The chronological order of TOS books

[falconsfan08]

Hello folks!

I am new to the board but I have a question for you all.

I want to read the Original series books in chronological order but I can't seem to find a list that includes the Bantam Episodes and the Bantam Novels, the Logs by Alan Dean Foster and the Pocket books.

Is there a list, somewhere out there in the interwebs that puts all of the literature in order?

Thanks for your help!

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Memory Beta has a timeline/chronolgy which has a listing of the old Bantam and Alan Dean Foster novels.

 

[Jinn]

Hello folks!

I am new to the board but I have a question for you all.

I want to read the Original series books in chronological order but I can't seem to find a list that includes the Bantam Episodes and the Bantam Novels, the Logs by Alan Dean Foster and the Pocket books.

Is there a list, somewhere out there in the interwebs that puts all of the literature in order?

Thanks for your help!

And @ryan123450 started a thread for the chronological order of the TOS and TAS episodes as well as the movies and some novels and has an updated version of the list on his website. The other novels may be included in Voyages of Imagination's timeline.

 

[ryan123450]

Hello folks!

I am new to the board but I have a question for you all.

I want to read the Original series books in chronological order but I can't seem to find a list that includes the Bantam Episodes and the Bantam Novels, the Logs by Alan Dean Foster and the Pocket books.

Is there a list, somewhere out there in the interwebs that puts all of the literature in order?

Thanks for your help!

As far as I am aware, a list exactly like what you want does not yet exist. I would love to develop one someday (not just TOS but all the series), but it's a bit down the way on my list of projects to do. As Darren and Jinn indicated though, there are a few resources out there which you could use to get yourself started on this project, and by mixing them all together you could end up with what you want.

The thread Jinn linked to was a long and detailed attempt by several of us on the board to take all the dates and references in the Lit-verse connected TOS novels and create a complete TOS chronology with those books and the episodes. This actually resulted in moving several episodes around out of the usual production order so keep that in mind if you are using the resulting timeline (which Jinn already linked to on my website). There is also my TOS Litverse Reading List, but it also only includes the stories from the Lit-verse and related material, not every book that has ever been published.

But if you start with the Pocket Books timeline from the book Voyages of the Imagination and add to it the newer novels published since then, you should get something pretty close to what you're looking for. Now a slightly updated version of the VotI timeline is available online here https://sites.google.com/site/stvotitimeline/ and you can figure out which books to add to it by seeing which novels have come out since then here http://startreklitverse.yolasite.com/complete-pocket-books-novel-list.php and then use Memory Beta's timeline to figure out where those books go, if they aren't already on my timeline.

Kind of a project to go through, but all the information is available out there depending on your desire to merge it all together. Have fun and happy reading!

 

[falconsfan08]

Wow!

Thanks for the incredibly quick and incredibly detailed response, I see I have a lot of work ahead of me if I want to put it together in order.

I didn't really realize what I was asking when I asked my question until I began to look at the timelines and various novelizations and original novels, there is quite a lot to work through!

Thanks guys!

 

[Idran]

You also have to keep in mind that some books are vague enough or contradictory enough about where they're supposed to be set that there is no one definitive placement for them, so you'll almost definitely have to use your own judgement to some degree.

 

[trampledamage]

Wow!

Thanks for the incredibly quick and incredibly detailed response, I see I have a lot of work ahead of me if I want to put it together in order.

I didn't really realize what I was asking when I asked my question until I began to look at the timelines and various novelizations and original novels, there is quite a lot to work through!

Thanks guys!

Welcome to the insanity, you're among friends here

 

[RandyS]

Welcome to the insanity, you're among friends here

Agreed. And Falconsfan? Be sure to keep massive amounts of Tylenol on hand. It sounds like you're gonna need it.

 

[tomswift2002]

falconsfan, I would recommend you get "Voyages Of Imagination", since it does lay out were all the books go, at least up to 2006, including the Bantam books and the young adult books, such as "Mission To Horatius" and the 1990's Starfleet Academy series.

But also watch out for, especially with TOS books from the 80's mentions of a second five-year mission occurring between "The Counter-Clock Incident" and "The Motion Picture" (some ignore the animated episodes and just go with "Turnabout Intruder". Back in the 80's it was believed that possible a six-or-more-year gap existed between the cartoon and the movies, and that Kirk and crew were on another 5-year mission.

 

[Starbreaker]

I bet there is about 35 years worth of missions in the books now. Especially when so many of them start off with "after 6 months of patrolling this nebula."

 

[Leto_II]

Definitely way, way more than simply five years' worth. And when you go back and look at some of those early '80s Pocket novels, tons of them individually span literally months, and some also simultaneously feature weeks-long shore-leaves on top of that, to boot. Back then, with fewer TOS stories in existence, authors evidently felt more luxurious freedom to "fill up" the remaining time of the 5YM with long story-timespans, but it makes it tougher now to fit many of those same tales into a modern chronology if you're keeping tabs on individual days elapsed, or whatever.

And of course this doesn't even take into account the likely number of "mundane," non-chronicled periods of the Enterprise's mission -- the starbase repair-stopovers, the uneventful planetary survey missions where absolutely nothing significant happens, days or weeks of travel-time between star systems, etc. Basically, all of the boring missions that don't make for meaningful "dramatic" storytelling which also soak up additional weeks and months of the 5YM.

 

[JD]

I would love to see someone try to add up how much time is actually covered by all of the TOS books.

 

[Christopher]

^I think "Mind-sifter" in The New Voyages covers nearly 2 years all by itself.

Then there were those '80s novels that pretty much ignored the whole "5-year mission" thing and had the TOS-style status quo still prevailing as many as 8 years after TOS. These days we tend to interpret them as assuming a second 5-year mission before TMP, but maybe they were just disregarding the opening narration altogether. The fact is, the only canonical in-story mentions of the Enterprise having a 5-year mission were in ST:TMP ("My five years out there") and Voyager: "Q2."

And if the TV series had been more successful and made it to a sixth season, I think it's very likely that the producers would've just kept the narration as it was and ignored the issue of how much time had passed. Like in Run for Your Life, the Ben Gazzara series which was about a man who had no more than 18 months left to live, but which ran for three years without explanation. And, of course, M*A*S*H, an 11-year series about a 3-year war.

 

[Idran]

I would love to see someone try to add up how much time is actually covered by all of the TOS books.

Ryan, didn't you do something like this once?

 

[ryan123450]

No i just added up how many individual stories took place during the 5YM. And that didn't even take into account seperate missions which were told in flashbacks of later stories.

http://startreklitverse.yolasite.com/how-many-5ym-adventures-are-there.php

 

[Idran]

Oh right, that's what I was thinking of.