SUPRMAN said:

NDRU said:

His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass was the first book)

Lord of the Rings & Hobbit

Chronicles of Narnia

Ender (so far, I am through book 3)

The Dark Tower--suffered a lot in Book 6 IMO, but came back nicely in Book 7.

The Ender trilogy was great!

There is another series of books that I can't name right now.

A world with tall robots who kept people confined in "cities."

There's like, 10 or 11 books now. Maybe more. At least 6 of them continue the main storyline, maybe 7. The other books are either alternate views on the same events (from a different characters point of view) or are written in between two of the original books as connectors. Everything I've read is quite good, but maybe not always on par with (for me) the first five books.

NDRU said:

Cerebus said:

My aforementioned brother-in-law is a complete GEEK about all of Salvatore's Drizzt books. He keeps telling me I have to read them and I keep telling him no.

I lost interest in the Wheel of Time books WAY early in the series. TOO. DAMN. LONG. I mean, really, there is a point when a single book is too big, when too much is happening, too slowly, and for me those books were it. Grand scope can be very rewarding (like with Tolkien, or even GRR Martin), but Jordan's books lacked focus for me. I would find myself drifting off to other thoughts as I read, then realize that I had no clue what happened over the last twenty pages.

I read the first Wheel of Time book too. I liked it quite a bit, but it seems like the Everquest of books; being something to get absorbed by seems more important than the story itself

I pointed out one of the recent ones to my friend (Book 12 or something) and he says "It's called 'The Gathering Storm.' I would hope the storm is finally gathering after 12 books!"

Right?! I mean, The Shadow Rising was book four.

SUPRMAN said:

JoeTyler said:

the first time I've seen a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek

I personally think ST is unwatchable...I mean, I liked the Patrick Stewart era, but that's all...

WHAT?!

Star Trek is very watchable. Every iteration through Star Trek:Voyager.

Deep Space Nine, I couldn't get into.

I like them both. I've never met anyone who liked one and not the other.

Funny - that's when I stopped watching Star Trek religiously. NOT because the show was "unwatchable" (I was intrigued by the various themes being portrayed) but because other things caused me to stop watching TV around that time (I don't recall exactly what but I know it was family stuff). I think I stopped watching when they were delving into the origins of the shape-shifting character and his race (which I found interesting).

Oh! I loved Oryx and Crake and it's sequel The Year of the Flood

PurpleJedi said:

Cerebus said:

Star Trek - I could break it down quite a bit further, but nobody would care. In general my favorites are canonical and further the storylines from the movies or tv shows.

I care! I don't knwo WHY I've never had the urge to pick up a Star Trek novel, whle I eagerly consumed everything George Lucas threw our way.

How expansive is the Star Trek universe? Do the (older) movies tie-in seamlessly?

I think there's a 70's Star Trek movie, then the Universal Star Trek movies, then the new Star Trek based Star Trek movies (Picard) and now the "new" Star Trek.

At least four separate tv series.

No. The movies are linear because the characters are aged/ageing. But years are vague unless you are a Trekkie.

BTW - for those of you who still frequent the public library (the horror!)...check out to see if they carry Fantasy & Science Fiction ;

It's a periodical with various short stories and stuff. I've read MANY, MANY interesting stories in those! In fact...it's inspired me to try to complete a sci-fi story that I've been kicking around for a few years now and try to see if I can submit it. (Never done such a thing before, so if any of you have tips & suggestions, it's much appreciated!)

One recent story that captivated me dealt with a giant metallic dragon that mysteriously appeared in Paris and ate the Eiffel Tower. It then proceeded to consume every architectural landmark, museum, temple and work of art on earth. It was indestructable and unstoppable. Soon people began to worship it and they outlawed anything artistic that could draw the dragon's ire. There was more to it of course, but that's all I can remember right now.

Anyway...it was a good read.

So if you have it available, check out an issue or two.

PurpleJedi said:

SUPRMAN said:

WHAT?!

Star Trek is very watchable. Every iteration through Star Trek:Voyager.

Deep Space Nine, I couldn't get into.

I like them both. I've never met anyone who liked one and not the other.

