A Guide to Star Trek: The Original Series Novels

[rachelmanija]

I notice that many people have gotten curious about the original series after seeing the movie. There are also some quite good novels, many by writers known for original sf/fantasy. Here's a brief, non-comprehensive guide:

The Spirit of WonderDiane Duane did the best job of capturing the joy I felt when watching the series. You want to serve on

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I do, but since I was totally unfamiliar with Here Come The Brides, I had the vague sense of things going over my head. I know a lot of people love it.

I'd love to read your recs TOO, though.

[oracne]

Plus that one has Spock-angst out the wazoo. Always a plus.

[nestra]

Ishmael! Awesome. I also remember liking her Trek novel "Ghostwalker", but it's been a while since I reread it.

[raanve]

I've only read one Trek 'novel' - the the novelisation of The Motion Picture, when I was in about fifth grade. After that, I didn't have much interest in reading Trek novels.

This list, though, makes me want to jump right in. This might make good airplane reading this week!

[oracne]

I used to have vast numbers of Trek novels, numbers of which I lent to a friend out of state, and she later got divorced and the box vanished. *sob*

But I replaced my Hambly Trek novels, and some of the others.

I remember there was at least one with McCoy's daughter in it. The A.C. Crispin ones had a couple with a son for Spock--YESTERDAY'S SON, and I forget the title of the other.

Jean Lorrah's Trek books amuse me for having cameos by Blake's 7 characters.

[nestra]

I remember there was at least one with McCoy's daughter in it.

"Crisis on Centaurus" has her.

The A.C. Crispin ones had a couple with a son for Spock--YESTERDAY'S SON, and I forget the title of the other.

"Time for Yesterday". I need to reread those.

[maukatt]

Oh yeah! Those were sequels of the TV episode , where Spock and McCoy are trapped in the Ice Age past of a doomed planet, along with the obligatory Beautiful Woman (who was exiled there as a political refugee). Those novels take up the question "What if Spock got The Beautiful Woman preggers while he was all id-ish with her?"

Entertaining, and worth reading.

[ellen_fremedon]

Oh, I need to reacquire some of these! I purged my shelves when the early Pocket books were mostly all still in print, and were available in huge stacks at every secondhand bookstore-- I only kept about ten of my very favorites.

[klwilliams]

I really enjoyed the Peter David ones (and in fact I appear as an Admiral in Rock and a Hard Place, so maybe I'm just biased).

One of my absolute favorites was Barbara Hambly's Ishmael, which was Star Trek meets Here Come the Brides.