Star Trek

I'm a serious bookworm. That said I've only read about 20 Star Trek novels, mostly early TOS. This is mainly because in the early days of Trek writing, women authors were the majority and the relationships between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were portrayed as particularly close. After awhile there was a backlash against this kind of emphasis, so now I go to fan fiction to get more Star Trek, since the fan fiction authors tend to write the characters more in keeping with the way I see them. There is a lot of incredibly good writing in the K/S genre, for example, that can never be published, and this is what I'd usually rather be reading anyway if I'm feeling like reading Star Trek. I've always loved Margaret Wander Bonanno's work however, and now that she's allowed to publish Trek fiction again, I'm a little more interested.

I'll probably end up reading the DS9 relaunch, at least starting it, since I dearly want that story to continue. But I've heard enough about where they're taking that series that I'm pretty underwhelmed. And because all the novels have to be internally consist now, if something I do not like is done in a novel, it cannot be "undone" by another novel I like better. I -prefer- the days when Star Trek novels could blatantly contradict one another and I could cherry-pick the stories I liked and disregard the rest. Now if I want to pick up just one new novel that sounds interesting, its part of a large series that is likely to ultimately disappoint me, or it won't make sense if I don't read the 10+ books written before it. It's harder to just pick up a new Trek book that sounds intriguing now, because they're all haunted by the shadows of books I'm not interested in, instead of being allowed to stand alone on their own merits.

That's always the hardest thing about tie-in novels though, how much they do or do not tie in to your own interpretation of the work. At least with fan fiction the varieties are endless. And there's a feast of material for the K/S inclined in particular.

I don't know much about fan fiction authors outside of K/S, but I can tell you as a literature major/writer/bookworm that there are some FANTASTIC fan fiction authors, that are just as good, if not better than many of the professional authors I've read. Killa (author of the K/S classic Bitter Glass) is an incredible writer, and that novel is as well written as any of the pro novels I've read, and better than most of them. It doesn't matter how good a writer is, however, if the story isn't marketable. It won't/can't be professional published. 

Sure there's a lot of crap fan fiction too, but remember Sturgeon's Law that 90% of everything is crap. You just have to know which authors to read. Some of the pro authors certainly love Star Trek as much as the fans, but I doubt how many of them love it for the same reasons I do.

>> Now can/should we encourage readership?

I dunno. I kind of think it'd be better if people read original works by generally better authors. I mean, both James Blish and Alan Dean Foster were known as a famous sci-fi authors before they novelized TOS and TAS, respectively. I wonder how many fans have read Foster's original fiction? They're really great! I'd rather support authors of original work.

>>Now that the "relaunch" books have better editorial controls in place than the old books to prevent contradictions, are they more respectable to fans?  (And for possible authors-)

Speaking for myself, better editorial control doesn't make much difference. The one thing I will say is now, from what I've heard, real changes can be made to the status quo, i.e. Janeway staying dead. That's kind of cool and I can certainly see that being an attraction to readers. That said, now you have the same issues with canon that the franchise has that was already alluded to: the tighter continuity makes it a bit harder to attract new readers. I guess it's a two edged sword in that regard.

Do the "relaunch" books have more respect within the franchise so we wouldn't expect them to be contradicted by future screen material?

I doubt it. They never did before, with the exception of STXI, where Roberto Orci incorporated elements of Diane Carey's "Best Destiny," for Kirk's history. So he's one guy that's done it. I'd say, though, that it's the same as before: live action is definitely canon. Maybe the official reference books can be considered canonical too. I'd say the novels, aren't though, especially since GR can no longer vet them (not that that was a good thing to begin with based on his past actions in this regard).

>> If you don't read Trek books, why?

Already answered.

>>If you do read them, what keeps you coming back?

Again, it's because there are so many other books I'd rather read.

Kind of totally off topic, but I saw the Gene Wolfe mention. The Book of the New Sun is one of my favorite literary works of all time.

Well, ghostmojo, you could pick a favorite series and stick with those.

Star Trek and Clive Cussler are the only fiction I read. Other than that I stick to history and biographies. In fact, it bothers me that we divide books into fiction and non fiction instead of reality and non reality.

That's a really good question. Part of me would really, really, really love to see movie adaptions. I mean, the visual potential...

But I think you're absolutely right to wonder how well an unreliable narrator translates to film. I know its been attempted before, but can you think of any examples where it's been done really well?

Either way, the film adaptions would -have- to maintain the frame of Severian telling his own story or it simply won't work. A film would also lack all the archaic terminology that makes reading the stories such a mind-warpingly alien experience. Hopefully the awesomeness of the cinematography would be able to recreate this hallucinogenic feeling adequately.