To boldly diagram what no one has diagrammed before
March 8, 2014 3:50 PM Subscribe
The Almighty Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Order Flow Chart by TrekBBS members Thrawn and 8of5 is an optional but relatively complete guide to the modern continuity in Star Trek novels, including "relaunch" titles and crossover series. [Via.]
Incidentally, original Abramsverse novels remain an undiscovered country. But at Tor.com, articles by Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer have been suggesting reasons to revisit the Original Series novels.
Incidentally, original Abramsverse novels remain an undiscovered country. But at Tor.com, articles by Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer have been suggesting reasons to revisit the Original Series novels.
Aw man, if this just had it all sorted for the Original series novels, I'd be printing this out and putting it on my wall.
And then I'd hunt down copies of my old Star Trek posters and cut-out pages from Starlog and the Star Trek magazine and then I'd be 13 years old again and writing my Next Gen Mary Sue fanfiction while obsessively re-reading Diane Duane's The Romulan Way and AC Crispin's Yesterday's Son.
In other words, oh my god, I am totally in love with this and with my novels again.
posted by Katemonkey at 4:31 PM on March 8, 2014 [3 favorites]
And then I'd hunt down copies of my old Star Trek posters and cut-out pages from Starlog and the Star Trek magazine and then I'd be 13 years old again and writing my Next Gen Mary Sue fanfiction while obsessively re-reading Diane Duane's The Romulan Way and AC Crispin's Yesterday's Son.
In other words, oh my god, I am totally in love with this and with my novels again.
posted by Katemonkey at 4:31 PM on March 8, 2014 [3 favorites]
The Final Reflection FTW!
posted by infinitewindow at 4:45 PM on March 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by infinitewindow at 4:45 PM on March 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
I read the TOS story adaptions by James Blish and some forgettable original novel. I have a couple of thick fanfics from a convention in the '70s. That was plenty for me.
posted by DarkForest at 5:13 PM on March 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by DarkForest at 5:13 PM on March 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
Wow, looking at that diagram, that's a lot of reading. Maybe I could get into some Mirror Universe fiction, if it included evil Spock.
Oh, and the one novel I have read was Mission to Horatius.
posted by DarkForest at 5:40 PM on March 8, 2014
Oh, and the one novel I have read was Mission to Horatius.
posted by DarkForest at 5:40 PM on March 8, 2014
The Blish adaptations were great for their day, and I still have them (along with the Animated adaptations he did), and in the days before VHS they and my bubblegum picture cards (and my one Golden Key comic) were Star Trek.
By the time the 1990s rolled around and Trek books became products from the sausage factory I'd pretty much given up trying to enjoy Trek fiction (besides, it was back on TV then).
I've read somewhere between 10-20 of these books, much of which I have forgotten completely, and I assume Sturgeon's Law holds true for most of these books (and that includes Sturgeon's own contribution, which was not so great) but this entire project gives me more warm fuzzies than a well-fed Tribble.
posted by Mezentian at 6:00 PM on March 8, 2014
By the time the 1990s rolled around and Trek books became products from the sausage factory I'd pretty much given up trying to enjoy Trek fiction (besides, it was back on TV then).
I've read somewhere between 10-20 of these books, much of which I have forgotten completely, and I assume Sturgeon's Law holds true for most of these books (and that includes Sturgeon's own contribution, which was not so great) but this entire project gives me more warm fuzzies than a well-fed Tribble.
posted by Mezentian at 6:00 PM on March 8, 2014
The Blish adaptations were great for their day, and I still have them (along with the Animated adaptations he did)
I still have fond memories of checking the collected Blish TOS adaptations out of the library, but weren't the animated adaptations by Alan Dean Foster? I seem to remember they were, and I also seem to remember that several of them fell prey to Foster's recurring authorial weakness: pulling near-omnipotent aliens out of his ass in lieu of an actual ending.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:13 PM on March 8, 2014
I still have fond memories of checking the collected Blish TOS adaptations out of the library, but weren't the animated adaptations by Alan Dean Foster? I seem to remember they were, and I also seem to remember that several of them fell prey to Foster's recurring authorial weakness: pulling near-omnipotent aliens out of his ass in lieu of an actual ending.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:13 PM on March 8, 2014
The animated adaptations WERE by Alan Dean Foster. Carry on.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:28 PM on March 8, 2014
posted by wittgenstein at 6:28 PM on March 8, 2014
"Thrawn" is clearly a Star Wars fan double agent.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 6:53 PM on March 8, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 6:53 PM on March 8, 2014 [2 favorites]
TrekBBS member Thrawn
Dammit, people, don't cross the streams!
