Josh Reviews Strange Novel Worlds: Essays on Star Trek Tie-In Fiction

I’ve been reading Star Trek novels for as long as I can remember!  I have fond memories of spotting some of the early Pocket Book Trek novels in my middle school library, and being quickly hooked.  When I was old enough to start buying books for myself, I bought Star Trek books.  I read as many as I could get my hands on.  I drifted away briefly after college, but the continuity of novels set after the DS9 series finale (which kicked off with S.D. Perry’s wonderful duology Avatar in 2001) brought me back into the fold and hooked me even harder than before.  I was a fierce follower of the wonderful array of (mostly) interconnected Trek novels published from 2001 all the way until that continuity was brought to a close twenty years later with the three-book Coda series in 2021.  (This wonderful continuity of novels was a victim of the first season of Star Trek Picard, which contradicted the events of the novels.)  I was extremely bummed by the premature ending of this interconnected universe of Trek novels that I had loved so much, and since 2021 I’ve only bought and read a handful of new Trek novels.  My enthusiasm for these books is at the lowest ebb that I can ever recall.

But then here comes the fascinating, scholarly work that is Strange Novel Worlds: Essays on Star Trek Tie-In Fiction, edited by Caroline-Isabelle Caron with Kristin Noone.  This dense book takes a serious, academic approach to looking at the fifty-year history of Star Trek novels, exploring specific noteworthy novels and series.  It’s exciting to see writers taking Star Trek novels seriously, as opposed to dismissing them.  And as a long-time reader and fan of these books, it was a thrill to dive so deeply into so many of the Star Trek books that I have read and loved over the years!

Essays in this collection explore the work of some of my favorite Star Trek authors, such as Vonda N. McIntyre, Diane Carey, Peter David (who gets two essays devoted to his books here, one exploring his fantastic Borg novel Vendetta, while another digs into his wonderful New Frontier series, which ran for two decades), J.M. Dillard, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Jean Lorrah, and more.  It made me happy to see those authors get a spotlight!  In addition, two of my very favorite current Trek authors, David Mack and Una McCormack, each wrote essays of their own; that was fun to see!

I was glad that this collection embraced the long history of Trek novels, taking the time to explore both old novels (such as the very weird 1976 book Spock, Messiah!) and new ones.

Sometimes I felt the writing in these essays was a little too scholarly for my tastes, a little too dry.  I guess that’s the downside of a serious academic approach!  I don’t usually read this type of writing, and while it was occasionally more verbose than I’d like, it really made me happy to see these books that I’ve loved so much saluted in such a fine fashion.

Reading this collection of essays made me remember my love for Star Trek novels.  I might not be too excited about most of the new stuff that’s being published these days, but I think it might be fun to go back and reread some of these books that I read a few decades ago… I think there are a bunch of them that it’d be a lot of fun to revisit…!

Click here to order this collection on Amazon!