The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack. It focuses on Rugal from the DS9 episode “Cardassians”, and what happens to him after he’s forced to return to Cardassia with his biological father. Brilliant story.
Metamorphosis by Jean Lorrah. Data goes on a quest on the planet Elysia, and the “gods” there make him human. Fittingly, takes place immediately after Season 2’s “The Measure of a Man”.
What, no love for James Blish’s Spock Must Die!, the first ST novel?
I’ve only read a few of them, but I did enjoy Vonda McIntyre’s The Entropy Effect.
I both like and dislike that story. On the one hand it is well-written with an interesting premise; on the other hand …
Hmm. I was going to say something about how SMD is impossible to reconcile with series continuity, but then I realized we were talking about Star Trek novels, which made the whole notion of continuity silly. So, instead, I’ll simply praise SMD, not merely for its general quality but for introducing me, at 10 or so, to the wonderful word “incunabular.”
That’s a great one too, with the same insignificant flaw as SMD.
I’m sure I mentioned Uhura’s Song when this thread wasn’t a zombie, but I’m going to praise it again anyway. God, what a great story.
Yes, this is a good novel. And the first name McIntyre gave to Sulu, Hikaru, actually made it into Star Trek canon.
I read that in high school and vaguely recall liking it, although I remember almost nothing about the plot. I should probably reread it sometime.
One thing that sticks out about it, for me, is Kirk telling Sulu, after it was clear that an engagement with the Klingons had gone in the Enterprise’s favor, to make sure that not one molecule of the opposing ship’s molecules to sticking to another. There’s no hint of mercy.
Since when I said this I got corrected, I have to pass it on.
The actual first ST novel is Mission to Horatius by Mack Reynolds. I got a copy when I heard about it.
Don’t bother to do the same. While I like Reynolds, this one sucks. They wander from planet to planet in a star system, but mostly Reynolds has no good sense of the interactions of the characters. From what I can find on line it was written in 1968, probably pretty early since Blish’s first collection of stories came out then. I’m betting Reynolds didn’t watch a lot of episodes.
Spock Must Die is far superior, since Blish got the characters down cold from doing the stories, the first of which were pretty good.
Big flub is that Blish was a supporter of the steady state theory which is in this book and in the Cities in Flight books.
I’ll be keel-hauled! For decades, I’ve been crediting “Spock Must Die” as the first Star Trek novel. Thanks for setting the record straight!
And…I love that book! (Um, Blish, not Reynolds…) As noted, he gets the characters right. The ideas are sweeping; he addresses bunches of philosophical ideas. He deftly bypasses the “transporter” debate, by using lovely quantum-mechanics doubletalk. The transporter induces particles to undergo a Dirac jump. Elegant!
And…okay, part of the premise is just stupid as hell. Kirk names them “Spock One” and “Spock Two” – and doesn’t notice that one of them is wearing a reversed uniform! Guy, that makes it immediately and instantly obvious which one is the duplicate! How stupid is this guy?
Nah, screw it: brilliant book, and well repays a quiet contrived wink to overlook the very few blunders. Good stuff. All of the Blish Star Trek episode retellings were brilliant.
That doesn’t bother me. Clearly the laws of physics in the TrekVerse are not the same as in ours.
In Blish’s version of Tomorrow is Yesterday (where the return to the 1960s accidentally) he throws in a mention of The Vegan Tyranny from the Cities in Flight books. I for one liked it.
I also liked The Romulan Way. It’s the only ST novel I’ve kept, the rest are gone.
My fave: The Entropy Effect.
I went through a phase in high school where I read several. This is the only one that I still recall reading and really enjoying.
“Entropy Effect” and “Federation” are the only ones I’ve re-read more than once. Funny thing, though, about ST books. Back when they were numbered, they were virtually all “stand alones”. Now they’re not numbered and are virtually all interconnected. Particularly the 24th century stories.
Yeah, I stopped reading when they went to the linked series. Especially the ones that were linked across the various iterations. I wanted TOS and DS9 and not really the others.
I read that when it came out. I was into all of the Blish books. One disconcerting thing I noticed was that Kirk consistently called McCoy “Doc” instead of Bones. Blish insisted it wasn’t his fault, he knew better. He blamed it on an editor at the publisher’s and I believe him. I don’t know if it ever got corrected in later editions.
It’s interesting that this thread has been resurrected now because Trek books are going on hiatus because of licensing issues. Next year, 2018, will be the first year in decades there won’t be a Trek book released monthly. A handful of titles will come out but not consistently each month.
The only other time in recently history some months got missed was when Pocket Books suddenly found out they could not print novels set in the Kelvin-verse of the Abrams movies and four books that had been completely finished and ready to go were never released leaving gaps in schedule.