Funny - that's when I stopped watching Star Trek religiously. NOT because the show was "unwatchable" (I was intrigued by the various themes being portrayed) but because other things caused me to stop watching TV around that time (I don't recall exactly what but I know it was family stuff). I think I stopped watching when they were delving into the origins of the shape-shifting character and his race (which I found interesting).

yeah DS9 was too geeky even for me.

Most Star Trek is terrible honestly, but it is gloriously terrible. DS9 was just moderately crappy. It took Catherine Janeway and 7 of 9 to bring back the abysmal sexiness of Star Trek.

SUPRMAN said:

PurpleJedi said:

I care! I don't knwo WHY I've never had the urge to pick up a Star Trek novel, whle I eagerly consumed everything George Lucas threw our way.

How expansive is the Star Trek universe? Do the (older) movies tie-in seamlessly?

I think there's a 70's Star Trek movie, then the Universal Star Trek movies, then the new Star Trek based Star Trek movies (Picard) and now the "new" Star Trek.

At least four separate tv series.

No. The movies are linear because the characters are aged/ageing. But years are vague unless you are a Trekkie.

Sorry...what I meant to ask was; In the expanded Star Trek "universe" offered by the many, many novels out there...do the movies tie-in to the storyline seamlessly?

PurpleJedi said:

SUPRMAN said:

I think there's a 70's Star Trek movie, then the Universal Star Trek movies, then the new Star Trek based Star Trek movies (Picard) and now the "new" Star Trek.

At least four separate tv series.

No. The movies are linear because the characters are aged/ageing. But years are vague unless you are a Trekkie.

Sorry...what I meant to ask was; In the expanded Star Trek "universe" offered by the many, many novels out there...do the movies tie-in to the storyline seamlessly?

I'm responding to this right now, gimme a minute or two.

Cerebus said:

SUPRMAN said:

The Ender trilogy was great!

There is another series of books that I can't name right now.

A world with tall robots who kept people confined in "cities."

There's like, 10 or 11 books now. Maybe more. At least 6 of them continue the main storyline, maybe 7. The other books are either alternate views on the same events (from a different characters point of view) or are written in between two of the original books as connectors. Everything I've read is quite good, but maybe not always on par with (for me) the first five books.

I only read the first three. Guess have to at least read the first five.

NDRU said:

PurpleJedi said:

Funny - that's when I stopped watching Star Trek religiously. NOT because the show was "unwatchable" (I was intrigued by the various themes being portrayed) but because other things caused me to stop watching TV around that time (I don't recall exactly what but I know it was family stuff). I think I stopped watching when they were delving into the origins of the shape-shifting character and his race (which I found interesting).

yeah DS9 was too geeky even for me.

Most Star Trek is terrible honestly, but it is gloriously terrible. DS9 was just moderately crappy. It took Catherine Janeway and 7 of 9 to bring back the abysmal sexiness of Star Trek.

7of9

...and it took Star Trek: Enterprise to bring softcore porn to the big screen when T'Pol and Trip had that "shower scene" in the first (or second?) episode!

Nothinbutjoy said:

Mmmkay, let's see...

Star Trek :spock:

Harry Potter

Twilight...yes I know....don't hate...I've moved on and I must admit it got me into many of the following that I had never looked at before and probably wouldn't have.

True Blood

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Walking Dead

I've never considered myself a Sci-Fi/fantasy type person. I've always loved Star Trek, but that was the odd one out.

I read Twilight out of sheer boredom. My oldest had read it and I wanted to see why she liked it. I do love the series, the first book in particular, but recognize it's weaknesses and as I've said, moved on.

I plan to start The Dresden Files, but really hesitate to start another series.

I would love for someone to do a prequel of The Matrix

debbiedean2 said:

Nothinbutjoy said:

Mmmkay, let's see...

Star Trek :spock:

Harry Potter

Twilight...yes I know....don't hate...I've moved on and I must admit it got me into many of the following that I had never looked at before and probably wouldn't have.

True Blood

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Walking Dead

I've never considered myself a Sci-Fi/fantasy type person. I've always loved Star Trek, but that was the odd one out.

I read Twilight out of sheer boredom. My oldest had read it and I wanted to see why she liked it. I do love the series, the first book in particular, but recognize it's weaknesses and as I've said, moved on.

