Wow, you just named all my favorite Trek novels from Back In The Day! Final Reflection is excellent; the cat-people one is one I'm especially fond of; and as for How Much For Just The Planet?, I was laughing so hard througout the entire book that I couldn't see the pages; it took me three times as long to read because of that. (I wonder if I'd enjoy them so much if I read them now, twenty years later... hmmm.....)
I haven't read Crossroads, or Tears of the Singers, but I've read all the rest you mentioned. Indeed, I own most of them... somewhere, in storage.... And yes, you've described them all perfectly. *g*
But as for those early books (Spock Must Die, Spock: Messiah; all of the Marshak/Culbreath books, including the D&S-tastic "Phoenix" novels; etc), I'll tell you why they sold, and why I and my fellow Trekkers/Trekkies bought them: they were the only original Trek material available! There were the TV episode novelizations, of both the live and the animated series, and there were the occasional collections of short stories, usually edited by Marshak/Culbreath, but that was it! When you were a devoted Trekker/ie back then, you were desperate for continuations of Trekdom. Anything that came out was not only eagerly snapped up, but was, if not treasured, at least read again and again.
It wasn't until the advent of those newer novelizations you've listed up there that the quality dramatically improved, and we could now be choosy. And because we could be choosy, quality continued to improve, and there was more to choose from.
Now, of course, those original novels are fun to read for "Horrify Your Friends And Neighbors!" purposes... kind of like John Ringo's "Paladin of Shadows" series.
("OH JOHN RINGO NO"!!!) (http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html?thread=760769#t760769)
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Date: 2009-07-03 05:22 am (UTC)I haven't read Crossroads, or Tears of the Singers, but I've read all the rest you mentioned. Indeed, I own most of them... somewhere, in storage.... And yes, you've described them all perfectly. *g*
But as for those early books (Spock Must Die, Spock: Messiah; all of the Marshak/Culbreath books, including the D&S-tastic "Phoenix" novels; etc), I'll tell you why they sold, and why I and my fellow Trekkers/Trekkies bought them: they were the only original Trek material available! There were the TV episode novelizations, of both the live and the animated series, and there were the occasional collections of short stories, usually edited by Marshak/Culbreath, but that was it! When you were a devoted Trekker/ie back then, you were desperate for continuations of Trekdom. Anything that came out was not only eagerly snapped up, but was, if not treasured, at least read again and again.
It wasn't until the advent of those newer novelizations you've listed up there that the quality dramatically improved, and we could now be choosy. And because we could be choosy, quality continued to improve, and there was more to choose from.
Now, of course, those original novels are fun to read for "Horrify Your Friends And Neighbors!" purposes... kind of like John Ringo's "Paladin of Shadows" series.
("OH JOHN RINGO NO"!!!) (http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html?thread=760769#t760769)
-LOL-