Author Habits That Annoy You

[Captain Dax]

What are a series of things that Trek authors do that kind of bug you? I have a list

Dayton Ward: Afraid to let his own stories stand on his own and will spend pages and pages recapping old books or old episodes. "Pliable Truths" recapped all of Chain of Command over several paragraphs

David mack: So Clancy-like. Sniper rifiles and "Stay frosty, watch our six" milltary dialogue. Most of this stuff is post Dominion war, so i get it, but they all still talk like they are in Rainbow Six.

Peter David: Dialogue is a very "comicbooky" I get it that's his bread and butter- but the constant use of "NOT EVER!" has bugged me since I was 12.

Christopher L Bennett: Over use of using real science to explain technobabble.

Greg Cox: More easter eggs than the Bunny himself, an over reliance of elbow nudging of "REMEBER STAR TREK EPISODE BLAH BLAH BLAH!"

Una McCormack: Has there ever been an author who was obviously an academic first? Soooooo many college kids in graduate studies fill her books. We get it, write what you know, but get off the campus for a minute.

Diane Carey: Constant need to make Kirk both Thomas Jefferson and Ayn Rand at the same time and her obsession with tying in The American Revolution and Civil War into her books.


Michael jan Friedman: All of his books are littered with original characters created by him that take away from the main characters. I'm looking at you Pug Joseph!

 

[The Wormhole]

David mack: So Clancy-like.

I've heard worse criticisms.

but they all still talk like they are in Rainbow Six.

I was unaware Rainbow Six had a unique way of talking. BTW, the group is called Rainbow, Rainbow Six is the callsign used by the commander.

Michael jan Friedman: All of his books are littered with original characters created by him that take away from the main characters. I'm looking at you Pug Joseph!

Pug Joseph is featured in a novel series which only features one character who has appeared onscreen, so, yeah, of course there's a majority of characters there created by the author.

 

[Cyfa]

What are a series of things that Trek authors do that kind of bug you? I have a list

~ Wow.

Most of the reasons that made your list sound like features to me, not bugs. Different authors (& editors) do things in different ways thankfully, otherwise we'd have a load of novels written in the same style, and how repetitive that would be. Maybe you've heard of IDIC?
Perhaps you could list some of the things that authors do that you really enjoy?

P.S. You realise that half the authors you've listed are members of this board?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Michael jan Friedman: All of his books are littered with original characters created by him that take away from the main characters. I'm looking at you Pug Joseph!

I like Pug Joseph...

 

[Airin]

Marshak & Culbreath: Awkward, convoluted writing, and plots that are extremely hard to follow. The power dynamics between Kirk and Spock are really weird, and they seem out-of-character.

Diane Duane: They're not bad novels, but the crew seems way too informal and chummy (for example, I remember an instance of Lt. Sulu calling Kirk "Jim"). The large gallery of fancy-looking aliens can be distracting at times.

J. M. Dillard: Her characterization of McCoy is odd, and she has a tendency to shoehorn romances between him and women that are young enough to be his daughters.

I've only read novels up to 1989 so far, so can't comment on recent authors, or those that had just written a single novel at this time. However, everything I've read from Michael Jan Friedman (both comics and a novel) is distinctly centered on the main characters, with almost no original ones around.

 

[Greg Cox]

P.S. You realise that half the authors you've listed are members of this board?

Not to worry. We have thick skins.

 

[StarCruiser]

'Tis a bloody good you do at that!

 

[somebuddyX]

I don't really have any big criticisms. I remember the first few New Frontier books feeling stuffed with weirdness, like the Mugatu with the British accent or the planet that's a bird, Majel Barret is someone's mother, and everyone was fucking everyone else. And then the ship blew up offscreen.
I remember having the opinion of not liking Michael Jan Friedman's books, like they always felt tied to other things, but when I look at the list I think I read like a couple of his at most. But I did like the extra stuff in "All Good Things." Maybe I wanted his stories to be more epic than they were but I was too young to articulate that.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Does this have to be limited to Trek authors? Offhand, I can't think of any habits Trek authors have that annoy me, but there's a cozy mystery series I read where a variation of the same introduction to characters' backstories is worked into the book wherever they first appear, and I've read over 40 of these. I would rather this info be in its own section so I can skip it if I want.

 

[Una McCormack]

Oh, I have far more annoying habits than this. Ask my family.

 

[Therin of Andor]

For every person who criticises an author for providing previous canon episode information in the Trek novel, there will be another person who complains when they have to go and research the episode for themselves.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Diane Duane: They're not bad novels, but the crew seems way too informal and chummy (for example, I remember an instance of Lt. Sulu calling Kirk "Jim"). The large gallery of fancy-looking aliens can be distracting at times.

I'd say that the first part of that is the natural result of people sticking together (and turning down promotions in order to do so). And I like the "large gallery of fancy-looking aliens."

The one annoying author quirk I can cite is with somebody who, at times, tends to exhibit an almost Tellarite tendency to argue for no apparent reason. Like denying that the stories published in the SNW anthologies are fan fiction, in spite of (1) the very strictly enforced "no professional authors" rule that excludes anybody with more than two professional sales of any kind, and (2) the fact that the editors call the works "fan fiction" (in so many words, if memory serves) in the introductions to the volumes.

