Spoilers Strangers from the Sky by Margaret Wander Bonanno - a look back

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Never said it was a "loving homage," just a nod. And actually digging out a copy of SFTM, and looking up ships, would have to have been a deliberate (albeit small) effort: it would have been even easier to pull a couple of ship names out of one bodily orifice, and numbers out of another, e.g., "Scout Thayer, NCC 314, to rendezvous with Scout Balclutha, NCC 2718 . . ." (two museum ships normally docked at Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco; the first three digits of pi, and the first four digits of Euler's number.)

 

[Christopher]

Never said it was a "loving homage," just a nod.

I just don't think that consulting one of the only reference works available at the time was a "nod," it was just getting the job done. The word "nod" implies it was meant to be recognized as an acknowledgment. This was background ambience and lorem ipsum.

And actually digging out a copy of SFTM, and looking up ships, would have to have been a deliberate (albeit small) effort: it would have been even easier to pull a couple of ship names out of one bodily orifice, and numbers out of another, e.g., "Scout Thayer, NCC 314, to rendezvous with Scout Balclutha, NCC 2718 . . ." (two museum ships normally docked at Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco; the first three digits of pi, and the first four digits of Euler's number.)

Speaking as an experienced writer, I'd say you're way off-base about the relative easiness or quickness of making up details on your own vs. looking up pre-existing ones. Maybe it's just me, but deciding on throwaway names is really hard. It helps a lot to have some external source of inspiration, or at least a source of focus to narrow the possibilities.

Not to mention that any proper name in a work of film or TV needs to be cleared by the legal department, just in case it's too similar to the name of a real ship or person or whatever. It's not something you can do as casually as you suggest. Using an existing reference source, whose author and publisher had presumably already checked for legal conflicts, was probably safer. (And yes, I just said most viewers wouldn't notice it consciously, but legal departments' job is to prepare for the worst.)

 

[JD]

When something is a "homage" or a "nod" I tend to think of it as being more subtle than blatantly taking things word for word out of the source.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Not everything is an Easter egg or a fannish tribute. When something is the standard reference for a work of fiction, then someone whose job is to create something in that universe will use it as a research tool. In the late 1970s, the definitive Trek references were The Making of Star Trek, the Concordance, and FJ's stuff. You can see their influence on a great deal of Trek fiction in the '70s and '80s, including some canon works.

I remember in some of the early DC Comics issues of Star Trek, writer Mike W. Barr used Bjo Trimble's The Star Trek Concordance and William Rotsler's Star Trek II: Biographies, so stuff like Rotsler's Starfleet Grand Admiral Stephen Turner popped up in the comic. Barr also ended up duplicating some of the errors that appeared in those books, like Trimble giving Dr. Boyce's first name as "Joe" instead of "Phil."

BTW, Mike W. Barr is in dire straits right now due to medical and financial difficulties. His GoFundMe can be found here in my signature below. Please contribute & signal boost if you can.

** Link removed by moderator -- Please see note in other thread **

 

[Antonio]

Putin practically has control of the Pentagon in 2025, so maybe not so silly.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I read Strangers for the first time almost cover to cover in one sitting on a flight from LA to Tokyo back when I was in college. (I was headed to Japan to meet the USS Midway for a midshipman cruise.)

I always enjoyed that book, reread it several times over the years, the most recent being a couple years ago. That novel alongside Federation live as my 'head canon' for those periods of Trek history, regardless of what comes after and officially changes it.

I genuinely loved some of her work as a writer, and her story about the STIV sequel novel was a cautionary tale to budding writers everywhere. I was saddened to hear of her passing several years back.

Strangers will always be a standout Trek novel from what I consider the 'golden age' of Trek novels.

 

[Daddy Todd]

I genuinely loved some of her work as a writer, and her story about the STIV novelization was a cautionary tale to budding writers everywhere.

Wait, Strangers was written by Bonanno, and the STIV novelization was McIntyre. Is there a story I don’t know about the novelization involving Bonanno?

 

[Jedi Marso]

Wait, Strangers was written by Bonanno, and the STIV novelization was McIntyre. Is there a story I don’t know about the novelization involving Bonanno?

It's been a while so my facts may be out of whack, but MWB wrote a book called 'Probe' which turned into a big fight between her and the publishing company. Maybe it was a sequel to STIV, I don't remember. Some of the folks on the board could probably explain it far more accurately.

EDIT: Here ya go. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Probe_(novel)#Background_information

I also edited my earlier post on it. It was a sequel to STIV, not the novelization of STIV.

 

[Christopher]

It's been a while so my facts may be out of whack, but MWB wrote a book called 'Probe' which turned into a big fight between her and the publishing company. Maybe it was a sequel to STIV, I don't remember. Some of the folks on the board could probably explain it far more accurately.

Margaret's version was called Music of the Spheres, and yes, it was a sequel to The Voyage Home as well as bringing back characters from her earlier Dwellers in the Crucible. Richard Arnold objected to aspects of it and demanded rewrites, and Gene DeWeese ended up massively ghost-rewriting it into Probe.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I remember in some of the early DC Comics issues of Star Trek, writer Mike W. Barr used Bjo Trimble's The Star Trek Concordance and William Rotsler's Star Trek II: Biographies, so stuff like Rotsler's Starfleet Grand Admiral Stephen Turner popped up in the comic.

I've never seen copies of either of Rotsler's short story collections, so I had no idea that Grand Admiral Stephen Turner originated there. I've assumed for forty years that he was a Mike W. Barr creation.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I've never seen copies of either of Rotsler's short story collections, so I had no idea that Grand Admiral Stephen Turner originated there. I've assumed for forty years that he was a Mike W. Barr creation.

I've never come across Rotsler's short story collections, but I used to own a copy of Star Trek II Biographies. Turner's name turns up on a few memos in there.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Sorry, I got Rotsler's bibliography all confuzzled in my head. Short Stories, Biographies, all different books, ones I still have never actually seen.

I'm sure they're readily available on Abebooks or eBay.