Saturday, 11 July 2009

Pocket in 2010

TrekMovie have announced Pocket Books' plans for 2010. It's a good year if you're a TOS fan (old or new). But sad times for Voyager, Enterprise or Vanguard followers. And interesting developments for the post-Destiny period, with Aventine getting it's own novel (and series?) and DS9 having a pretty ginormous jump in its chronology to have a novel as part of The Tyhpon Pact series. All the books apparently have a stand-alone approach; even those in The Typhon Pact series are noted to be so. With the odd New Frontier book and anthologies sprinkled in the year basically comes in three waves:

Part I: TOS prime (and New Frontier)

January: Sorrows of Empire, by David Mack
The previously announced Mirror Universe novel expansion, no new info.

February: Inception, by S.D. Perry
While this one has been know about online for a little while this is the first proper announcement. TrekMovie describe it thusly: "Set before The Original Series, the book is story of four people at the start of their careers. Commander Kirk and the woman he loves Dr. Carol Marcus, Commander Spock and his chance encounter with an botanist, Leila Kalomi."

March: Treason, by Peter David
Earlier announcements indicated a TOS reprint around this time, but it seems Pocket have instead elected to re-release the latest New Frontier book, but in mass mark paperback rather than tradepaper back.

April: The Children of the Kings, by Dave Stern
A Pike-era book which "focuses on the Orion Syndicate, a dying girl and the kidnapping of a Starfleet officer."

May: Unspoken Truth, by Margaret Wander Bonanno
The previously announced movie-era Saavik novel.

June (or maybe July), a New Frontier novel by Peter David
A trade paperback release, title forthcoming.

Part II: new TOS
June: Refugees, by Alan Dean Foster
No detail other than the refugees are Not the Vulcans.

July: Seek a Newer World, by Christopher L. Bennett
The Enterprise goes on a "world building" mission

August: More Beautiful than Death, by David Mack
Vulcans after Vulcan goes bang (or crunch/squish/woosh)

Sepetember: Another new movie era novel
Might be a Scotty novel, but it's not been contracted yet...

Part III: The Typhon Pact
Each novel is under the banner of a particular series (including Aventine interestingly), and each deals with one or two of the Typhon Pact species. Apparently they are all stand alone tales, with interwoven elements, but not to the extent of Destiny.

October: Titan: Seize the Fire, by Michael Martin
The Titan and crew have an encounter with the Gorn

November: Aventine: Zero Sum Game, by David Mack
The Aventine is "assigned to aid with the insertion and extraction of Starfleet operatives behind Breen lines"

December: DS9: The Rough Beasts of Empire, by David R. George III
Via DS9 the Romulans vie for control over the Typhon Pact, and the Tzenkethi are involved too!

January: TNG: Path of Disharmony, by Dayton Ward
The Enterprise looks after a conference on Andor while the Pact make a "daring to reach into the heart of the Federation to raise it’s standard as the pre-eminent power", with a focus on the Tholians.

On top of that the Seven Deadly Sins anthology is due in spring, and the next Myriad Universes collection, Shattered Light, in the summer. The next Corps of Engineers omnibus has been delayed again, until at least 2011!

My thoughts: Unless the next couple of DS9 relaunch novels, out soon, span a lot of time I'm disappointed to see that series forced all the way into 2382 without at least something to span the time. But who knows maybe the next two Will span that period, and it will be interesting to see DS9 at this point. I am generally a little disenhearted by the stand alone nature everything will apparently have, and the massive bias to TOS (at least the TOS prime stuff sounds quite varied I suppose). Hopefully the other series will get back in play in 2011...

4 comments:

Xavier_Storma said...

Yeah... a shame... the 24th century is their hotseller, and all they plan for 2010 are four tiny books?

I am getting really tired of TOS these days. At least until now, the books have been more in focus of the TNG/DS9/VOY era. But now it seems to switch. I wonder when we will have no more TNG era adventures and will be limited just to TOS, so that we will probably cover every single second of Kirk's and Spock's life.

8of5 said...

Well you might be exaggerating a bit there, the 24th century stuff is still making a third of the output.

And you can see their logic; TOS is the big thing right now. It’s just unfortunate they seem to have felt it necessary to make it So dominant, and in such big blocks, that seems to amplificate the effect.

At least Pocket are still representing all the series, if even at a less than annual rate for some, IDW really is stuck on TOS.

Xavier_Storma said...

And I fear, this will also happen to Pocket Books.

They left GORKON, SCE, VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE completely out.

I would have prefered 2 or 4 TOS books less and those series instead.

Oh, and what's about those JJverse books? They do not make any sense... the next movie will probably make them all non-canon anyway.

8of5 said...

All books are non-canon from the off... It's in inherent risk of doing tie-in in fiction that they might one day be contradicted. But as the TrekMovie articles points out Clark is taking the editorial position that the general status quo must remain intact by the end of each of the JJ-verse novels, which reduces the likelihood they will be contradicted.

I too would have preferred a more even balance to the output. But we can also look it this way; in 2009 we've had two Titan books, two Vanguard books, two DS9 books and two Voyager books. So lets say we're aiming for about one book from each series a year (TOS, nuTOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, NF, Titan and Vanguard alone are nine series, which leaves three slots for a second book for one or two series, a crossover sort of thing, or SCE, Gorkon etc), at that average we've had more than the fair share of 24th century stuff for the last year or two. Plus the nuTOS will want to establish itself with several novels about the same time, so you can understand the logic of a sudden influx of TOS next year.

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