Star Trek

Most fan fic is awful, so I need a shortcut. Can anyone tell me some good ones?

Also, Trek novels...I started reading one in the library, it was with Picard as Captain and Worf as his new first officer. It was a bit bland...are there any better ones? I heard the writers have to really stick to the concept of Trek and can't introduce any major changes to canon...is it true?

The rules regarding books (for first-timers anyway) are: Don't kill any canon characters & don't introduce relatives.

Of course they do break these rules a lot.

There is also a lot of good fiction out there, so not entirely sure what I would recommend.

What series/character(s) do you like? Any rules on genre? shipping? Mary Sues?

If you like Quark, Armin Shimerman's audio books are very good. There's also one with Rene Auberjonois that's good -- though the story's time travel element doesn't really work in audiobook format.

I said in another thread that I've been going to animated fan films for my new trek fix. Aurora trek and a new one I've found -- a 3-part, 10-hour plus miniseries, one episode of which is called Star Trek Redemption -- are both good, though the latter miniseries is long enough to wear you out. But it's 10 hours of new star trek, so who cares.

I don't read fan fiction, but in terms of novels your best bet is to learn which Trek writers you like and follow their stuff. Peter David and Keith R.A. Candido are my favourites. I very much enjoyed Candido's I.K.S. Gorkon series. Peter David's best include "Q in Law", "Vendetta", "Imzadi" and the "New Frontier" series. Both writers utilize the main characters well and flesh out areas of the Star Trek universe ignored by the shows and movies. If you're an Enterprise fan, the Dave Stern novels are pretty good too.

IDW seems to be doing a decent job with their comics license. The ongoing comic based on the original series reboot is pretty well written and the art is good. The miniseries vary, but most of the original series ones have been excellent.

A while back I read a fanzine which reprinted Pocket Books' rules for Trek novels. As I remember it, the big ones are no major character deaths, no major changes to the universe (don't blow up the Enterprise, keep canon species and villains alive and viable for later use), and no sexual relationships between main characters.The new novels started to go wrong when they began to break these rules.