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:53 PM on March 8, 2014 [3 favorites]
Dammit, people, don't cross the streams!
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:53 PM on March 8, 2014 [3 favorites]
I was thirteen when I read The Final Reflection, and even my young adolescent self realized that that novel was well above the tie-ins' usual standards. The only other franchise novel that really stands out in my memory after all these years is Vonda N. McIntyre's novelization of The Wrath of Khan.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:21 PM on March 8, 2014
posted by thomas j wise at 7:21 PM on March 8, 2014
The Final Reflection is probably the best Trek novel I ever read, (it's fun seeing it referenced early and often here), but honorable mention goes to one that didn't make the list due to wonky continuity: Dark Mirror. I read it in high school, right around when we covered The Merchant of Venice, and it had some hilarious snippets of a Mirror Universe version that still crack me up.
posted by mordax at 7:57 AM on March 9, 2014
posted by mordax at 7:57 AM on March 9, 2014
Can you please mention that the DS9 Relaunch page on Wikipedia has some spoilers?
posted by pony707 at 7:05 PM on March 9, 2014
posted by pony707 at 7:05 PM on March 9, 2014
Ha! I did a three or four month project starting the day after the most recent nuTrek flick in which I read all the Blish adaptations followed by all the ADF adaptations. Blish's were better than i recalled from my youth, and got better as they went along. ADF's started strong, with better characterization and more texture, but went off the deep end in the later books.
Poorly substantiated internet sources allege that much of the later work published under Blish's name was actually written by his wife, who did get her name on the last two of these adaptations.
ADF's later books got out of hand because he was bolting one adaptation of a twenty-minute episode onto two additional episode-like stories that he came up with on his own. This at the same time as scripting several brand-new direct-to-vinyl audio-only episodes featuring the TAS crew, if not the cast, culminating in a credit for the story of Star Trek: the Motion Picture.
He was a busy man. As for the godlike aliens thing, it sure seems likely that at least as far as TOS/TAS/TOS movies, Roddenberry is the fellow to look askance at.
Also, Diane Duane is on Twitter and occasionally tweets about her involvement with Turek tie-in books.
It is too bad this doesn't include the weird, lumpy, and relatively rare 70s Bantam TOS tie-in books. David Gerrold, Joe Haldeman, a book where Spock becomes a cult leader, collections of fan fiction - it was weird. Which makes it great, in my book.
posted by mwhybark at 4:11 AM on March 10, 2014
Poorly substantiated internet sources allege that much of the later work published under Blish's name was actually written by his wife, who did get her name on the last two of these adaptations.
ADF's later books got out of hand because he was bolting one adaptation of a twenty-minute episode onto two additional episode-like stories that he came up with on his own. This at the same time as scripting several brand-new direct-to-vinyl audio-only episodes featuring the TAS crew, if not the cast, culminating in a credit for the story of Star Trek: the Motion Picture.
He was a busy man. As for the godlike aliens thing, it sure seems likely that at least as far as TOS/TAS/TOS movies, Roddenberry is the fellow to look askance at.
Also, Diane Duane is on Twitter and occasionally tweets about her involvement with Turek tie-in books.
It is too bad this doesn't include the weird, lumpy, and relatively rare 70s Bantam TOS tie-in books. David Gerrold, Joe Haldeman, a book where Spock becomes a cult leader, collections of fan fiction - it was weird. Which makes it great, in my book.
posted by mwhybark at 4:11 AM on March 10, 2014
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My grandma bought me Imzadi for my tenth birthday (I had an Enterprise cake!), not knowing it was 300 pages of Riker-Troi erotica. I still recall reading the words "triangle of pubic hair" for the first time. Several months later, my first queer feelings emerged around the time Dax first aired.
posted by avocet at 4:09 PM on March 8, 2014 [7 favorites]