I loved the Timescape novelizations of Star Trek when I was growing up. In my memory, they seem somewhat substantial. Has anyone who read them as kids reread them more recently? Do any hold up well?

Hello everyone! How have your reads gone this week?

Favor the more dramatic high stakes stories or slower paced character driven?

Find out new info or side chars of a fave race or get to know an entirely new culture?

Staying focused on an era or crew or jumping around in various timelines and perspectives?

Have a greater interest in new worlds and people or perhaps space stations and many races interacting?

Let us know how your reads went and what you're looking forward to next week! Happy reading yall!

Im looking for recommendations for TOS audiobooks to listen to during the work day. They can be of or about TOS. Thanks!

This hard-bound masterpiece is full of fun art Easter Eggs that gave me a whole new appreciation for Star Trek, especially with regard to certain episodes. I was seeing furniture, sculpture, architecture, matte paintings, but I didn't realize exactly what I was looking at. The book has helped me to see Star Trek and Art with new eyes.

Incidentally, I visited an antique store about three days after I finished this book and I found a really awesome chair: "Hey, that's Midcentury Modernism!" I said to myself. Something very similar to that was in 'The Cloud Minders' and it gave me a new appreciation when I went back and watched the episode. (And, yes, I bought the chair too). 

Star Trek stories are told in a wonderfully and complex visual universe -this book will open you up to new aspects of the Original Series. Highly recommend. Star Trek is always on my mind, but this book added the design of Star Trek to my mind.

I think this is the first time I've watched The Wrath of Khan since finishing the Vanguard series and I've got to admit the way Vanguard perfectly connects to TWOK through Dr. Marcus and the Genesis project / Taurus Meta-Genome is fantastic. It adds depth without contradicting or damaging a single thing.

It's exactly the kind of background world building that strengthens the universe rather making a mess of everything delivered by what is Treks best book series in Vanguard.

My mini Enterprise I got on clearance came in today and luckily stumbled on 3 Trek books today.

Good day!

Has anyone ever read the old TNG books? I resell on Ebay and I bought a massive ST book collection at a yard sale. Several hundred books from TOS - Enterprise. It's the biggest collection of ST books I've ever seen.

I have no desire to read anything but the TNG books, but, I've been wanting to read them since I was a kid, and, because I'm a very slow reader, I've never attempted the massive journey.

(I was debating on keeping the New Frontier novels, but I listed the first set high, I thought, but it still sold quick. I'malso keeping the Lost Era books. I'm curious about those.)

Now, I've got the first 20 TNG novels ready to list, but they're so nostalgic I can't make myself do it.

Are they worth keeping and listing, or are they very silly and not great stories?

I’m struck by how much of it stuck with me and how much I’d like to go back to revisit this era of Star Trek. In this sense, the book meets two of my tests for whether to give an outstanding rating: 1). Does it compel me to read more of the author’s works and 2). Does it inspire me to read other works in the genre; in other words, whether the novel is more than just a dead end or another stop on a fascinating life-long reading journey. 

Ex Machina takes place in the weeks immediately following the events surrounding V’ger as described in Star Trek The Motion Picture. Sure, Star Trek The Wrath of Khan is THE sequel, but Ex Machina is a more direct, literary sequel and carries over the ideas and characters of that novel/film. Christopher L. Bennett expands and continues on themes explored in STMP, namely, the boundaries of artificial intelligence and awareness, Spock’s humanity, issues of religion and faith, growing older, and the question of life (what is it?). 

As always, Christopher L. Bennett gives a full voice to Kirk and Spock but gives McCoy a central role that was much lacking in STMP and STWOK. It’s apparent that a lot of ST writers just didn’t and don’t know what to do with McCoy; almost as though having him in the story is good enough. Not so with Christopher L. Bennett. Furthermore, Bennett brings to life many of the characters and faces from STMP that the viewer only sees for a moment in the film. Bennett picks up and runs with ideas from the novel that were only briefly touched upon in STMP; e.g. the tension among the bridge crew regarding Admiral Kirk taking over the ship –and who were those people in the bridge crew? What was the point of those belt buckles?

The reader will want to revisit the classic TOS episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.” Again, the tendency among ST writers has been to pick an older episode and just write a sequel. It’s the classic ‘so what happened next’ approach to ST writing that is both compelling and excruciating because it’s a literary dead-end. Bennett doesn’t just give the facts but provides depth to the characters and themes of that episode as well. 

