Group Re-read!

[melannen]

Hello everybody! What have you been up to? I have been creating a bookverse/TOS/Pundit RPS crossover universe and eating cake, among other things. And reading fic - it's interesting how much of the old Kirk/Spock stuff takes book-Vulcan as canon, and even some of the reboot fic is much richer if you get the book references. I strongly encourage this trend.

In order to do so, I would like to start a group read! So here's how it's going to work: On Tuesday (more or less), I'll post the book that we're going to be reading over the next week (or longer, for long books), and then the next Tuesday, I'll put up a discussion post for it.

If you don't have a copy of the book we're discussing, you can go to the source post, and we can fix that problem! The source post is locked - if you can't see it, make sure you're actually a member of the community. (Membership is open.)

This week's book:

Pocket Books #47: The Kobayashi Maru, by Julia Ecklar.

In this book, we get first-hand accounts of Kirk, Chekov, Sulu and Scotty's tests, plus several other Starfleet Academy scenarios, and a RL no-win situation as a framing device. There are also supplementary chapters featuring Ensign Piper from Dreadnaught and Peter Kirk from Sarek available on the source post - I believe those are the only other tests we ever get to see in full, at least in TOS-era.

I will be ready to talk about no-win situations of all kinds next week - same time, same channel. If you don't have time to re-read the whole book, please join us anyway!

If you have suggestions for what we should read in upcoming weeks, comment here (or in any re-read post) and let me know!

Comments

[gnomad]

Ooh, ooh! This is the book that I randomly picked up at the used bookstore last week. What luck!

[melannen]

Hurrah! I have been Thinking about it a lot since the new movie.

[stellar_dust]

Do we/should we have an official spoiler policy? I assume we can talk about TKM in relation to the new movie?

As for suggestions, I'd like to reread any of the books that have a bearing on the movie - Best Destiny, any of the ones that concentrate on Vulcans and/or Romulans, Enterprise ... and also First Contact, so we can snark about *that* movie. :D

[melannen]

Yes, we can discuss books in relation to the new movie! I'd suggest, but not require, spoiler-cuts for the new movie, and for any book/etc that's been out less than four years or so - say, since Enterprise went off the air.

I'll be going for movie-relevant books! Though last priority goes to anything that requires me to watch terrible movies I have so far avoided. :P (You don't have to wait for the official re-reads, though - feel free to make a discussion post of your own, about whatever.)

[klangley56]

Julia Ecklar--one of several from the ranks of ST fandom who published pro ST novels--including Jean Lorrah, M.S. Murdock, Della Van Hise (and the infamous "Killing Time"), Peter David, Sonni Cooper, and Julia and a coauthor under the pseud L.A. Graf). Some of these folks also authored non-ST novels.

Julia also is one of fandom's premier filkers--both as a singer and a composer--and one of my personal favorites ever since she released her first cassette tape, "The Traveller," in 1982.