I plan to start The Dresden Files, but really hesitate to start another series.

I would love for someone to do a prequel of The Matrix

That would be AWESOME!

The Star Trek books work like this, more or less...

There is somewhere around 540 Star Trek books, give or take ( there could be a lot more than that, but I think that's pretty close). According to Gene Roddenberry WAAAAY back at the beginning, the books are NOT canon. But he said that at the very beginning, when the stories in the books had nothing to do with the series or movies. At one time, according to Paramount, the books were NOT canon. However, whether they like it or not, they created a large audience who DOES consider a certain portion of the books to BE canon. So much so that the stories for all of the series eventually ended up continuing in the books alone as the movies and tv series with those characters are no longer being produced. So really, I think that answers your question. But if you'd like to know more about how it actually worked, here's a (too long, but as short as possible) history of how this happened...

There are ST books written during the time of the original series. They were very short books and didn't add much of anything to the history of the characters, or add to the official ST canon. They were just short, throw away (imo) ST stories.

From 1970-1981 Bantam released a series of stories very much like those first books, but they started to include events and histories spoken of in the (now cancelled) TV series.

There was also a number of books released during this era that adapted some of the original and animated series episodes to print.

Pocket books, starting in 1979 with the adaptation of Star Trek The Motion Picture, released a series of numbered books. The Motion Picture was number 1 and the numbering ended many years later at 97. These books were the first to really work at fitting into the overall canon of the Star Trek universe. Unfortunately, not all of them did. Some of them were just Star Trek stories (not always very good ones) and they sometimes contained direct contradictions to what the characters had done on the series, in the movies and in other books. The books that did tie-in to the movies and series sometimes did so as a prequel, a sequel, branching off in the middle of a known story or as a side-story to what you knew took place previously. In my opinion its these books that first created the loyal ST book readers and this particular type of Trekkie (the kind that only follows the book canon and doesn't care about attending conventions for the tv shows and movies).

There ended up being a lengthy series of books for The Next Generation that worked exactly the same way. A few of these I would claim as some of my favorite books ever, in any genre (Imzadi and Q-Squared come to mind). But a few of them were complete crap, also. Books that were very similar to what I described above, sometimes going so far as to contradict what took place on the series (I'll never understand why they printed these). Fortunately, it became easier to tell what you were in for over time as the back covers made it more and more clear if they fit into an existing story or not.

Somewhere along the line during those two series of books (as they ran over the top of each other) there started to be notes in the front of the books telling you exactly where they fit in the canon. They eventually settled on calling them "Historians Notes" and these days pretty much every book in the five main series contains them.

Deep Space Nine had a series of books, but it was relatively short.

Voyager had a series, but it was even shorter.

They stopped numbering all Star Trek books, but continued printing them. At one time, following Voyager going off the air, they had stopped producing new Deep Space Nine and Voyager books altogether. They eventually did a reboot on them, continuing on with their storylines post-series.

All of these series continued to drift for a bit, sometimes telling stories that tied into the movies and episodes, or followed the stories of previous books, sometimes not. But even when they didn't they would still almost always give them a Stardate or a Historians Note so you could know where they fit in the overal ST timeline.

Then, in 2004, TNG had a nine book series of "Time for" books (like the bible verses, a time for war, a time for peace, etc) that began to tie up a bunch of loose ends and for the first time REALLY push the series forward, way past what had happened in the movies. Eventually this drifted into all the other series books and you could feel that the writers and editors had a plan, that they were steering towards a specific point. They reached it in 2010.

These days, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Riker's ship Titan and Ezri Dax's ship the Aventine have all been written into one story in one timeline. In 2010, 11 and 12, all of the books for those series relate directly to one another if they're not a straight continuation of a story from a previous book (regardless of series title).

Here's a few of the big things that have happened...

As mentioned, Riker has his own ship, the USS Titan. Troi is on his ship, as is Tuvok from Voyager.

Picard still captains the Enterprise, Worf is his first officer. He married Beverly Crusher and she's pregnant.

Janeway is dead, assimilated by the Borg, she then connected with 7of9 to help destroy them. After which (like, after she was dead) she was taken by the Q Continuum to parts unkown.

As I just mentioned, the Borg are defeated.

