Faceman Reads Star Trek Books

That's enough, from both of you.

Darn. This Star Trek book thread was getting good finally.

Judging by your reviews, that's more than can be said for the novels themselves......

Hold this thought. The book I'm reading now is based partially on this episode.

Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Review to come if I ever finish.

Protectors (VOY) 2381

2381 ends with a whimper. And a voyager book.

This book felt like it was about nothing. It had no reason for being. It bounces between earth, where Janeway is recuperating and undergoing fitness Evaluations, and the DQ where Voyager is trying to find something useful to do. Neither story deserved to be written.

Janeways story is cliche. Officer goes through trauma and her superiors doubt her ability to return to the job. Wonder how this one will turn out.

Meanwhile voyager makes contacts with the sub space waveforms from the Twisted episode above. Twisted is considered an awful episode but at least it tried to fuck won reality. This story has them finding their space and teaching them to terraform a planet that they've collected species on. Whoo hoo.

And this is how it goes for 80% of the book. A book that never gets started. It felt like I was in the first act the whole time. Where was the main conflict and plot.

Well bam! It turns out these waveforms used to destroy planets for the Worlds of the First Quadrant and then out of nowhere a bunch of ships atrack Voyager and he waveforms help them escape and they end up in Worlds space and they re actually nice guys and... literally all that in 20 pages. No shit.

Now I suspect these Worlds people have a darker secret but that's to be fleshed out in other books. Other plots that had their first act in this book were:

1. Janeways sister will never speak to her again
2. THe doctor had his programming altered to erase memories of seven
3. Star fleet is studying an ex.borg drone and taking him apart to get to his secrets...Seven knows him and will travel to earth in the next book to help!
4. Paris's mom is suing for custody of his kid because Paris lied to her! Paris is going to court on earth!

In other words lazy. Instead of having a plot this book has set up plots for future books. I.e. A relaunch. But you already did that Kirsten Breyer-ice cream. You had your shot. It was ok but you kinda wasted it on a Q story so is this you trying again? Is this third times a charm? Because it's intolerrable garbage that's what it is.

And with that I suspend this project. Join me next time in my not-yet-started thread of Michael Crichton books he wrote before he wrote them as Michael Crichton.

Fuck you Voyager.

Yeah, it was pretty much the first part of something they didn't bother labeling as a trilogy. And it's not until the end of the third book that the series seems to reach any sort of status quo.

I suspect Beyer got fucked over by Pocket Books, just like the DS9 relaunch got kneecapped when the new administration forced them to jump ahead several years (repeatedly) to fit in with the TNG relaunch.

Ok maybe. I dunno. She puts out one book and a year so it wasn't well telegraphed as part of a series.

All of her books so far have been set in 2381 which I don't have an issue with. Most of DS9 was set in 2376 until they stopped. Protectors was published in 2014. Other Star Trek books published that year were set in 2385 and 2386 so she's out of sync with the main stories. Eventually I will pass her novels while she continues to write 2382 novels.

Janeway has a sister?

And why would Paris' mom get custody of his brat when (presumably) her mother is still alive somewhere?

Paris and Torres are alive and raising their daughter. Paris's mom wants custody because Paris lied to her that Torres and their daughter had died. Why a court would entertain grandparent rights is beyond me.

They suggest that she's got all sorts of connections and influence as a result of being the widow of a highly respected admiral.

Also true but still... i expect the next book to accurately explore the nascent grandparent rights movement in its appropriate legal context.

Time to start this one up again. I hope you all enjoyed my side thread on reading Michael Crichton books written under pseudonyms:

http://wordforge.net/index.php?thre...ichton-books-written-under-pseudonyms.112920/

But it’s time to start this slog again and a this book is a great example for the haphazard nature of Star Trek prose that's supposed to written in a combined consistent universe.

Rough Beasts of the Empire (2381-2382) (Typhon Pact Book 3)

Simply put, while this story is good, it is mostly unearned. The story focuses on two main Star Trek characters – Spock and Ben Sisko – who never share a scene together. While the Spock sections of the book – and those on Romulus post Nemesis and Destiny essentially make up the main political story, the sections of the book on Sisko, while well written, are a puzzling addition to this novel.

