Your first Trek novel?
- Thread starter Garth Rockett
- Start date
Mine was probably Mutiny on the Enterprise - I remember my dad borrowed it from the library for me after I started to get into Trek.
The Blish novelizations of TOS. My best friend of the time had them and brought them in to school. We were in choir together (8th grade) and I borrowed her books. It wasn't long before I bought my own set of them. Then I started watching the TOS reruns.
I read the early Trek novels (Spock Must Die!) etc. There were not many Trek books out back in the 1970s and I devoured them all.
I read the early Trek novels (Spock Must Die!) etc. There were not many Trek books out back in the 1970s and I devoured them all.
Star Trek 12 by James Blish
Original novel:
Planet of Judgment by Joe Haldeman
I remember those Arivne and Irapina were some strrrrrange creatures!!
Original novel:
Planet of Judgment by Joe Haldeman
I remember those Arivne and Irapina were some strrrrrange creatures!!
"Vendetta" by Peter David. It was published in 1991, IIRC. I think I probably read it in 1992 or 1993, so that would put me at like 11 or 12 years old. At the time, it was the longest, most complex thing I'd ever read and it took me a really long time to get through it!
TNG: "Reunion" was my first novel. I got it in '91. I had started watching the show and it was I could talk about. My Mom watched QVC a bit back then and they had a Star Trek show once or twice a month. She order me a MJF signed copy!
But, I didn't really get into the books until 1997 when New Frontier came out.
ncc71877
But, I didn't really get into the books until 1997 when New Frontier came out.
ncc71877
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Spock Must Die! when it first came out. I still have my original copy.
Gulliver's Fugitives, by Keith Sharee. Doesn't get much love around here, and I can understand why people feel that way, but for a kid who must have read every children's and YA book on mythology the library had, Fugitives was an ideal segue into literary Trek.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
I still love Gulliver's Fugitives. Sure, last time I read it, I recognized that its writing was perhaps a little awkward in some ways, the Rampartians' technology perhaps implausibly advanced, and I could quibble about the specifics of the depiction of the Rho Ophiuchi nebula. But I love the idea behind the book, its embrace of mythology and archetype. And as a writer I've got to love its anti-censorship message, its celebration of the power of fiction and imagination.
Secret of the Lizard People by Michael Jan Friedman.
I think I found #3 or #4 as my first Blish. Then I found batches in second hand stores throughout 1980. I read each one as I found it. But TMP's novelization in December 1979 had kicked me off on my search.
My first original novel was "Fate of the Phoenix". It could only go up from that one. To think I actually read the sequel first - in my impatience at not finding the first one (for many months, and even then I only had a UK edition; the US editions of "Price..." and "Planet of Judgment" were tricky finds).
In about 1982, I found a hugely expensive "Mission to Horatius" in a collectibles section of one of my favourite second hand stores - and realised that my younger brother had owned this when we were kids. (I had owned and read Whitman's "I Spy" from the same Christmas.) I went digging for it and found them! While reading it I remembered I'd read his copy as a kid.
I think I bought both a Blish adaptation as well as Spock Must Die around the same time.
Yes, when they first came out.
--Ted
Yes, when they first came out.
--Ted
Even before the modern day practice of shops removing the covers and sending them back for credit, many paperbacks - and even comics and magazines - often contained a warning that it was illegal to resell a book with a mutilated or missing cover.
The first Trek book I ever read was Alan Dean Foster's Enterprise Logs, the TAS adaptations. I still have them.
The second was the hugely disappointing graphic novel/comic The Ashes of Eden, which quickly found its way to a secondhand store.
The second was the hugely disappointing graphic novel/comic The Ashes of Eden, which quickly found its way to a secondhand store.
not sure but it was a library copy. possibly covenant of the crown or a TOS-movie era one dealing with a new Klingon ship IIRC...
My first Trek novel was one I read back in Jr. High. It was Jean Lorrah's ST:TNG book Survivors.
It was November, and I was home sick. I had been home for a week at that point, and my mom, who had no source of transportation other than her feet, walked through a solid block of snow two feet deep all the way to a local pharmacy called "Medicine Chest", which was nearly a mile away for medicine and supplies. While there, she bought me a copy of that book, which had been on their shelves for a while.
I read it, and re-read it, and re-re-read it, since I had nothing else I could do, being stuck in bed, sick, for such a long time.
In the years to come, I collected pretty much everything Ms. Lorrah has written, Trek and non-Trek. My favorite is her series Savage Empire. Love it.
It was November, and I was home sick. I had been home for a week at that point, and my mom, who had no source of transportation other than her feet, walked through a solid block of snow two feet deep all the way to a local pharmacy called "Medicine Chest", which was nearly a mile away for medicine and supplies. While there, she bought me a copy of that book, which had been on their shelves for a while.
I read it, and re-read it, and re-re-read it, since I had nothing else I could do, being stuck in bed, sick, for such a long time.
In the years to come, I collected pretty much everything Ms. Lorrah has written, Trek and non-Trek. My favorite is her series Savage Empire. Love it.
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