasn't addressed until the sequels, "The Return" and "Avenger", which both featured Kirk resurrection scenes - undoing the death at Soran's hands, as shown in "Generations" - and which some authors deliberately started to refute in some novels.

I think "deliberately started to refute" may be putting it too strongly. It's more that the main line of novels was not considered to be bound by the Shatner novels, or vice versa, because they were targeted at different audiences (albeit with some overlap).

So by default, "The Ashes of Eden" is part of regular continuity.

Not really, because there was no regular continuity among novels at that time. There were just books that did their own thing. It wasn't until two years later, with New Frontier, that the Arnold-era policy of standalone books began to give way to continuing series, and it wasn't until a few years further on that any kind of regular or default continuity began to form among the books. Whether previous books fit into that continuity, if they haven't been overtly incorporated into it, is a matter of the reader's individual opinion.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

So by default, "The Ashes of Eden" is part of regular continuity.

John Ordover said expressly in the late-90s that it was not. Even though it could fit loosely with the other post-Star Trek VI novels (which, with one or two exceptions, hold together well and had since Best Destiny way back when), because it was a Shatner novel, even though it was in the 23rd century, it was its own thing.

 

[Christopher]

Just goes to show how perceptions can differ... I always felt the block of post-TUC novels that came out in fairly quick succession were mutually contradictory. Best Destiny had the decommissioning of the Enterprise reversed at the end (something I'm surprised Paramount let Carey get away with), Sarek treated the decommissioning as though it had never existed at all, and Shadows on the Sun had the crew reporting for decommissioning on schedule at the end. I think SotS is the only one of those that's compatible with The Ashes of Eden.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Whereas I tend to think the only one that doesn't fit is The Fearful Summons. *shrug*

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think Fearful Summons just barely (with lots of coughing loudly and squinting) fits in after Ashes of Eden if you can accept that Kirk was cheating on his beloved Telani with that cadet .

At least, it fits no worse than DC comics' fitting whole series' of comics between STII, III and IV.

Maybe I'm just too forgiving with continuity.

 

[Stevil2001]

Doesn't The Ashes of Eden have an epilogue where Spock visits Kirk's grave on Veridian and finds it empty? That would fit it squarely into the "Shatnerverse."

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Regarding the epilogue... the novel does. The graphic novel does not.

 

[Csalem]

I assume that epilogue is the same as the prologue in The Return?

 

[donners22]

and (well, really a somewhat crazed ) joining forces is basically the plot of Star Trek Legacy.

Glad I didn't force myself through the dismal gameplay to see that, then.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

and (well, really a somewhat crazed ) joining forces is basically the plot of Star Trek Legacy.

Glad I didn't force myself through the dismal gameplay to see that, then.

The skirmish mode is fun. I couldn't get past the third or fourth Enterprise era mission, though. I went "F*** it" and decided to just mindlessly blow enemy ships up and making the plot up in my head.

 

[Destructor]

I enjoyed the Shatnerverse novels, I think the Reeves-Stevenses are excellent writers and while the novels can be a bit 'comic-booky' in retrospect, when I read them they are always fun. They are no more or less 'canon' than any of the other novels, they are just not part of the same continuity. But Trek novel readers, as others have noted, have always had to do a bit of mental gymnastics in order to get everything to gel. To me, just because no-one in the DS9 relaunch ever MENTIONS the massive plague or Borg invasion mentioned in the Shatner novels doesn't mean they didn't happen in the same continuity that I keep in my head.

I'd actually highly recommend giving the first book a try.

 

[Christopher]

I enjoyed the Shatnerverse novels, I think the Reeves-Stevenses are excellent writers and while the novels can be a bit 'comic-booky' in retrospect, when I read them they are always fun. They are no more or less 'canon' than any of the other novels, they are just not part of the same continuity. But Trek novel readers, as others have noted, have always had to do a bit of mental gymnastics in order to get everything to gel. To me, just because no-one in the DS9 relaunch ever MENTIONS the massive plague or Borg invasion mentioned in the Shatner novels doesn't mean they didn't happen in the same continuity that I keep in my head.

Well, in the timeframe of the DS9-R, perhaps that can work, but when you get to the Totality trilogy and the post-NEM novels, the discrepancies become insurmountable. In the Shatnerverse, Bajor still hasn't joined the UFP as of 2378; the starship Titan doesn't finish its relief work at Romulus and make its first new alien contact until a year later than it does in the TTN novel series; and Kathryn Janeway is still alive in 2381.