Riker and Troi tried to have kids a lot, but they can't. Troi gets pregnant , but the fetuses die. Its kinda sad and I hope they don't go back to that again.

I could go on here... but I won't.

Since the Original Series exists in its own timeline, for many years it lived by itself with very little interaction with the rest of the ST universe. Fortunately, since we there were so many movies showing these characters aging, but still in Starfleet, they were able to translate that into A LOT of books that tell the stories of what went on during those years. For me, there are far more books for the Original Series that are NOT canon than, probably, all the other series combined. Thankfully, a lot of the books that are canon are really great reads that do an incredible job of fleshing out the Star Trek universe at that time, as well as expanding upon the history of the universe as it was introduced in that series. Like, I never, EVER thought there would be so much explanation of the histories of Vulcan and Kronos. But boy is there.

Flash forward all the way to 2005 and they finally introduce another stand alone series set in the time of the Original Series. Personally, I think its great. I look forward to these and the Titan books more than any others. However, some people don't like it because its basically DS9 set in the time of the Original Series. Here's the Wiki description: "Star Trek: Vanguard is a "spinoff" of the original series, set aboard a starbase and featuring a new mix of characters, e.g. instead of focusing on a first officer, engineer, and science officer, the main characters include an intelligence officer, a reporter, and a JAG officer." See, basically its DS9. But I really love the characters and the books have been very well written so far.

William Shattner also wrote a series of ST books (known as the Shattnerverse) that continue Kirk's story after you saw him "die" in Generations. He did die, but the Romulans stole his corpse and brought him back with some crazy nanotechnology. Since he died in the time of TNG, these stories put Kirk in that era of Star Trek, which allows his character to interact with those from the other series (and the still living Spock). These books could in no way ever be considered canon, but they are GREAT books. They tell some very exciting and imaginative stories and they sold very well.

There are also a couple of large ancillary series that are quite popular. Starfleet Corp Of Engineers started as a series of ebooks, but it proved so popular that most of them have been printed in collected hard copy versions (I assume all of them will be eventually). The COE books do occasionally tie into the other series. Star Trek New Frontier is a long series (18 books now), all written by Peter David, that exist in their own universe (as it were). The New Frontier books are the first ever created specifically for print, they are not based on any characters, ships, etc in the previously known ST canon.

Enterprise.... whatever.

Now, after all that, the toughest part for me would be if somebody ever asked me where to start reading. Because honestly, I have no damn idea. I've been reading them for twenty years now and I love so many of them that I think I would probably just overwhelm somebody if they asked for any random book. If they had an idea what series or characters they liked best I could probably get it down to just a few books to suggest.

I really dig science fiction but these days I've realy been trying to get into more science non-fiction... so that question is kinda hard to answer right now.

Right now I'm fanatizing about unlocking the potentional of the human DNA when I becaome a geneticist.

I'm not actually doing anything about it right at the moment but fantasies are always a good start.

[Edited 7/27/11 20:28pm]

Eff all y'all haters! DS9 is my favorite BECAUSE its so damn geeky. Not moving around the universe running into random aliens, planets, enemies, etc etc etc, allowed them to have characters that actually had arcs. The characters on DS9 grew and changed far more than any of them on the other shows. There is not one character who was the same at the end of the series as they were when they were introduced. DS9 is some of the very best sci-fi to ever be produced. .... just my opinion, of course.

I like 7of9, but I always thought it was unfortunate that she needed to be so sexualized to drum up interest in the show. Thankfully she actually turned out to be an interesting character (who CONTINUES to be an interesting character as a Starfleet professor in the current books). Voyager as a whole was hit and miss, though, even with Seven. The main issue for me was that they just needed to bring them home sooner. There was no need to wait until the last episode of the last season. I honestly think if they would have had more success if they had just gone ahead and brought them back around season four or five. If they had done that, Voyager and DS9 could have had joint episode, TNG characters could have been included, and we would probably have gotten that movie with all of them in it. But Voyager ran the franchise into the ground, so none of that happened.

Enterprise.... whatever.

[Edited 7/27/11 20:40pm]

the that is Cerebus

The reason why I watched Voyager:

so... the vast majority of my favorites have already been mentioned but I'll take a moment to honor the amazing writer that is Piers Anthony. Author of the Xanth novels and a slew of other really odd but incredible Sci-Fi/Fantasy books...

