Faceman Reads Star Trek Books

I have been sitting quietly in the dark for several months at night so that my temperamental second child will shut up and sleep. I was also perusing books and found the TNG "A Time To..." miniseries of nine books that take place in the year before NEM. As I read those books I began reading about those books, which took me to the interesting website, Memory Beta, the Trek non-canon site. Memory Beta has a literary chronology page which intrigued my OCD tenancies. I was also aware of the "relaunch" books, where in Trek writers were given more liberties with the characters and were able to construct a "canonical" narrative post series finales. I read Avatar and Abyss when they came out but never continued. Apparently the 24ht Century Relaunch novels feature many cross overs and miniseries that may or may not be interesting. I will endeavor to find out.

Having finished the 9 book series I decided to use the chronology page and Wikipedia to construct a chronology of books that I have decided to read. I wanted to focus solely on the relaunch with one caveat. The TNG relaunch begins post-NEM, but I felt that to be a bit unfair. TNG really ended in 1994, as all you get for the next eight years are four films. So I started post-destruction of the Ent-D in my chronology of reading (excepting the nine "A Time To" books I had already finished.) Thus, my project begins with "Ship of the Line" by Diane Carey.

I will say, despite the mediocrity of the "A Time To" series, had I not started with it, but actually started with "Ship of the Line," I may have stopped this project right there. For that book is pure shit. It tells the tale of the launch of the E-E by framing it around the characters of Capt. Bateson from "Cause and Effect". The book includes a grudge between Bateson and the Klingons, a 100+ year old Klingon who finds out Bateson is alive, the taking of the E-E by said ancient Klingon, Picard dealing with Gul Madred in his torture chamber, a rescue of captured Starfleet, and the Klingons giving up at the end solely because of Bateson's nemesis's whiny son (who would be around 100 too). Everyone goes on their separate ways. Pure. Fucking. Junk.

Diane Carey, I hope you read my assessment of your garbage.

As of today, I have read sixteen novels and the six-part Slings and Arrows (Pre-First Contact novella series). I have about 100 books to read so this may take several years and, depending on quality, I may quit. I have discovered I can read these books stunningly quickly, the pulp that they appear to be. Their quality of story is middling, overall. A Time To, for instance, has four duologies, most of which are just drawn out for profit boring shit. The last three books are quite good and focus on Federation conspiracies and politics. Duologiese and trilogies seem to be a habit for Trek writers. Not every story deserves more than one book. Tales of the Dominion War books 1 and 3 focus on Picard and Ro trying to destroy an artificial wormhole. The books are them getting side tracked for 75% of the time to justify padding it into two books.

Q-Continuum is even worse. I have just finished book two of three. There's a super being trapped in the galactic barrier who is evil. Picard is going there for an experiment. Q steals Picard about half way through book one and shows him Q and the superbeing's (O) adventures over time. As of the end of book 2, Picard is still with Q observing the flashback, not having seen O placed in the galactic barrier yet. Meanwhile the Enterprise is stuck near the barrier, intimidated by a cloud creature that doesn't want them near the barrier. In other words, two books in and nothing has happened. There is no story here. I dread starting book 3. Greg Cox, if you're reading this, those three books are shit as well.

I suspect Pocket is engaged in a cheap money grab in many of these trilogies, duologies, and miniseries, as I have yet to figure out why the editors would allow such thin stories to be stretched beyond a single novel.

I will update this thread from time to time, perhaps I'll post the order of books. I would also like to take a detour and read all of Garamet's books, just to see how they compare. I will need a point of reference before I begin though.

I recently read the novelization for Star Trek V. It was surprisingly good. It makes me appreciate the movie (or at least what they were going for) much more.

If we could have seen the stuff in the novel play out on screen, I think Star Trek V would be up there with the other original series movies. It's an interesting idea... killed by a writer's strike, a slashed budget, a shitty FX house, and Shatner's ego.

@Faceman, you should probably beat your head against a brick wall several dozen times.

That will mimic the experience of reading Star Trek books but will ultimately be less painful.

I don't think I could stand to read a Star Trek book at this age.

Oh you could. It takes a mere 3 to 4 hours to read one.

Nerd alert.

Whoa whoa. This merely proves I'm open to new things. I've read more trek books in the last 30 days than I have in the last 30 years. We'll see how nerdy I am when I'm done with all 140 or so books. Yeah!

I actually found these Trek comic books to be fairly enjoyable.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Visions-John-Byrne/dp/1631400398/

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-New-Visions-2/dp/1631403672/

3 to 4 hours I wouldn't be getting back. After 40 years and, what, 700 odd hours of Trek on TV? Yeah, I don't think I need anymore of these tomes. I read enough as a teenager. None of them were anything special IMO (no offense @garamet).

This one was special:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Reflection

And there are one or two others, but yeah, many of them were pretty forgettable.