 

[Greg Cox]

For every person who criticises an author for providing previous canon episode information in the Trek novel, there will be another person who complains when they have to go and research the episode for themselves.

I'm reminded of two diamatrically opposed reviews of one of my THE 4400 novels. One reader complained that I spent too much time explaining stuff that any true 4400 fans would know already, while the another reader thanked me for making the book accessible to someone who had only a seen a few episodes of the TV show.

So, two differents readers criticizing and praising the exact same thing.

I remember that, where that book was concerned, I erred toward recapping simply because THE 4400 was not as deeply engrained in pop culture as STAR TREK is.

 

[I am not Herbert]

Maybe you've heard of IDIC?

Eh, although it's a more negatively-keyed premise for a post than I would personally prefer to author, it's well within the realm of reasonable discourse (and IDIC, for that matter). And the title of the post gives sufficient warning to any author whose feelings cannot withstand the (mild) criticism within.

A lot of those listed are personal preferences, and will vary significantly from person to person. For example, I too have found Bennett's explanation of scientific phenomena a bit distracting at times. But that is probably because I am not a hard-SF guy at all, and enjoy ST mostly as morality plays/mythology in space. The science and its (im)plausibility is beside the point for me, so long as it's internally consistent and doesn't take away from the storytelling (e.g., characters aren't forgetting solutions in Act IV that should have already been obvious to them based on what happened in Act II). From what I can tell, the hard-SF explanations/hypotheses (I wouldn't know the difference) in Bennett's books are well done and might be heartily enjoyed by a different kind of reader.

And interestingly, my biggest dislike is the exact opposite of that listed above re MJF: I don't want to read extended internal monologues of the main characters. We never got that in the series, and so it always rings hollow to me. (And how interesting can the internal monologue of a main character be? If it departs from what we already know about them, it will feel false, and if it doesn't it will feel platitudinous. The burden of tie-in media, I suppose).

 

[Kor]

Well TOS tended to have Kirk's internal monologues contrived as "Captain's Logs" while events were unfolding, even when he was in a scene where he obviously didn't even have a way to do a voice recording like that.

Kor

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Like denying that the stories published in the SNW anthologies are fan fiction, in spite of (1) the very strictly enforced "no professional authors" rule that excludes anybody with more than two professional sales of any kind, and (2) the fact that the editors call the works "fan fiction" (in so many words, if memory serves) in the introductions to the volumes.

1) Every professional author starts out with zero professional sales. It's making sales in pro markets -- and Strange New Worlds paid pro market rates -- that makes one a professional writer. The writer got a check and the potentional for royalties selling stories to SNW.

2) The editors can call the stories "fan fiction," but the check makes the stories not.

Well TOS tended to have Kirk's internal monologues contrived as "Captain's Logs" while events were unfolding, even when he was in a scene where he obviously didn't even have a way to do a voice recording like that.

The first issue of IDW's ongoing Lower Decks comic has Mariner commenting on that.

 

[KRAD]

The one annoying author quirk I can cite is with somebody who, at times, tends to exhibit an almost Tellarite tendency to argue for no apparent reason. Like denying that the stories published in the SNW anthologies are fan fiction, in spite of (1) the very strictly enforced "no professional authors" rule that excludes anybody with more than two professional sales of any kind, and (2) the fact that the editors call the works "fan fiction" (in so many words, if memory serves) in the introductions to the volumes.

The editors never called the works fan fiction. In fact, they were not fan fiction by definition because they were sold to a professional market. So anyone who has called them fan fiction is completely wrong. Also anyone who sold three stories to SNW was disqualified from future anthologies because they were professional now, having sold three works of short fiction to a professional market.

And interestingly, my biggest dislike is the exact opposite of that listed above re MJF: I don't want to read extended internal monologues of the main characters. We never got that in the series, and so it always rings hollow to me. (And how interesting can the internal monologue of a main character be? If it departs from what we already know about them, it will feel false, and if it doesn't it will feel platitudinous. The burden of tie-in media, I suppose).

I find this complaint mind-boggling. The one thing prose can do that no other storytelling medium does is internal point of view. It's one of the few things that tie-in fiction brings to the table that you can't get anywhere else. Why would you want to remove that bullet from a writer's gun?????

 

[David cgc]

Well TOS tended to have Kirk's internal monologues contrived as "Captain's Logs" while events were unfolding, even when he was in a scene where he obviously didn't even have a way to do a voice recording like that.

The earlier episodes were more diligent about having Kirk's narration explicitly in the past-tense and phrased retrospectively, with him knowing stuff he hadn't yet found out at the moment, for instance. It does rob the story of a little bit of tension, I can see why they shifted to the logs being from Kirk's perspective at that moment of the episode, even when it doesn't really make sense.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

If you're not used to encountering paragraphs (not just the odd "setting the scene" couple of sentences) of internal monologue on the part of a character in a particular genre, I suppose it can be a bit jarring to be told instead of shown.

 

[FredH]

Christopher L Bennett: Over use of using real science to explain technobabble.

While Bennett’s no more infallible than anyone else, I’m not sure how there can ever be too much use of real science to shore up seeming bs science in a science fiction novel?