fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2388 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2388 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Val and Matt]

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[My Chemical Romance]

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[Little House on the Prairie/GoT]

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[The Venture Bros.]

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[Once Upon a Time in Odessa]

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[Gabriel Knight]

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[Dangan Ronpa]

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[America's Cup]

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[Legion]

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[Trailer Park Boys]

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[Warehouse 13]

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[Sugar Bits]

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[Touhou Project, Assassins Creed, Madoka Magica, Rise of the Guardians]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 030 secrets from Secret Submission Post #341.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What, in your opinion, are the best TNG novels that you would recommend to someone who's a big fan of the series but has never delved into anything beyond the actual show's episodes before?

(I personally prefer stuff focused on the actual main characters, and set during the series rather than the movies, but feel free to turn this thread into a free-for-all rec'ing meme :D)

If you can find the old Simon & Schuster Pocket Books from the 80s/90s ~~online in that huge torrent file that's out there somewhere~~ in a used books place, ALL OF THEM. Original series ones, too.

Recommend "Masks", "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", anything by Peter David (Q-in-Law), those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

You stole my comment. I loved all these. Peter David was my favorite TNG author. Imzadi, Vendetta, Q-Squared. Love love love.

And Masks is such a fantastic Picard story with great world building on the alien planet.

They're short stories that won a very high-level fanfiction contest--a bunch of the authors went on to become, well, published authors. They feature stories from all series, so TNG will be in there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Strange_New_Worlds

Yeah, the Strange New Worlds anthologies are seriously kickass.

Published fanfic man, gotta love it.

my fellow fans love Barclay as much as I do so I remember a disproportionate number of tales featuring his adorably neurotic self. <3

My parents own every Star Trek novel ever written, bless their gloriously geeky hearts, so I've read them all...alas that means I get them mixed up some and I'm not living at home now so let's see what I can remember!

Infiltrator (by W.R. Thompson) -- rereading this as an adult the main OC is a wee bit MarySueish, but it's still fun and well-done! I particularly love Riker in this novel, as well as the technology, and the anarchist planet run by a sentient tree.

Dark Mirror (by Diane Duane) -- Duane is my favourite TOS novel author, and this TNG novel is pretty awesome too! Like it says on the tin it features the mirror universe, and bc Duane makes the best alien characters we have a scientist who is a space dolphin. Oh yeaaaaah, space dolphins!!

Gemworld, pt 1 and pt 2 (by John Vornholt) -- fantastic worldbuilding, with a special emphasis on the #1 recurring character ~*~*~Reginald Barclay~*~*~

also I quite liked most of the Starfleet Academy books featuring TNG characters! They're kid's books, but you could at least check them out of the library (or read them in the book store--they're easy and quick to read!) Particularly the Capture the Flag one featuring La Forge and a ragtag team of misfits kicking butt at low-g capture the flag.

SA

also the novelization of Relics (the episode featuring TOS' Scotty) is really good.

DA

I'm the "all the Pocket Books" nonny above...I knew I left one (or several) off my list. Seconding Relics, OP!

Can I come over to your parents' house and stay up all night reading Star Trek novels, tia

My and my siblings were kinda the dealers for any of our friends who like Star Trek. "Pssssst...wanna borrow a Star Trek book? First hit is free!!"

Oh, man, do I love the TNG novels. But in my experience they're all pretty terrible, so I'm not sure what to recommend.

I should preface this by saying that I haven't read any of the relatively recent novels - I understand that the written version of the Trek universe has gotten rebooted in the past 5 years or so, and a lot of people seem to have high opinions of the relaunched books, but I haven't read them.

The ones I did read, I don't think they're all that great, but I still love them. I read a ton of Trek novels, and especially TNG novels, when I was a kid - I pretty much devoured them. I would go down to the library and pretty much take out any book that I could find that said Star Trek on it and the TNG ones were the ones that I loved the most and the ones that were most plentiful. They had such a sense of adventure to them a sense of an infinitely expansive universe - they weren't afraid to present things in a serious way - but they were also fun and something that I could easily understand. And they made a huge, huge impact on me - probably more of an impact, when I was a kid, than the actual Trek TV series did (my parents didn't let me watch a whole lot of TV). They're wonderful for the color they provide and I love them to this day - but at the same time, they're mostly pretty short and simple and often kind of sloppy, looking back.

So my advice to you is, first of all, find a time machine and read them all while being about 10 or 11 years old. Barring that, just pick them up and read them and you'll probably enjoy them, as long as you don't expect too much. Or pick up the new books, because they might actually be good.

In terms of specific novels that I remember - the best / weirdest is clearly Planet X, which is a literal X-Men crossover set in the Star Trek universe. I remember liking the Double Helix books a lot, and I thought the Captain's Table series was usually pretty reliable. Other than that, as far as I'm concerned, it's a crapshoot so just pick and choose.

In my experience, most TNG books are not-super-brilliant -- not on the level of most episodes anyway -- but have some component/idea/subplot that is pure fanficy wish-fulfillment-y "I always wanted to see that in an episode but if they had actually done it it would have been dumb" and can expound on that in detail that would be impossible in an episode.

For example, an early one, "Ghost Ship" is pretty bad because I honestly can't remember how the plot got resolved and the prose is ridiculously adjective-filled and sorta purple and everyone (especially Riker) is OOC and it was obviously written pretty early in the show's run...but it has the Enterprise being "haunted" and related glorious creepy horror and emotional torque that would look silly/wouldn't work in live action but is awesome for a fanfic-y novel. Plus lots of Data!whump and Data-and-Geordi!friendship and Troi!character exploration that makes her a lot more interesting and Yar being badass and everyone feeling a lot more sappy towards each other than usual due to the novel format being able to describe their thoughts and elaborate on them at length...so it's just great for itch-scratching if you just want some of that sap or whump or whatever.

Now, a lot of novels are better than Ghost Ship, but the balance between what the overall plot is versus what you get out of it/what sucks you in is pretty similar.

I also liked Strike Zone, A Rock and a Hard Place, and I think I liked Perchance to Dream a lot but I can't remember what it was about. LOL

[ SECRET POST #2388 ]

Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Have you looked at the Strange New Worlds anthologies?

Re: Have you looked at the Strange New Worlds anthologies?

Re: Have you looked at the Strange New Worlds anthologies?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?

Re: Recs for Star Trek TNG novels?