I don’t think the author (David George) tried to pad his book with the Sisko narrative, but in the end he fails to link the story up. While Sisko does meet with Donatra, leader of the splinter Imperial Romulan State, for one chapter, he has no effect on the main story. His inclusion in the book is irrelevant to the plot, yet he’s in roughly one third of the chapters. (The chapters rotate between Sisko, Spock, and various Romulans or Tzenkethi.)

The plot involves the Romulan praetor’s attempt to reunify the Romulan empire while her allies in the Typhon Pact, the Tzenkethi, plot to unify the empire under a more controllable leader. The praetor uses Spock’s unification movement to rally citizens to unify the splintered empire. She succeeds. Donatra commits suicide after being framed for an assassination attempt on the now popular Spock and the Tzenkethi assassinate the praetor and arrange for more docile leader to be elected.

When I say the story is unearned it is because it is now 2381/82 and Sisko is now on the outs with his wife and feels the prophets have abandoned him. He now denies he is the emissary. He reenlists in Star Fleet, and takes command of a galaxy class ship and leaves his wife and now four year old daughter on Bajor. All so that he can walk his path alone and avoid sorrow and death for those he loves.

A few observations. The last DS9 novel took place in 2377 and was published in 2009, while Destiny took place in early 2381 and was published in 2008. That’s right. Destiny was published before a DS9 relaunch novel that took place four years earlier. And now they’ve abandoned the 2377 chronology and jumped the DS9 characters ahead to 2382 – at least the few that appear in the book (Sisko, Vedek Kira, and brain dead Vaughn. No seriously.) So you’ve got a four to five year gap where apparently enough happened to Sisko that he would abandon his family and rejoin Starfleet. But again, whether it’s the author’s fault for choosing this plot (remember Sisko is not essential to the main plot) or the editors’ fault for choosing to skip four years of DS9 stories, Sisko’s plot is unearned. This particular novel was published in January 2011, sixteen months after the last DS9 relaunch.

Also note this is the third Typhon Pact book. It came first in time, so I read it first as this is the nature of this project.

Next up, a Voyager book (yay) that takes place concurrently in early 2382. As if to prove the editors’ learned nothing (or learned something…not clear yet), this book was published in 2014! By 2014, the main universe books took place in 2384 or 2385. Yet they’ve let Voyager novels lag behind the chronology, while shattering the DS9 narrative to bring them up.

Hypothesis: “DS9” novels will focus mainly on one or two characters from now on as, opposed to TNG or VOY stories, DS9 created far more interesting characters that can hold a novel on their own.

Faceman. You ever read the original series novel "Cry of the Onlies"?

To me it is truly one of the worst Trek novels as it combines two original episodes I hate. Namely "Miri" and "Requiem for Methuselah" .

And has the utterly ridiculous spectacle in the climatic "battle" of the Enterprise phasers firing "glitter"

Seriously.

How much do these authors get paid? Pocket is releasing like a dozen Star Trek books this year. THats massive oversaturation. They can't sell that many copies of a given book right?

I thought Pocket's traditional publishing schedule for Star Trek books going back more than 25 years one book per month which is of course 12 a year.

How is that "massive oversaturation".?

Well, if Faceman can do his job and review Star Trek books, it's not oversaturation. If he can't do both, it is, and he has to choose one or the other, and if he chooses the books, chewing lead might end up being the only way to save his family.

I have doubts that there's a market for this much Trek prose. Thus 12novels a year (an estimate) seems high. I want to know the economics.

Let's say an author gets a measly $20,000 to write a book which is four to five hundred pages long. Just to recoup that cost the book has to sell nearly 3000 copies. I assume an author gets a small cut of the sales price so I bet a single book needs to sell in the tens of thousands. Millions of books a year to make this economically feasible and again this is based off a shitty paycheck. I assume writing a book takes substantial time and talent, editing a proofing even more time.

Garamet once said IIRC that on average a writer needs five books published before the annual income is enough to live on.

So assuming say a minimum of 40,000 a year to live on that would mean an average of 8,000 dollar a year from each book.

One book a month isn't that bad, considering that output is split between six different series, in addition to whatever crossover events or one-shots they're doing.