Cerebus said:

Eff all y'all haters! DS9 is my favorite BECAUSE its so damn geeky. Not moving around the universe running into random aliens, planets, enemies, etc etc etc, allowed them to have characters that actually had arcs. The characters on DS9 grew and changed far more than any of them on the other shows. There is not one character who was the same at the end of the series as they were when they were introduced. DS9 is some of the very best sci-fi to ever be produced. .... just my opinion, of course.

That is it. DS9 was not interesting concepts and adventures, it was a Star Trek soap opera. I see the appeal, as it had an original take on the world of Star Trek, but it was never my cup o tea. I did like the Tribble experement. cute

I like 7of9, but I always thought it was unfortunate that she needed to be so sexualized to drum up interest in the show. Thankfully she actually turned out to be an interesting character (who CONTINUES to be an interesting character as a Starfleet professor in the current books). Voyager as a whole was hit and miss, though, even with Seven. The main issue for me was that they just needed to bring them home sooner. There was no need to wait until the last episode of the last season. I honestly think if they would have had more success if they had just gone ahead and brought them back around season four or five. If they had done that, Voyager and DS9 could have had joint episode, TNG characters could have been included, and we would probably have gotten that movie with all of them in it. But Voyager ran the franchise into the ground, so none of that happened.

Actually, I really only like TOS and TNG. Voyager grew on me in reruns but it was pretty weak in terms of originality, acting, characters, etc. I liked the Doctor, 7, and the Vulcan okay.

Enterprise.... whatever.

I was disappointed in Enterprise partly because the pilot was really good. They updated the feel of it in a way that was a preview for BSG who perfected it. And there were some interesting ideas, most notably that humans and vulcans did not like each other. But it got bad quickly.

Most of all I hate the latest movie! Star Trek is supposed to be dorky and interesting that movie was cool and dull. And seriously, they destroyed Vulcan? ok no thanks

[Edited 7/27/11 23:14pm]

RenHoek said:

so... the vast majority of my favorites have already been mentioned but I'll take a moment to honor the amazing writer that is Piers Anthony. Author of the Xanth novels and a slew of other really odd but incredible Sci-Fi/Fantasy books...

Amazingly I have never read his stuff and I have meant to for 30 years.

NDRU said:

Cerebus said:

Eff all y'all haters! DS9 is my favorite BECAUSE its so damn geeky. Not moving around the universe running into random aliens, planets, enemies, etc etc etc, allowed them to have characters that actually had arcs. The characters on DS9 grew and changed far more than any of them on the other shows. There is not one character who was the same at the end of the series as they were when they were introduced. DS9 is some of the very best sci-fi to ever be produced. .... just my opinion, of course.

That is it. DS9 was not interesting concepts and adventures, it was a Star Trek soap opera. I see the appeal, as it had an original take on the world of Star Trek, but it was never my cup o tea. I did like the Tribble experement. cute

Actually, I really only like TOS and TNG. Voyager grew on me in reruns but it was pretty weak in terms of originality, acting, characters, etc. I liked the Doctor, 7, and the Vulcan okay.

Enterprise.... whatever.

I was disappointed in Enterprise partly because the pilot was really good. They updated the feel of it in a way that was a preview for BSG who perfected it. And there were some interesting ideas, most notably that humans and vulcans did not like each other. But it got bad quickly.

Most of all I hate the latest movie! Star Trek is supposed to be dorky and interesting that movie was cool and dull. And seriously, they destroyed Vulcan? ok no thanks

I see both sides of the coin on the DS9 argument. I know plenty of people who feel the same way you do. And there is clearly a reason they gave them a ship and started having them travel through the wormhole regularly. But for me it will always just slightly edge out TNG (which just slightly edges out TOS - the three are very close together for me) because the premise allowed the characters to change and grow so much. The random weekly adventure model has already been done, they needed something new.

I had watched many, if not all, of TOS episodes before TNG premiered, but I wasn't a Trekkie yet. I can remember where I was and exactly what I was doing (eating chili for dinner) the night TNG premiered. I can't explain why, but it instantly hooked me. I watched nearly every single episode of TNG, DS9 and Voyager the night each one was first aired. If I missed them I would get bent. I even bothered with learning how to program a VCR so I could record them.