I used to read a lot of these but apart from the movie novelisations and some from the ShatnerVerse, I've mostly forgotten...

Let's see...
Ship of the Line
Invasion: First Strike
The New Voyages 2

...maybe this thread will remind me of some more...

Read oodles of them.

The standout ones from the early days of TNG are probably 'Rock and a Hard Place' and 'Q in Law', back then they were unashamedly pulpy and quite fun.

Recently they've tried to go a bit more hard fiction, and more political, and there've been some very good ones, but I don't think they've the roster of authors to match their ambitions - although Greg Bear wrote a Trek novel in the 90's - which shouldn't reflect on their ability to write, just that maybe they're more likely to do a fun romp with Romulans than become the Trekverse version of Iain M Banks. Horses for courses.

The recent TNG ones with the resurrection of Data were quite good, and had some interesting concepts.

@Faceman is spot on with the padding though, I'm glad I got the Q Continuum ones second hand, and was bitterly disappointed that 'Q and A' was a piss weak copy of 'I, Q'.

Q Comtinuum Book 3 (TNG) 2374

Q Continuum book 3 is proving to be equally crap. About a third way in and still nothing is happening. I believe th author wAnted to write an epic Q story but was forced to frame it with TNG characters who watch unamused. I am also not amused. I hope this Greg Cox guy stopped writing after this.

Oh crap he kept going.


http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Greg_Cox

The DS9 relaunch novels are much better, imho.

of TNG I liked "Vendetta" best. Would've made a great TNG movie.

One of us! One of us!

Wait...

Q Comtinuum Book 3 (TNG) 2374

I gave up on this abortion of a book. It was that or quit this exercise all together. Had I paid money I'd ask for it back.

I assume Q saved the day or some shit.

Next up a short story from the Tales of the Doninion War anthology.

I pretty much loathed the character of Q. I think more than a few Trek fans did but they kind of enjoyed seeing John DeLancie ham it up onscreen. I'll admit that though I loathed the character I was more than a little tickled to see DeLancie because I was fond of him for his long run on the NBC soap opera "Days of Our Lives".

Greg Cox and Christopher Bennett are both regulars over at TBBS. Cox seems like a nice fella. Bennet is very smart, but can be a dick. I read a Bennet Trek book once just to see. It was okay, but, like every other Trek book I've sampled, ain't good enough to drag me away from real science fiction novels.

*wince*

Yeah, that one is actively bad. I like her TOS stories much better. I think there's a problem, in that Carey likes to write drama and tension, and Roddenberry insisted that TNG have no arguments between its main characters or whatever. But that's not a sufficient excuse for that book. One of the worst TNGs I've read. (The worst is Gulliver's Fugitives, avoid at all costs. But you seem to be reading mostly more recent stuff anyway.)

Not surprised It wears thin on rereads, but it would have been most of it would have been better than INS or NEM for sure.

I can barely remember but IIRC Diane Carey's "Ship of the Line" was when someone put a bug in her ear about "What do you think would happen to the captain and crew of the Bozeman after they got back? What if there was a Klingon who had an 80 year old grudge against Captain Bateson?"

Now where Carey got the idea of giving Bateson the Sovereign class Enterprise I have no idea. But Carey always liked to write about the "big ships" (Dreadnought & Battlestations being two examples). She also liked giving her books a very pro American patriotic theme by her own admission.

Bennet IIRC was one of the writers if you criticized his book it was the equivalent of shooting his grandmother.

Over the years, I've only read a handful of Trek novels (probably a half dozen or less) and Dreadnought was the worst, and last one.

The Bozeman crew absolutely had that down home American feel, yeah.

Yeah Vendetta had its weaknesses. The Delcara character and Picards obsession with her for reasons that were never apparent. Not to mention the hostility of the other starship commander toward Picard which likewise seemed to be pulled out of thin air.

But the entire notion of the Doomsday machine from the original series being built as an anti Borg weapon has fascinated me endlessly. Combining my favorite TOS episode with my favorite TNG enemies is just too much.

I read garamet's Burning Dreams a few years back (and enjoyed it) and I have her Unspoken Truths which I'll get around to one of these days, but, other than that, I haven't read a Star Trek novel in many, many years. I suspect most of the ones I read when I was younger were crap. However, I wasn't the most discerning literary critic back then...

I do remember laughing my ass off at this one...



James Caligula Kirk.
Klingon proverb: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, prepare for doom!"
Scotty and the Klingons playing golf.

Of the three Trek books I've read, one was a novelization of the Voyager episode "Flashback," One was called "Surek's Soul" which was a watered down version of a plot from Enterprise, and the other was "The Good the Men Do" which was the franchise'franchise's collective apology for Enterprise's finale, to which I remember nothing except a really old Tucker has a run in with a grade school-aged George and James Kirk. I only just remembered reading that book as I was writing this.

Faceman is more brave than even poor @Kyle for doing this.