Acts of Contrition (VOY) 2381

Back to the wonderful world of Voyager in which, following the last book Protectors, the crew of the scrappy starship go off to meet the Confederacy of the First World. This book picks up immediately and follows several plots and subplots, amongst them:

1. Who are the coalition of bad guys targeting the gateway to the First World?

2. Seven goes to Earth to help with the “catom” plague. Hilarity ensues. (Spoiler: she is in stasis the whole book and only figures out that her experiences with Axum on earth were a dream…)

3. Paris has a custody battle with his mom and wins! This was the most painful part to read as a lawyer. I could get highly technical here but suffice it to say there is a reason I no longer read lawyer books or watch lawyer TV shows…

4. VOY’s doctor Sharak explores the alleged “catom” plague on one of the infected planets…to be resolved later…

The book jumps between the AQ and the DQ, with the DQ parts focusing on diplomatic ties with the Confederacy, which appears to be focused solely on acquiring goods. Those who can’t work hard enough are punished by losing citizenship and losing access to services. It’s like a better allegory than they were able to draw with the comical Ferengi.

Obviously their interest in Starfleet’s technology, and nothing else, puts them at odds. While they never fully resolve their differences (they have replicator technology but choose not to use it in fear of market collapse) they do work together to fight the bad guys at the end. In the end, it is a coalition of the many aliens that no one remembers from the series working together for unknown reasons. It later turns out that their leaders are possessed by the same “consciousness” that the crew discovered in Unworthy which were ultimately stolen by Meegen the hologram. To be continued…


Next up, not the next VOY book, though I am looking forward to finishing them! Next is Department of Temporal Investigations, Watching the Clock which takes place chronologically next but jumps back and forth in time since it is about time travel.

I think Pocket would come out ahead if they simply dropped the entire Voyager and Enterprise lines of books.

A typical advance for a first-time novelist is about $7,500. His royalties, once the publisher has recouped the advance), will be a few cents per copy. If the author has an Amazon Affiliate link on his page to his book, he will make more from that, than he will the royalties off his book.

Bear in mind, that the author cannot trust the publisher to accurately report sales of the book. Any publisher out there than you can name, has been caught (often by quite well-known authors), lying to the author about how many books they've sold. It is entirely possible for a publisher to sell more than enough copies of a book to return a profit on it, but tell the author, he's not getting anything after his advance, in terms of royalties for some time. Said author should immediately be suspicious of such a statement, if the publisher offers him a contract for his next book, regardless of the size of the advance, because clearly, they're screwing him. If the first book was a flop, they wouldn't offer him dick.

Anyone writing Trek novels, unless they're already well-established, is probably not getting much more than a first time author, in terms of an advance, and they're probably getting fucked over when it comes to royalties. Additionally, since the Trekverse (like all other nerdoms) has a "true believer" contingent, who'll buy anything and everything with the Trek name on it, no matter how shitty it might be, the publisher has a very good idea what the number of copies a book will sell, before it's even written. So, if your average Trek title sells 5,000 copies, then the publisher knows that they need to make sure that they can still turn a profit at that number. (Bookstores pay 1/2 the cover price, FYI.)

As someone who's worked in the book distribution industry, I can tell you that printing costs are incredibly cheap. The amount of books tossed away because they're damaged or unwanted, is insane. The publishers are doing more to cut down on waste, but as much as 90% of a print run will be either sold for pennies on the original price, or trashed completely, without anyone thinking that they need to re-evaluate things.

Jesus. I can't imagine how long it takes to write 500 pages and have it edited. For $7500? Fuck that. Are you better off working at Arby's than writing the next misadventure of Captain Janeway?

Sweet mother of mercy how long are these books getting?

#Murica

Someone else must have mentioned the “five-book rule,” because it wasn’t me. What I did mention a few years back was that someone had compiled a survey for the Authors Guild that indicated the median income for midlist writers (a term that’s often misunderstood) had not changed between 1985 and 2005, and was less than $7,500 a year.

Updated data indicate that, if anything, it’s currently less:

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/the-wages-of-writing/

That aside, the heyday for Trek writer income was between the release of The Motionless Picture and the premiere of STTNG. For one thing, Trek fans were hungry for something to fill in while they waited for the next onscreen installment. For another, there were only six books released per year.