Voyager was admittedly VERY hit and miss. I remember really hating on it a lot when it first aired, but I was ST geek so I felt like I needed to keep watching, keep being part of that community, even if I didn't always like it. Then a couple years back I found some really inexpensive ST DVD box sets overseas and went ahead and ordered Voyager (I had the rest of them already). Re-watching it from beginning to end after not having seen new Trek on tv that I liked for nearly a decade changed my mind on it a bit. Yes, some of it is still really bad. So bad that I will skip those episodes in the future. And I TOTALLY agree with you about the acting, but it was mostly just the guy who played Harry Kim and ESPECIALLY the guy who played "Tattoo Head" Chakotay. But "Tattoo Head" was very open in the press about not liking the direction of the show, so he was tanking on purpose. Otherwise, in hindsight, I think Voyager is better than a lot of people make it out to be. But they STILL should have brought them home sooner.

Enerprise.... whatever. I was mad about it from the word go. Star Trek before TOS does not need to be told other than in print, as flashbacks, or as characters talking about it on screen. That's how Roddenberry created it and that's how it should stay. I watched the pilot and a couple more episodes and I was so angry that I actually lost a friend over it. IMO they were unnecessarily re-writing an established history and it really pissed me off. However, I downloaded the entire series last year and I've now watched every episode (it was hard to do). Nothing about what I saw changed my mind. In fact, seeing how they ended the series actually made me more angry. Also, the production value was REALLY high, so it also pissed me off that they weren't putting that money towards something GOOD. Lastly, I may be one of the few people on Earth who doesn't find Jolene Blaylock attractive. Her tits are fake, she's about 20 pounds too skinny, her legs are grossly thin and she has negative ass. The only redeeming qualities of this show for me were Scott Bakula and the guy who played Trip. They had great chemistry together on screen.

I won't even bother rambling on about the new movie. Its not Star Trek in my opinion. That's really all I need to say.

NDRU said:

RenHoek said:

so... the vast majority of my favorites have already been mentioned but I'll take a moment to honor the amazing writer that is Piers Anthony. Author of the Xanth novels and a slew of other really odd but incredible Sci-Fi/Fantasy books...

Amazingly I have never read his stuff and I have meant to for 30 years.

Yep. Me too. I even have a bunch of them on my shelves that I've picked up at garage sales, thrift stores and book fairs. But for whatever reason I've never taken the dive.

Cerebus said:

I won't even bother rambling on about the new movie. Its not Star Trek in my opinion. That's really all I need to say.

I was all excited for it, and then I realized as it played that it was really just another action movie dressing as Star Trek

NDRU said:

Cerebus said:

I won't even bother rambling on about the new movie. Its not Star Trek in my opinion. That's really all I need to say.

I was all excited for it, and then I realized as it played that it was really just another action movie dressing as Star Trek

Yep. The tone was all wrong. Destroying Vulcan was idiotic. Spock meeting himself. Really? How does that work exactly. New backstories for Kirk and Spock (they're TOTALLY different). Pike being a mentor for Kirk (umm, no). The actors either not acting anything like the characters they were portraying or trying way to hard to be like them (one or the other, but not both). Scottie in the tubes (siiiigh) and just generally being comic relief. And wait, here's the winner, why would Nero travel back in time to kill Spock instead of just travelling back in time to save his wife? Complete clusterfuck of a movie.

Cerebus said:

NDRU said:

I was all excited for it, and then I realized as it played that it was really just another action movie dressing as Star Trek

Yep. The tone was all wrong. Destroying Vulcan was idiotic. Spock meeting himself. Really? How does that work exactly. New backstories for Kirk and Spock (they're TOTALLY different). Pike being a mentor for Kirk (umm, no). The actors either not acting anything like the characters they were portraying or trying way to hard to be like them (one or the other, but not both). Scottie in the tubes (siiiigh) and just generally being comic relief. And wait, here's the winner, why would Nero travel back in time to kill Spock instead of just travelling back in time to save his wife? Complete clusterfuck of a movie.

I liked it.

IMO - it allowed a new take on the characters without messing up the timeline (it's an alternate reality after all).

