Any new novels still using things from the Litverse?

[David cgc]

I feel like there not being a real ship makes the simulation "winnable," in that there is an objective way to succeed; ignore the distress call, or deduce it's a fake, and stay out of the Neutral Zone, and there's no cost or failure, since no one was ever in danger. Unless you wanted to add that to the level of the simulation "cheating" to make it impossible to succeed; if you don't attempt a rescue, there's definitive evidence that the Maru was real, and if you do, the ship is (or may be, depending on the circumstances) a false image sent to lure you into a trap.

 

[Christopher]

I feel like there not being a real ship makes the simulation "winnable," in that there is an objective way to succeed; ignore the distress call, or deduce it's a fake, and stay out of the Neutral Zone, and there's no cost or failure, since no one was ever in danger.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. But if they retreat, then they may never know if the ship was real or not, and they'll have to live with the possibility that they condemned a whole crew to die to save themselves. That's exactly what happened in Sulu's KM simulation in Julia Ecklar's novel The Kobayashi Maru. Sulu ended up convinced that his cautious decision had been the necessary and responsible one, but nobody felt it was a victory.

After all, the KM is a test of character. It's not about whether a goal is achieved, it's about assessing how a command candidate deals with a no-win situation, both strategically and psychologically.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'm just trying to rationalize the '09 movie's and Prodigy's conceit of having an actual ship visible on the viewscreen within the simulation

Might have been added after somebody taking the test opted not to attempt a rescue (which, as I recall, somebody did, in a work of prose TrekLit). Just because the simulation lets the cadet crew see the ship doesn't mean it will let them reach it.

I'm reminded of the dark ride, "Snow White's Scary Adventures." The transformed Queen-as-crone appears several times, offering guests an apple; the one time it's close enough to touch, it turns out to be an intangible projection (not sure whether it's done with a hologram, or with some variation on either the "Pepper's Ghost" or "Mirascope" illusions)

At any rate, I'm more interested in whether this is true:

I haven't read it yet, but according to Memory Beta The Dark Veil the Picard Titan novel has Christine Vale and Ranul Keru in it.

It's been 4 years since I read it, and I don't recall whether it has Vale or Keru in it or not.

 

[James Swallow]

I haven't read it yet, but according to Memory Beta The Dark Veil the Picard Titan novel has Christine Vale and Ranul Keru in it.

The Dark Veil also includes Karen McCreedy, first introduced in my novel Synthesis, plus mentions of the Tezwans from the A Time To... series and the starships Lionheart and Robinson, from The Fall and Typhon Pact novels, respectively.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I was hoping you'd notice, and respond. Thanks. Within the next two months, I'll probably "read The Dark Veil again, for the first time."

*****

Re: Typhon Pact, every time I see or hear that name, I'm instantly reminded of Laserium's first all-classical show (also its first show that actually told a story, and the first for which a soundtrack record was released), Crystal Odyssey. The "big bad" of Crystal Odyssey was named Achros, and his lieutenant was named Typhon.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Typhon Pact, every time I see or hear that name, I'm instantly reminded of Laserium's first all-classical show (also its first show that actually told a story, and the first for which a soundtrack record was released), Crystal Odyssey. The "big bad" of Crystal Odyssey was named Achros, and his lieutenant was named Typhon.

All the Typhons are presumably named after the giant Typhon from Greek mythology, the father of monsters (with Echidna as the mother). "Achros" is not a name from Greek myth, although it's clearly trying to sound like one.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

"Achros" is not a name from Greek myth, although it's clearly trying to sound like one.

I always assumed that it was derived from "achromatic," which makes perfect sense, given that Crystal Odyssey's plot (again, a first for a Laserium show) revolved around taking the audience on a quest to visit the Rainbow Makers (a term applied to laser artists, and I have no idea which was derived from which) and look into the Crystal Mirror.

I really wish there were revival productions of Crystal Odyssey.

But getting back on-topic, I'd say that The Dark Veil pretty much demonstrates that elements of the 1999-2021 litverse are only toast if they're either explicitly declared so in Coda, or explicitly contradicted by PIC and/or seasons 3-5 of DSC.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It reminded me a little of some minor characters from Starfleet: Year One being namedropped in the Enterprise relaunch books. Yes I know they weren't deliberately in-universe alternate timelines, but they might have been.

IIRC, the Titan novelverse original characters cropped up in the tail end of the Shatnerverse too.

 

[Christopher]

I always assumed that it was derived from "achromatic," which makes perfect sense, given that Crystal Odyssey's plot (again, a first for a Laserium show) revolved around taking the audience on a quest to visit the Rainbow Makers (a term applied to laser artists, and I have no idea which was derived from which) and look into the Crystal Mirror.

If it were, then the Greek name for that would probably be Akhromatos. The Greek root for color is khrōma, and all its declensions add suffixes to that instead of foreshortening it.

But getting back on-topic, I'd say that The Dark Veil pretty much demonstrates that elements of the 1999-2021 litverse are only toast if they're either explicitly declared so in Coda, or explicitly contradicted by PIC and/or seasons 3-5 of DSC.

Of course, despite any in-story pretense of alternate timelines, it's ultimately all just imaginary stories, so any author who wanted to introduce a new-continuity version of a character from a different fictional continuity could easily do so without any handwave needed.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

If it were, then the Greek name for that would probably be Akhromatos

Never said it was good Greek.

 

[veritech]

I favor the First Splinter explanation of the Breen over Discovery's portrayal. It's way more complex and interesting, in my opinion.

 

[Christopher]

I favor the First Splinter explanation of the Breen over Discovery's portrayal. It's way more complex and interesting, in my opinion.

The beauty of the novels' depiction of the Breen (and I think it was intentional) is that it includes numerous different species, so whatever Breen appearance we eventually saw onscreen could be presumed to be just one species out of many. It's even easier to reconcile in Discovery's case, since it's 700 years later and Breen society could have changed massively in the interim, e.g. one species becoming dominant and displacing the others, or splitting off into its own sect.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Besides which, the number of Breen whom we've seen without their helmets can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Probably with fingers left over.

 

[Christopher]

Besides which, the number of Breen whom we've seen without their helmets can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Probably with fingers left over.

That's basically how I reconciled TNG's ridge-browed Romulans with the unridged Romulans of TOS. I figured that since all but about a half-dozen of the Romulans we saw in TOS and the movies were wearing helmets, it was possible that they had ridged foreheads all along. The unhelmeted ones were the high-ranking military personnel, politicians, and diplomats, so I figured the smooth-headed minority were in power in the 23rd century and had been displaced by the 24th. (The fact that Spock was able to pass for Romulan in "Unification" proved that smooth-headed Romulans must still be around even if the TNG-era series never showed any.) Of course, Picard eventually canonized that both populations coexisted as "northern" and "southern" ethnic groups.