I pre-ordered my copy of Strange Novel Worlds as soon as it was available after hearing David Mack talk about it on a Trek Lit podcast (either "Positively Trek" or "Literary Treks"). I'm thoroughly enjoying the book (having read the intro and the outro "A Coda on Coda") and am writing here in hopes that Mr. Mack will see this. I loved your incisive and concise chapter: "Official, but Not Canon: The Tie-In Writer's Dilemma."
I recently shared with a fellow Trek lover (though not a reader of the fiction) what was also a fairly recent conclusion at which I had arrived: as Star Trek: Picard is the reason that the LitVerse was wound down and ended in the Coda trilogy, I'd rather Star Trek: Picard never have existed.
(This isn't a Trojan Horse to trash the show. I bought all three series on DVD, and I actually loved series 1 and thought series 2 and 3 started off with lots of promise.)
This is about the irreplaceable loss of twenty years of emotional engagement with incredibly well-written novels. I wasn't a reader of Trek fiction prior to discovering the "continuing adventures" of Deep Space Nine in 2004, and upon making that discovery, I caught up on what I'd missed and have read almost everything published since around 1999/2000. Lately, my enjoyment of the novels has been on the decline. There have been stellar standouts--DISCO's Desperate Hours and Dead Endless, PIC's The Dark Veil, Rogue Elements, and Second Self--but almost all the others have landed somewhere between less-than-satisfying and rather disappointing.
And I finally was able to identify (at least what I believe and for myself) is the problem: Trek fiction has become, once more, tie-in fiction.
It's not that the authors are not still great and talented writers.
It is simply that for 20-plus years or so, the novels read like anything and everything but tie-in fiction.
Over the past two decades, I did go back and read a few of the "numbered" novels that were published before 2000. Some were great. A lot were okay. A few were absolutely terrible. They were, in fact, what I expected them to be during the two decades prior to 2000 when I did not read Trek fiction . . . because I knew that as much as I loved filmed Trek, the novels would never be able to "matter" dramatically as much as the series and movies.
What prompted me to compose this post was Mr. Mack's eloquent words from his above-mentioned chapter: "After years of keeping the flame of Star Trek alive, to have it taken from our hands without so much as a word of thanks."
That is raw. I want to say to Mr. Mack and the other writers who "kept the flame alive" that for this Star Trek fan, the literature--under your helm and Marco Palmieri's, Margaret Clark's, and Ed Schlesinger's creative guidance--outshone even the best each of the series had to offer.
Many thanks for many years of compelling reading.
D. Browning Gibson