At least one of those novels sold over 450,000 copies. Even though media tie-in royalties are lower than original fiction, that was enough to put the writer at the top of the midlist for a couple of years.

At this point those are the best ones.

The tng books are mostly by Dayton ward and he's terrible. He's got a raging hard on for tyressa Chen, constantly recaps in chapter 3 what happened in chapter two.

David r George III is handling all of DS9. His last book WAS ALL ABOUT VIC VONTAINE BEING KIDNAPPED.

Plus he's so a word padder he can spend TWO PARAGRAPHS DESCRIBING SOMEONE ORDERING COFFEE FROM THE REPLICATOR.

Titan is just boring.

At least vgr and Enterprise books are about advancing the characters and the narrative. Not just spinning wheels

Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations : Watching the Clock (DTI) 2382 (mostly)

Where to begin…where to begin…

Well I guess I’ll start at the beginning of the plot!













No that won’t work. Unless I missed it, there’s no plot anywhere in this 500 page monstrosity. Just some random “stories” (I use that term loosely) interspersed with “character” (again loosely) development pieces that jump back and forth in time. For a time travel investigations book there’s relatively no time travel yet the book shoehorns flashbacks in as if there will be.

What is this book about, Face? There’s a gun to your head. Answer the question!

Fine. There’s a department that investigates temporal…things that occur in the universe. And there are workers at this department, some of them interesting, some of them useful for the forced rape scene at the end that is barely acknowledged as such. The workers spend most of the time discussing temporal theories, many of which I assume the writer worked up on the spot. You know how people hate technobabble rich Trek? And then there are people who hate time travel Trek? Well those people will have something to hate together when it comes to this book. Because blah blah blah. Quantum that. Tachyon this. I can’t even. Don’t get me started. Just pull the trigger already.

No, Face. We’re not going to kill you. Tell us more.

Seriously? Fine. This sucks. Well character A investigates incident 1. Character B investigates incident 2. Character C investigates incident 3. Some of the incidents occurred fifteen years earlier in flashback as a way to introduce the character's backstory. You see where I’m going with this?

No.

I know. But the douchebag who wrote it didn’t either. You can tell because at the end the douchebag writer…er… Christopher Bennett, decides that all the unrelated incidents are maybe related and they’re all related to… Before I tell you, do you know how there are Trek fans who hate time travel, and those who hate technobabble and even more who hate Enterprise?

The “show” (loosely used) or the ship?

The “show” that "starred" Scott Bakula. You know that show? Seasons long temporal cold-war arc that never made sense, never explained, never compelling?

Yes, we’re familiar. We’re considering turning the guns on ourselves if you keep talking…

Well all the bullshit investigations are related to temporal cold war future guy! It’s an Enterprise book shoehorned into 2382! And the last few pages we learn who future guy is.

Who?

No one you’d recognize. I've already forgotten. Smitty? Smithy? Fred? Fuck, who knows.

Oh.

And yet no clarity of plot. Did you see Spectre?

The 24th official Bond film starring Daniel Craig and some white chick?

Yes.

Yes we did see that.

OK. You know how it kinda sucked when they retconned all the prior Craig films as a master plot of Spectre/Blofeld.

Spoiler alert, asshole.

You said you saw it?

Others might not have.

Oh. Fuck other people.

Yeah! Right on!

Anyway, that’s what this book is. Quick, how do I relate all these pointless vignettes? I know, TCW from ENT and future guy! Future guy did it! That’ll sell books. (Note he missed one vignette but whatever, he’s lazy.) That’s what this was. Future guy was blofeld and all those unrelated adventures we slogged through in the first 450 pages were Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall…only substantially worse since those three movies are good and this book is…what’s the word…

Bad?

Yes, if you want to sugar coat it. Bad. This book is bad. Next up, more fantastic VOY prose from Kristen Breyers (?). It’s infinitely more readable than this shit and at least has fleshed out characters like Harry Kim and dead Kes.

I once tried reading a DTI book but couldn't stay conscious enough to get through it. Who was Future Guy?

Some guy from the 28th century named Jamron Harnoth. They arrested him scooby doo style. Motive unclear.