I have been a fan of your books for many years.

I received my copy of the novelization in the mail from Amazon.com on Saturday. I read it in one sitting. I thought the novel was very good. No, I did not think Scotty was a buffoon in the novel or in the movie for that matter. He came across as brilliant and perhaps a bit eccentric. Oh, and I loved the part where Admiral Archer’s beagle showed up at the end! I enjoyed your take on these iconic characters.

Keep up the good work.

There is a scene in the novelization that I hope wasn’t simply deleted from the film, but never shot: It states that Little Jimmy stole the car to get away from his stepfather Frank (and the hitch hiking boy on the road is his older brother, just running away from home). I really hope this is never mentioned again, because it makes Winona Kirk look incredibly bad: not long after she lost the heroic, likeable husband she loved, she went and married a total a-hole …

2 other things:
Why is the spaceport in Iowa?
Here Alan wrote a very simple, logical explanation – because it is a thinly populated area, if there is an accident, there aren’t too many potential evacuees or buildings in danger.

Why doesn’t the Kelvin crew immediately recognize that Nero is a Romulan?
The Narada crew, with their tattoos and shaved heads, doesn’t look like any other Romulans we ever met! (In the “Countdown” comic we are told that this is a Romulan mourning costum)

What if Hitler had listened to his military advisors and not poured so many of Germany’s resources into the development of V-1 and V-2 rockets, or the ME262 jet fighter and its predecessors?

Would the Soviets (and their captured German scientists) still have been able to launch a satellite into space as early as 1957?

What if the Nazis had never enacted a series of anti-semetic policies and caused some of its best scientists to want to leave in the early-mid 30’s?

What if “The Manhattan Project” had never been given such high priority in the United States due to the absence of such great (perceived) threat across the Atlantic?

Funnily enough, Alastair Reynolds’s novel Century Rain looks at a version of Earth where WWII petered out early on. By 1959, their technology is closer to that of the 1930s!

Yeah, I loved the novelisations of those movies. I was really disappointed as a child with STIII when I saw it on video in the mid-80s (didn’t see it in the cinema, because TWOK wasn’t available on VHS then and I knew it was a sequel to that film).

I mean, the movie starts something like 80 pages into the novel!

That is essentially correct.

“The planetary defense grid was mentioned much later, sure. I just think it would make a lot of sense to have one at any time after ENT, where Earth learned that not everyone out there is as friendly as the Vulcans.”

Agreed. And Star Trek has always treated this issue somewhat questionably.

“I always thought Trek had somewhat higher standards of plausibility than superhero comicbooks.Don’t the blatant logic gaps belong to the fun of reading comicbooks?”

I think if you take a good, hard, and honest look back—-they belong to the history of Star Trek movies as well….just not quite to the same degree.

Even some of the more basic elements to buying into the ST Universe are rather implausible (FTL travel, transporters). And the list of “logic gaps” in some of our favorite ST movies is as long as the Queen’s dining table.

This film provides some tremendous WTF moments for sure, but IMO, no more so than the rest of them.

“Most of the innovations, maybe all of them, would have been beyond anyone to reconstruct in the 40s. On the other hand it might have directed research in certain directions, agreed.”

Motivation is another element to consider. Think of the advances in technology caused by the chain of catalystic events which caused the Second World War in our own history—-atomic energy, ballistic missiles, jet aircraft, etc.—-all of which were sped tremendously along by the existence of an exterior threat perceived by any number of significant nations in the 1930’s-40’s.

Even just in the United States, the attack upon Pearl Harbor compelled Americans as a whole to become more productive between 1941-45 than probably any other point in history.

The appearance of the Narada in 2233 would certainly present a threat which was not present in the original timeline. Starfleet’s priorities would likely have been changed as a result. Consider how much different our world would be in 2009 were it not for the events that occurred on a single day back in September of 2001—-the point being that a single event can alter an entire society’s priorities for better or worse.

The potential result of 22 years (from the Kelvin incident to the time in which we first see the Enterprise) of Starfleet’s mindset focusing in another direction relative to what took place in the original timeline shouldn’t be dismissed or even merely underestimated.

But again, even beyond all of this, I have to think that even the possession of a hull fragment (or something like that) from the Narada could easily have significant impact. Just discovering the composition of some of that enhanced 24th Century material could send some science (particularly engineering fields) in another direction.

I think it is far less likely that technology would not be different, than vice-versa.

I didn’t know that. So the skipper can theoretically select the ship’s cook as acting captain? But I guess the skipper will have to take responsibility for his choices after the mission.

The planetary defense grid was mentioned much later, sure. I just think it would make a lot of sense to have one at any time after ENT, where Earth learned that not everyone out there is as friendly as the Vulcans.

USS Ford and the Japanese: Agreed, in those days there was not much telemetry beyond simple radar. I guess I should have said: what if the Japanese had some partial construction plans of the USS Ford? Most of the innovations, maybe all of them, would have been beyond anyone to reconstruct in the 40s. On the other hand it might have directed research in certain directions, agreed.

Comparing Superman and Trek: Hm! There is that analogy with Krypton. Also the multiple universes concept has been used by DC comics to fix continuity in. But I feel a little uneasy with the comparison, I always thought Trek had somewhat higher standards of plausibility than superhero comicbooks. Don’t the blatant logic gaps belong to the fun of reading comicbooks?