Personally, I never can get myself to read books of science fiction. It might have something to do with the well-intentioned but vacuous, hooray-for-reading propaganda I was subjected to in gradeschool that was biased towards reading for pure pleasure rather than for more (like knowledge or inciteful thought).

So I rebelled by reading books only for information and learning rather than entertainment. I use movies to entertain me. While the Star Trek series and its movies aren’t Shakespeare, I enjoy some of the imagination, artistic design and thought (yes, there is some thought in these shows) that went into them.

That being said, I think that viewers/readers are strolling blindly down the wrong path if they honestly believe that they will find brilliant writing under the umbrella of what is afterall a franchise. Originality is the breath of writing but there is no life to be found in the conformist doctrine of a sci-fi universe with its special weave of events created by so many previous writers. Beam me up, Scotty! ;) (I know, so cliché, but I was too weak to resist. Carry on.)

As for Andy Mangels/Michael Martin’s books, I love them. And I’m a big fan of the Titan series. I can’t wait to see if anything else comes out of that series.

J

David R George III is the most promising new Trek writer I’ve seen in quite a while. He writes quite big books, but I just like his style so much I tend to devour them in only a few sessions. He did one of the Mission: Gamma novels from the DS9 “8th Season” which I liked and which I thought did excellent work in developing the character of Elias Vaughn. His recent three TOS novels on the big 3 are also all very readable, although the McCoy one is definitely the best.

On the topic of DS9, the first batch of post-series novels are generally very good ( runing from “Avatar” thru to “Unity”, which effectively rounds off the “eighth season” of novels). That said, “This Grey Spirit” was rubbish, but most were fair/good to excellent. Not too keen on those post-Unity though.

“Doctor’s Orders” , “The Three-minute Universe” and “Mutiny on the Enterprise” are all good, memorable novels from the original series’ back catalogue.

I’m of mixed feelings towards Peter David. I used to love his early TNG stuff, which peaked with Imzadi, but since then I felt he degenereated into pure fanfic with all the wish fulfilment fantasies and out-of-character actions that brings.
(New Frontier was a great idea, but the execution was so cheesy i felt embarassed to be seen with it. A Starfleet captain would never, EVER respond to an alien attack by petulantly shouting across the bridge, “I want to blow those B@stards out of space!” as Calhoun does in the opening story. And the constant wise-cracking is more in keeping with a Marx Bros film than Star Trek).

Back to the good: the Strange New Worlds anthologies are generally very good, with some very striking stories in there that more than make up for the occasion dud.

Oh, and as a rule of thumb – only go for books from series you really like. I felt VGR and ENT were very varibale and so tend not to look at their novels. But the TOS, TNG and DS9 crews I know liek the back of my hand, and so books about them – especially ones that feel like actual episodes – I do look at.

I’ve been filling some of my recent leisure time (since reading TNG’s The Buried Age) with going back to read some ‘classic’ novels. I blew through Fontana’s “Vulcan’s Glory”, a tale of Spock’s first mission on the Enterprise under Pike, and am already making pretty good time on David Dvorkin’s “Timetrap”.

I don’t mind miniseries from time to time (provided they come out in close enough succession, like the enjoyable “A Time To…” series, to be easy to follow) but I too miss the old days of the book/episode feel… at least from time to time.

As I await a copy of “Resistance” (the new TNG novel) I am planning to hit “The Abode of Life”, “The Pandora Principle” and a few others for my own amusement. Heck, I might dig out my copy of “The Kingon Gambit” just for fun!

Rob+

That was over a year ago. He swore off Trek books permanently. Deservedly so, with those three stinkers.

Arrrrrg.