Sean O'Hara

Walter Jon Williams has said that his one Star Wars novel made him more money than all his other books combined. Now, there are a lot more Star Trek novels published each year than Star Wars, so there's probably less money per author, but it's certainly a good career move for authors. Especially when you consider that most novelists can't earn a living by writing -- the average advance for a first novel is under $10,000, and few novels ever earn-out.

Sean O'Hara

Vendetta, in which we learn that the original Doomsday Machine was a prototype for an anti-Borg weapon, and now the full-scale version is coming. It's a damn shame that the movie producers never read the novels, because the book is a hundred times more bad-ass than First Contact, and keeps the Borg frightening while sticking to the original concept -- a hive-mind where each individual is a processor and there is no leader at all.

My favorite Trek novel is John M. Ford's How Much for Just the Planet, where the Klingons and Federation vie for control of a planet whose inhabitants are much too savvy to fall for any of their enticements. There are musical numbers.

Since the new movie came out, I've been reading Memory Beta to see what's happening in the world of the novels, and it turns out the authors are dealing with the aftermath of the Dominion War and the destruction of the Romulan government, and even examining the inner workings of the Federation government. "Articles of the Federation," which appears to be Star Trek: The West Wing, sounds very interesting.

Straker

I read Mission To Horatius way back in the '70s (still have it lying around somewhere) but I was unaware that it pre-dated Spock Must Die! Mission was a Whitman hardback aimed at young kids which probably accounts for your reaction.

I too have all of Blish's TOS adaptations, many of which have a certain charm, but I always found it very odd that Blish often worked from early screenplay drafts that differed markedly from the final episode. For instance, the Blish version of The Doomsday Machine omits the shuttlecraft-down-the-throat sequence and leaves Matt Decker still alive at the end.

The Gold Key comics series was notoriously awful, partly because the artist lived in Europe (Spain or Italy I think) and had never actually seen the show; he worked strictly from photographs. The funniest thing was how he interpreted Janice Rand's basketweave hairdo as a hat!

fiver

Spock Must Die came out in '71 or '72 while Mission came out while the show was still on the air ('68 I believe). Of the Pocket Books series, I always was partial to J.M. Dillard's novels at the time.

I got rid of all my Star Trek fan stuff a long time ago when I was going through a phase where I was embarrassed by being a fan. Seems like that was probably a bad move since a LOT of it is unavailable now except on the used market. I remember going from used store to used book store, calling them all across town for years trying to locate all those Blish books - now I don't have them anymore so it's kind of a shame. I used to have the series of 12 illustrated star trek books that were something like graphic novel versions of some of the TOS episodes in book (not thin comic book) form. Also had the series of Alan Dean Foster adaptations of the animated series - which I found significantly more interesting than the cartoons themselves.

I always thought I had a pretty good collection of ST books way back in the day. I stopped shortly into the Next Gen series so I never read any of the DS9, Voyager, Enterprise or non-related novels. I'm glad a bunch of the Pocket Books novels are available for the Kindle, fairly cheaply - I'm having a blast rereading some of the novels right now.

I had maybe 5 or 6 of those Gold Key comics so I don't think I ever saw the Janice Rand 'hat' you mention - sounds hilarious though. My favorite was the one where Spock had to have his brain capacity enlarged in order to do an information transfer for a planet - went mad for a time as you might expect

Michael

kvrdave

DAMN YOU!!! Because of recent eye problems, I haven't read a trek book (or any other book) for about 2 years. I jumped back into reading by starting with Atlas Shrugged (figured 1200 pages would be a good test of my eyes ), but now I can see that I will need to get back to trek and see what has happened.

MBoyd

I just got the DVD of all the Trek comics from multiple publishers from 1967-2002. Pretty neat. $28 on Amazon. Can't wait to explore it more. I read the Ashes Of Eden adaptation and a couple of the 1980's Marvel series.

Travis McClain

I still have my Ashes of Eden softcover graphic novel. I haven't read it in quite a while, but it remains a favorite of Trek lit.

How is that DVD, by the way? I've been tempted, but I'm unsure about reading comics on my computer. Seems like I read that the DVD includes all the old ads, too; is that right? Also, can you print issues?

I've read some online where the settings automatically zoomed and it seemed that I only had a choice between either the full page (in which case it was too hard to really read a lot of text) or it zoomed to part of the page and the panels didn't always fit properly. In those instances, I had to keep switching which part of the page was zoomed and construct the idea in my head of what was going on in that panel. Not very enjoyable.

RichardW

I was looking through the Kindle list earlier this week and noticed the Star Trek novels. I was hoping they would get around to them eventually. The fact that many are $3 or less is even better! I read some of these back in the 80s and can't wait to dig into them again.

MBoyd

Yes all the ads are included. It's just scans of the comics, so whatever was originally printed is in there. You can print yourself too. You can zoom anything yourself. it doesn't do it automatically. I am reading on a 24" iMac. I actually wish there was a little more real estate to play with. I do find myself scrolling down to read everything before looking to the next page. Takes some getting used to, but I don't mind it!

Travis McClain

Sweet. Old school ads are almost as interesting as old school comics! And while I don't see me printing a whole lot, it's nice to have the option. Even though I'm on message boards pretty frequently throughout the day, I'm still clinging to physical reading.

kvrdave

They have the same for X-men and others. Ihave the x-men one. If they could do that on the kindle, I'd be buying one.

spejic

If you want to get into the novels as a whole, you should start with the novels that came out after the Nemesis movie, such as the Titan series and the Destiny mini-series. Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager are now mixed up and part of an interconnected story. There were a few novels that set up the Destiny series, among them "Before Dishonor" by Peter David (whom I don't like as a Trek author) which was awful, though lots of important stuff happens in it. I'd skip it - you learn what happened soon enough in later books. Get ready for Borg overload in any case.

If you want to stick with the original crew, there isn't a place to start because all the novels are pretty much self contained - just get what people recommend is good. Also look for the excellent Vanguard series, which is set in the time of the first season, but has a different setting.

My favorite remains "A Stitch in Time", written by Andrew Robinson, the actor that played Garak on DS9.

Trevor

I went thru a ST novel phase about 15-20 years ago. Remember enjoying the Peter David novels best, but a lot of other fun reads as well. Still have a box of them sitting in my living room, trying to decide if they need to go to storage or be sold off.

I also found that ST Comic on DVD collection. Looking forward to getting to it someday.

xmiyux

Clearly they need to be donated to us kind folks in the Book Forum.