Trek Novels

Equinox2003 · Post by **Equinox2003** » 2003-04-02 03:17am

I'm new here, pardon me if this topic is old around here.

Does anybody read the Trek novels? What are your fav and worst titles?
I know some people are not much for non cannon, but some of the Trek novels are good, while some are most certainly not.

Some of my favs are the DS9 triliogy "Millenium"
In which a second wormhole is found and leads to chaos for the entire
Trek universe.

I.Q. in which Picard and a powerless Q try and save the Continuum.

Also, The Battle of Betazed, set during the Dominion's brief occupation
of Betazed during the war.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-04-02 04:06am

My prefrence, is a well known love of the TOS novels.

Faves include the Douology about Spocks son, Daine Daune's Books, "How Much for JUST the Planet" <Damn funny>, "Doctor's Orders"<McCoy in Charge of the enterprise>, and Dreadnaught.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-04-02 05:49am

The Rise and Fall of Kahn Noonien Singh, Vol 1 & 2 - Greg Cox. Best Trek books yet.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2003-04-02 05:57am

Is Dreadnaught before or after Battlestations? I think they are by the same author but I don't have them available to check right now.

Probe was a good TOS story. It's a follow up to St IV (it deals with the origin of the probe).

I liked the Next Gen novel Vendetta

I also like many of Peter David's New Frontier series. They are entertaining and he makes use of stuff from classic Trek and a lot
of characters that made appearances in TNG.

I liked the DS9 novel that imediately follows the end of the series. It really is like the season opener for an 8th season. Some of the others in the post series novels are okay but some are kind of lame.

I haven't been impressed with the two Enterprise novels I've read. I just read the one with T'Pol on the cover. It was very short and didn't deal with her as much as the liner notes made it seem it would. It was also very short. Interesting look a pacifism though.

Equinox2003 · Post by **Equinox2003** » 2003-04-02 03:53pm

Of course! The Eugenics wars! I can't believe I forgot to mention
that series. I liked those too.
"How much for just the planet?" I started that one but managed to lose
it before I finished.
Also good from the TOS titles I think, are 'Cloak' from the Section 31
series, and First Frontier in which a minor species uses the Guardian
of Forever to make sure humans never form the Federation.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-04-02 11:55pm

I loved "Doctor's Orders". I've also liked the "Genesis Wave" books that have come out.

Micheal Ryans, Beta pilot · Post by **Micheal Ryans, Beta pilot** » 2003-04-03 11:29am

Uraniun235 wrote:I loved "Doctor's Orders". I've also liked the "Genesis Wave" books that have come out.

Yeah, the Genesis Wave books rock.

Andras · Post by **Andras** » 2003-04-03 04:32pm

Federation, IMO, is the best ST novel going

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-04-03 07:59pm

Damn, most of the good ones have been mentioned already. Dreadnought was before Battlestations, both be Diane Carey.
Q-squared was pretty damned cool, as was Dark Mirror(Peter David and Diane Duane respectively).

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-04-04 05:35am

Diane Daune is to Star Trek what Timothy Zhan is to Star Wars!

that is all.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2003-04-04 04:03pm

The Yosemite Bear wrote:Diane Daune is to Star Trek what Timothy Zhan is to Star Wars!

that is all.

So I take it you liike both Dreadnaught! and Battlestations!

She certainly can come up with cool TOS style ships. The Dreadnaught and the T-Rex looking construct tug the Banana Republic.

I still like the bit at the end of Battlestations! where Scotty wants a word with the woman who used the tug to bend a bit of the Enterprise's frame.

Another good TOS novel is Prime Directive

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-04-04 06:38pm

Diane Carey wrote Dreadnought, not Diane Duane.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-04-05 02:21am

Daune wrote the severly cool, macheavellian Ronin Romulons.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2003-04-05 11:43am

consequences wrote:Diane Carey wrote Dreadnought, not Diane Duane.

Thanks. I could only see the first name on the books from where I'm sitting and jumped to a conclusion.

kmart · Post by **kmart** » 2003-04-05 12:17pm

From Diane Duane, the TOS novels:
THE WOUNDED SKY
(kind of bastardized into NextGen's WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE)

MY ENEMY MY ALLY
(which has an AWFUL lot of similarity to Moore's NextGen THE TRAITOR)

From the Reeves-Stevenses:
MEMORY PRIME
FEDERATION
PRIME DIRECTIVE
(ideally these people should have been writing the feature films; they write character well, space battles well, and can even justify the tech aspects without sounding silly in that awful NextGen kind of way/)

From John Ford:
THE FINAL REFLECTION
(I think this is a hugo worthy sci fi story, irregardless of how you like the trek part of it, just awesome)

From Marshak & Culbreath:
PRICE OF THE PHOENIX & FATE OF THE PHOENIX
(I know most folks HATE these books, but I find their exploration of the Kirk Spock relationship to be worthy, even if it is a little weird.)