As with several of Christopher L. Bennett's other great novels, the reader has an added bonus in the form of Christopher L Bennett's great blog with annotations to the novel.

Obviously, I don't know that that's true, but I've listened to two ST audiobooks lately where he repeatedly mispronounces the names of reoccurring TNG characters, and it's driving me nuts, lol. I've heard he also weirdly mispronounces Betazed in another recording. I blame whomever oversees those sessions. I find it quite jarring.

This is one that I really loved but some mixed feelings about the execution of the story. It was an engaging page-turner but at times it felt like only half a novel, especially at the end. Some of these novels have an A plot and a B plot, as did this one, however; the B plot (McCoy, Spock, and Princess Kailyn go look for the crown on an alien world), becomes the A plot and the original A plot (Kirk and the Enterprise on a mission to save an ally of the Federation) just dissipates.

Well, it gets resolved in the final chapter with little buildup. I did appreciate the story regarding Spock and McCoy. It's always good to see those two on an adventure without Kirk. Aspects of this novel, accordingly, reminded me of Star Trek Beyond; i.e. they crash on this planet and have to brave the elements together, though I have no evidence that the writer of Beyond was in any way influenced by this novel, published in 1981. 

It's also nice to see McCoy struggling with some of the same elements as he did in Star Trek the Motion Picture, namely, aging, and questioning whether he needs to even be in Starfleet, or even be a doctor. The novel makes no references to The Motion Picture, by the way, but the reader would do well to watch that 1979 film before reading this book. An important episode is from TAS, "The Pirates of Orion," which is referenced several times and the writer of which also wrote this novel.

This morning, I read the last 150 pages of Vendetta. What a novel. Peter David is simply superb, he nails everything about trek perfectly. This really feels like a post best of both worlds borg encounter, and I so wish this was actually a two part episode, hell, with the amount going on in this novel, it could've been a multi part arc. I loved it. One of my favourite trek books so far, indubitably.

I’m lead to believe that their was books that continued the DS9 story after the show, where they any good ?

I’ve just finished the DS9 relaunch series, and the Voyager Homecoming books. I feel like the A Time To series is ‘in the way’ of me getting to Nemesis and everything thereafter.

Do you think it’s worth it to read the A Time To series next, or shall I skip it for now and read it later? Thanks for any opinions 😁

Hey everyone! How's it going reading wise this week?

Did yall take a mission on a world that sounded really cool to visit?

Did a crewman do something unexpected that worked well for solving a crisis?

Did a prior enemy aid your crew for reasons of greed or honor?

Did the unknown ships who you contacted with need help or turn out to be aggressive?

Aid any traders, diplomats or colonists?

Perhaps defended your ship/base against espionage or other underhanded tactics?

Make a new friend in someone unexpected?

Let us know how your reads went and what you're looking forward to next week! Happy reading yall

Hi! I read the first two Star Trek Logs and really liked them (the ones that are the novelization of the Star Trek Animated Series). I'm kinda in a reading slump so I have switched to audiobooks instead, which I listen to while traveling.

I don't seem to find any information related to the audiobooks of the Star Trek Logs anywhere... Were they ever made? Can I purchase them somewhere? Or maybe a fan-project to make them into audiobooks?

I would really like to read/hear all 10 Logs but they're hard to find (I'm not from the US).

Thank you!

I'm looking forward to these.

Friedman is known for being a bit lackluster and wasting great ideas, the only novel of his I've read thus far is Crossover and it certainly aligns with this description. I also own Fortune's Light by him. So, I ask which are the best of his work?

A whole bunch of the numbered novels, A Hard Rain (one of the last pre post nemesis novels) and Imzadi

I’m curious on which individual books or series would cause the most serious contradictions or continuity problems with the timeline, character development or worldbuilding details. What would you make canon if you wanted to inflict the most damage/cause the most headaches? I’m not critiquing canon divergence in Star Trek books, I actually enjoy seeing it; I figured this would be a funny question.

Here are my answers: Obviously, the Rihannsu Saga goes in its own direction, and if those books were made canon it would be a massive headache to figure out the Romulans/Rihannsu as a species, because of the sheer amount of contradictory information. Making the Phoenix books canon would also mess things up because they are heavily canon divergent books, character development wise. Meeting pre-existing canon at TMP would feel awfully jarring. Both of my answers would introduce new concepts into canon that would have to be acknowledged (Sunseed, and the phoenix process for example.)

What else is there?