[FORUM] Do you read tie-in fiction?
Jul. 25th, 2015 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI certainly do.
Star Trek novels are novels I have read since I was very young, starting with my uncle's copy of Diane Duane's Spock's World. This particular line goes back decades, the current Simon & Schuster imprint going back to the 1980s.
Why? There is much that I like in Star Trek--certain characters, certain civilizations, certain tropes--and I like seeing more of them. Since the universe has disappeared from television for more than a decade and the franchise rests on the anemic movies, the novels are for me the only media in which the universe continues to develop.
Perhaps more to the point, many of the novels are really quite good. Especially within the past two decades, at worst the authors have been competent, vetted by Paramount. At their best, these authors can actually be very good, writers with strong reputations outside of Star Trek tie-in fiction who are able to do good things with their source material. An entertainingly interconnected continuity has been built up over the past two decades, one in which actions have lasting consequences. Sometimes the television shows kept hitting the reset button. With the modern novels, this just does not happen. I like seeing this for myself.
This is certainly not the only thing I read. It is something that I do read and take pleasure in reading. Why not?
What about you? What do you think? What fandoms, what expanded universes, do you engage with?
Discuss.
Star Trek novels are novels I have read since I was very young, starting with my uncle's copy of Diane Duane's Spock's World. This particular line goes back decades, the current Simon & Schuster imprint going back to the 1980s.
Why? There is much that I like in Star Trek--certain characters, certain civilizations, certain tropes--and I like seeing more of them. Since the universe has disappeared from television for more than a decade and the franchise rests on the anemic movies, the novels are for me the only media in which the universe continues to develop.
Perhaps more to the point, many of the novels are really quite good. Especially within the past two decades, at worst the authors have been competent, vetted by Paramount. At their best, these authors can actually be very good, writers with strong reputations outside of Star Trek tie-in fiction who are able to do good things with their source material. An entertainingly interconnected continuity has been built up over the past two decades, one in which actions have lasting consequences. Sometimes the television shows kept hitting the reset button. With the modern novels, this just does not happen. I like seeing this for myself.
This is certainly not the only thing I read. It is something that I do read and take pleasure in reading. Why not?
What about you? What do you think? What fandoms, what expanded universes, do you engage with?
Discuss.