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-04-05 02:33pm

I don't recall any episode called "The Traitor". Do you perhaps mean "The Enemy" (Geordi is trapped on planet surface with Romulan) or "The Defector" (Romulan admiral defects with false information, unwittingly leads Enterprise into a trap)?

kmart · Post by **kmart** » 2003-04-05 03:23pm

Uraniun235 wrote:I don't recall any episode called "The Traitor". Do you perhaps mean "The Enemy" (Geordi is trapped on planet surface with Romulan) or "The Defector" (Romulan admiral defects with false information, unwittingly leads Enterprise into a trap)?

I'm sorry, you're right, it is THE DEFECTOR. My girlfriend from when the show aired used to keep our videolist, and for some reason she listed it as THE TRAITOR and it always sticks in my mind with that title, maybe cuz of the speech Picard makes to the guy about being a traitor. Anyway, there are some significant similarities to MY ENEMY MY ALLY as I recall, especially with regard to the confrontation resolution. I made up a list one time, and I came up with about a half dozen that I thought were significant.

I don't know that Ron Moore even realizes the similarity. God knows I think he is a very solid writer, and am really hoping his GALACTICA thing will somehow make up for the loss of FIREFLY or FARSCAPE. So the similarities could just be the kind of thing that happens with Steven King, where he reads a book and stuffs it into his subconscious w/o realizing he is WAY too close to somebody else's stuff when he writes it ... there have been issues with RUNNING MAN being too much like Robert Scheckley and TOMMYKNOCKERS being a riff on QUATERMASS & THE PIT and a lot of his stuff seems like expansions of Richard Matheson stories, but plagiarism watchers like Harlan Ellison (I love Ellison's stuff, am not knocking him when I say that) still seem to think there is no real problem with King's being derivative.

I've got a script partly written that I was very proud of, about a couple of screenwriters who make a good living selling scripts that never get made, who they make a deal with a demon to get their next project filmed, only to realize they need to escape the deal. The story is pretty funny (I called it DEVELOPMENT HELL), but I stopped when I realized my ending was EXACTLY the same as somethign Larry Niven had done years before in a story that I think is called CONVERGENT SERIES. In ten years, I've never come up with a decent ending that wouldn't have pinched massively from that Niven story, and it really pisses me off, cuz I've got some really funny stuff in the rest of it. But I guess that is the problem when you remember too much of what you read!

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2003-04-07 08:59pm

There is only one author whose TNG stuff I can stomach, really, and that's Peter David. Rock And A Hard Place was a burner, as was Vendetta. His Q related books, Q-Squared and Q-In-Law (hilarious) are great, but I, Q (with John DeLancie) is flat-out fucking amazing. That book, if it was not a New York Times Bestseller, without a doubt deserved to be.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-04-08 04:06am

kmart wrote:From John Ford:
THE FINAL REFLECTION
(I think this is a hugo worthy sci fi story, irregardless of how you like the trek part of it, just awesome)

It's still how I view Klingons.
And an interesting take on Dilithium, as well.

kmart · Post by **kmart** » 2003-04-08 11:06am

Frank Hipper wrote:
kmart wrote:From John Ford:
THE FINAL REFLECTION
(I think this is a hugo worthy sci fi story, irregardless of how you like the trek part of it, just awesome)
It's still how I view Klingons.
And an interesting take on Dilithium, as well.

He goes even further on dilithium in HOW MUCH FOR THE PLANET? There is a hysterical Randy Kilowatt kind of children's program included as an early chapter in that novel that I think is called something like 'dilithium and you' which puts dilithium in a historical context. Parts of that book are priceless, especially the first and last sections, but as I'm not a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan, a lot of it doesn't really fly for me.

Sothis · Post by **Sothis** » 2003-04-08 11:35am

Federation deserved to be a movie. It would have been an epic- I'd love to see the confrontations between Cochrane and Thorsen on the big screen.

Lord Pounder · Post by **Lord Pounder** » 2003-04-08 02:46pm

Maybe it's just me but i loved the 2 trilogies that the Gar-Stevens wrote in conjunction with Shatner. Good ole bald Bill calls the fans losers then released the 1st trilogy to keep himself in toopee's but they where good books mainly due to the Gar-Stevens doing all the writting. The second trilogy, about the Mirror Universe and the Preservers, where brilliant and lead to a nice tie in with the modern TNG movies.

The Mirror Universe and the Trek Universe diverged due to Crushers "Forget me" injection not working on Cochrane and in one universe he choses to chalk it up to booze depravation and in the other he remembers and acts on his knowledge of the Borg etc causing a Imperial Federation.

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-04-08 03:15pm

I really liked First Frontier and Best Destiny.

Crazedwraith · Post by **Crazedwraith** » 2003-04-10 03:55pm

Personally I throught the Dominion War Books 1& 3 BOOKS WERE GOOD. Millenium 1 + 2 were great but no. three was jus confusing.

Baron Mordo · Post by **Baron Mordo** » 2003-04-10 04:45pm

There were a couple of ST books that were neat. I actually just funished The Eugenics Wars book 2. The first one was better. Some other good ones were Here There Be Dragons, I, Q and the INVASION! series. At least just the first two. I really liked the New Frontier Series, though. It was closest to the way Star Trek could have been. Also, being a dork, I already knew a couple of the characters like Soleta, Mark McHenry and Zak Kebron from the Starfleet Academy junior novels. So there.