Nero did not "travel back in time to kill Spock" - he and Spock were accidentally flung back in time when they passed through the anomally.

And I thought that Chris Pine did a magnificent job at "being Kirk" without becoming a caricature of William Shatner. Spock was Spock. The others...well it's difficult to judge because no one really paid attention to the mannerisms of the original actors very closely (or at least as much as with Kirk and Spock).

There definitely WERE flaws in the movie. The BIGGEST one I see is this; Vulcan is supposed to be such an advanced society. A mining vessel appears. The planet doesn't have a single starfighter that can knock that laser contraption out of the sky?

Cerebus said:

The Star Trek books work like this, more or less...

A WHOLE LOTTA INFORMATION

You are the MAN!

I had to print that out and will read it in detail over a glass of wine.

For anyone who doesn't have anything to do on Saturday and can get to NYC;

Cerebus said:

NDRU said:

Amazingly I have never read his stuff and I have meant to for 30 years.

Yep. Me too. I even have a bunch of them on my shelves that I've picked up at garage sales, thrift stores and book fairs. But for whatever reason I've never taken the dive.

y'all both need to get started then... they're crackin' good fun... full of puns that are very cleverly explained...

example: Pumpkin - a gourd that inflates things...

there's loads of good stuff there!!

Cerebus said:

The Star Trek books work like this, more or less...

There is somewhere around 540 Star Trek books, give or take ( there could be a lot more than that, but I think that's pretty close). According to Gene Roddenberry WAAAAY back at the beginning, the books are NOT canon. But he said that at the very beginning, when the stories in the books had nothing to do with the series or movies. At one time, according to Paramount, the books were NOT canon. However, whether they like it or not, they created a large audience who DOES consider a certain portion of the books to BE canon. So much so that the stories for all of the series eventually ended up continuing in the books alone as the movies and tv series with those characters are no longer being produced. So really, I think that answers your question. But if you'd like to know more about how it actually worked, here's a (too long, but as short as possible) history of how this happened...

There are ST books written during the time of the original series. They were very short books and didn't add much of anything to the history of the characters, or add to the official ST canon. They were just short, throw away (imo) ST stories.

From 1970-1981 Bantam released a series of stories very much like those first books, but they started to include events and histories spoken of in the (now cancelled) TV series.

There was also a number of books released during this era that adapted some of the original and animated series episodes to print.

Pocket books, starting in 1979 with the adaptation of Star Trek The Motion Picture, released a series of numbered books. The Motion Picture was number 1 and the numbering ended many years later at 97. These books were the first to really work at fitting into the overall canon of the Star Trek universe. Unfortunately, not all of them did. Some of them were just Star Trek stories (not always very good ones) and they sometimes contained direct contradictions to what the characters had done on the series, in the movies and in other books. The books that did tie-in to the movies and series sometimes did so as a prequel, a sequel, branching off in the middle of a known story or as a side-story to what you knew took place previously. In my opinion its these books that first created the loyal ST book readers and this particular type of Trekkie (the kind that only follows the book canon and doesn't care about attending conventions for the tv shows and movies).

There ended up being a lengthy series of books for The Next Generation that worked exactly the same way. A few of these I would claim as some of my favorite books ever, in any genre (Imzadi and Q-Squared come to mind). But a few of them were complete crap, also. Books that were very similar to what I described above, sometimes going so far as to contradict what took place on the series (I'll never understand why they printed these). Fortunately, it became easier to tell what you were in for over time as the back covers made it more and more clear if they fit into an existing story or not.

Somewhere along the line during those two series of books (as they ran over the top of each other) there started to be notes in the front of the books telling you exactly where they fit in the canon. They eventually settled on calling them "Historians Notes" and these days pretty much every book in the five main series contains them.

Deep Space Nine had a series of books, but it was relatively short.

Voyager had a series, but it was even shorter.

They stopped numbering all Star Trek books, but continued printing them. At one time, following Voyager going off the air, they had stopped producing new Deep Space Nine and Voyager books altogether. They eventually did a reboot on them, continuing on with their storylines post-series.

All of these series continued to drift for a bit, sometimes telling stories that tied into the movies and episodes, or followed the stories of previous books, sometimes not. But even when they didn't they would still almost always give them a Stardate or a Historians Note so you could know where they fit in the overal ST timeline.

Then, in 2004, TNG had a nine book series of "Time for" books (like the bible verses, a time for war, a time for peace, etc) that began to tie up a bunch of loose ends and for the first time REALLY push the series forward, way past what had happened in the movies. Eventually this drifted into all the other series books and you could feel that the writers and editors had a plan, that they were steering towards a specific point. They reached it in 2010.

These days, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Riker's ship Titan and Ezri Dax's ship the Aventine have all been written into one story in one timeline. In 2010, 11 and 12, all of the books for those series relate directly to one another if they're not a straight continuation of a story from a previous book (regardless of series title).

Here's a few of the big things that have happened...

As mentioned, Riker has his own ship, the USS Titan. Troi is on his ship, as is Tuvok from Voyager.

Picard still captains the Enterprise, Worf is his first officer. He married Beverly Crusher and she's pregnant.

Janeway is dead, assimilated by the Borg, she then connected with 7of9 to help destroy them. After which (like, after she was dead) she was taken by the Q Continuum to parts unkown.

As I just mentioned, the Borg are defeated.

Riker and Troi tried to have kids a lot, but they can't. Troi gets pregnant , but the fetuses die. Its kinda sad and I hope they don't go back to that again.

I could go on here... but I won't.

Since the Original Series exists in its own timeline, for many years it lived by itself with very little interaction with the rest of the ST universe. Fortunately, since we there were so many movies showing these characters aging, but still in Starfleet, they were able to translate that into A LOT of books that tell the stories of what went on during those years. For me, there are far more books for the Original Series that are NOT canon than, probably, all the other series combined. Thankfully, a lot of the books that are canon are really great reads that do an incredible job of fleshing out the Star Trek universe at that time, as well as expanding upon the history of the universe as it was introduced in that series. Like, I never, EVER thought there would be so much explanation of the histories of Vulcan and Kronos. But boy is there.

Flash forward all the way to 2005 and they finally introduce another stand alone series set in the time of the Original Series. Personally, I think its great. I look forward to these and the Titan books more than any others. However, some people don't like it because its basically DS9 set in the time of the Original Series. Here's the Wiki description: "Star Trek: Vanguard is a "spinoff" of the original series, set aboard a starbase and featuring a new mix of characters, e.g. instead of focusing on a first officer, engineer, and science officer, the main characters include an intelligence officer, a reporter, and a JAG officer." See, basically its DS9. But I really love the characters and the books have been very well written so far.

William Shattner also wrote a series of ST books (known as the Shattnerverse) that continue Kirk's story after you saw him "die" in Generations. He did die, but the Romulans stole his corpse and brought him back with some crazy nanotechnology. Since he died in the time of TNG, these stories put Kirk in that era of Star Trek, which allows his character to interact with those from the other series (and the still living Spock). These books could in no way ever be considered canon, but they are GREAT books. They tell some very exciting and imaginative stories and they sold very well.

There are also a couple of large ancillary series that are quite popular. Starfleet Corp Of Engineers started as a series of ebooks, but it proved so popular that most of them have been printed in collected hard copy versions (I assume all of them will be eventually). The COE books do occasionally tie into the other series. Star Trek New Frontier is a long series (18 books now), all written by Peter David, that exist in their own universe (as it were). The New Frontier books are the first ever created specifically for print, they are not based on any characters, ships, etc in the previously known ST canon.

Enterprise.... whatever.

Now, after all that, the toughest part for me would be if somebody ever asked me where to start reading. Because honestly, I have no damn idea. I've been reading them for twenty years now and I love so many of them that I think I would probably just overwhelm somebody if they asked for any random book. If they had an idea what series or characters they liked best I could probably get it down to just a few books to suggest.

Okay that does it, I'mma start reading some these books. Starting with the ones by William Shatner, just gotta love the fact he just wrote his character back into the series hanging out with Spock and Picard, he's too much.

I read an overall synopsis a long while ago that was suppose to sum up the ST timeline using all the books (or most), series and movies, from what I saw it was suppose to go so far as the human race becoming part of the Q Continuum and a couple of steps beyond. I don't know if I could get that deep but I would think it would be kind of trippy.