Like so many die-hard Star Trek fans, I tried my hand at fan fiction for a while.
Without tooting my own horn, I think I was reasonably good at it. Well, at least, that’s the impression I got from those folks who reached out to me when I was actively posting it to some online forums hosting such scribblings. Once, a fanzine publisher wanted to reprint one of my Star Trek: Voyager stories in their upcoming edition; but, alas, as often happens with small outlets that volume never came to fruition. Another outlet contacted me and asked if I would consider being one of their exclusive authors, meaning that I’d only post stories, novellas, and novels to their site; but that seemed a bit too restrictive as they were a small corner of the web-o-sphere with a fairly tiny audience.
But another writer encouraged me to get an agent and try submitting some of what I’d crafted to Pocket Books, the line of Simon and Schuster (I believe it is) responsible for Trek publications. Sadly, I couldn’t find a representative willing to work with me – I guess the potential profit margin for them on such wares was very, very, very small – so I let it all go. I did do a bit of research into the requirements the Trek editors of the day held as their gold standards; and – in my own humble opinion – I certainly had no difficulty keeping within those parameters. Regardless, nothing much came of it, though I do keep a few ideas worth kicking around in my Bucket List should time come available for me to try once more.
In any event, one of the founding tenets Pocket Books insisted is that any and all submitted stories should (and I’m paraphrasing) extend beyond what’s possible in any of the televised formats, introducing audiences to something – be it characters or circumstances – that boldly went where no previous story had gone before. (Snicker snicker) Now, you can read into that what you will, but I took it to mean that the decisionmakers didn’t want authors to merely produce something that could’ve been rather easily filmed and presented as any other yarn within any of the respective properties. Sure, it had to fit aesthetically within the wider Trek universe, but my two cents is they wanted adventures reasonably bigger-than-life: delivering something too similar to what had been done before on television might not encourage readers to pick up the latest production because that kind of thing had already been done to death. Why repeat something solely to recapture something already tried?
Well …
Without getting too deep into the weeds, Dayton Ward’s Pliable Truths (2024) really does exactly what those editors cautioned budding authors against: it taps some already existing situations from both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the stomping ground for a new tale involving Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s attempt to diplomatically facilitate an formal ending to Cardassian and Bajoran hostilies, something given a helluva lot of screen time in both iterations of Trek. It even brings aboard a few familiar faces from both shows in order to establish its bona fides and gives them respectfully prominent roles in the action. While it’s arguably a welcome trip to yesteryear, it’s also everything former editor John Ordover kinda/sorta preached against back in day.
In fact, I’d argue that Pliable Truths feels very much like it could’ve easily been a two-part episode of other spin-off; and – in all honesty – it probably would’ve turned out to be quite good, well received amongst fans.
Not long after the Enterprise-D thwarts a Cardassian attack (see TNG’s “Chain Of Command” two-parter), Admiral Nechayev seeks out Captain Jean-Luc Picard – ailing from being tortured by Gul Madred in those same episodes – requesting his assistance in negotiating the Cardassian withdrawal from the space station Terek Nor (aka Deep Space Nine). Seeing this as an opportunity to aid the healing process, Picard agrees … only to find that the Cardassian Union has sent Madred to the central seat at the negotiating table. While the set-up sounds pretty interesting, it’s (sadly) essentially wasted as the story pivots between two subplots, one involving incarcerated Bajorans on a distant world (with Ensign Ro figuring prominently into the action) and another exploring an act of horticultural terrorism down on the surface of Bajor (with Dr. Beverly Crusher, Kira Nerys, and Keiko O’Brien taking center stage).
I’ve been assured by those who still follow Trek literature closely that Dayton Ward is one of the more highly regarded creators still dabbling in that universe, and more power to the man. On many levels, Pliable Truths feels very much like a throwback to the time when The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were actively in production, delivering meaningful stories in Trek’s traditional ‘morality tale’ format, something that’s been sorely missing from the JJ Abrams films as well as the awful TV incarnations that’ve followed. Like comfort food, Truths is always inviting – with a few modest exceptions – and sticks to the recipe so many Trekkers, Trekkies, and general Trek enthusiasts devour when given the chance. Although its ending is somewhat predictable – there’s little if any tension in any of it given the fact that audiences already know none of these characters are truly in any jeopardy – the novel still hits its marks and gets out without any real controversy along the way.
But … that’s my issue with it to a small degree.
Because it’s set in a very narrow time frame and its original characters are so bland, there’s just no real excitement in any of it. I appreciated being swept off into what I accept as one era of Trek’s television broadcast heyday; and yet the big finish was still a bit underwhelming as nothing all that much changed in my perception of what was and should be possible in a Trek novel. It was a bit too much like what had already come before, leaving this visit to the Final Frontier more like a bit a déjà vu than it was one more chapter wherein the human adventure was just beginning.
Good? Yes. But that’s about it.
-- EZ
Without tooting my own horn, I think I was reasonably good at it. Well, at least, that’s the impression I got from those folks who reached out to me when I was actively posting it to some online forums hosting such scribblings. Once, a fanzine publisher wanted to reprint one of my Star Trek: Voyager stories in their upcoming edition; but, alas, as often happens with small outlets that volume never came to fruition. Another outlet contacted me and asked if I would consider being one of their exclusive authors, meaning that I’d only post stories, novellas, and novels to their site; but that seemed a bit too restrictive as they were a small corner of the web-o-sphere with a fairly tiny audience.
But another writer encouraged me to get an agent and try submitting some of what I’d crafted to Pocket Books, the line of Simon and Schuster (I believe it is) responsible for Trek publications. Sadly, I couldn’t find a representative willing to work with me – I guess the potential profit margin for them on such wares was very, very, very small – so I let it all go. I did do a bit of research into the requirements the Trek editors of the day held as their gold standards; and – in my own humble opinion – I certainly had no difficulty keeping within those parameters. Regardless, nothing much came of it, though I do keep a few ideas worth kicking around in my Bucket List should time come available for me to try once more.
In any event, one of the founding tenets Pocket Books insisted is that any and all submitted stories should (and I’m paraphrasing) extend beyond what’s possible in any of the televised formats, introducing audiences to something – be it characters or circumstances – that boldly went where no previous story had gone before. (Snicker snicker) Now, you can read into that what you will, but I took it to mean that the decisionmakers didn’t want authors to merely produce something that could’ve been rather easily filmed and presented as any other yarn within any of the respective properties. Sure, it had to fit aesthetically within the wider Trek universe, but my two cents is they wanted adventures reasonably bigger-than-life: delivering something too similar to what had been done before on television might not encourage readers to pick up the latest production because that kind of thing had already been done to death. Why repeat something solely to recapture something already tried?
Well …
Without getting too deep into the weeds, Dayton Ward’s Pliable Truths (2024) really does exactly what those editors cautioned budding authors against: it taps some already existing situations from both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the stomping ground for a new tale involving Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s attempt to diplomatically facilitate an formal ending to Cardassian and Bajoran hostilies, something given a helluva lot of screen time in both iterations of Trek. It even brings aboard a few familiar faces from both shows in order to establish its bona fides and gives them respectfully prominent roles in the action. While it’s arguably a welcome trip to yesteryear, it’s also everything former editor John Ordover kinda/sorta preached against back in day.
In fact, I’d argue that Pliable Truths feels very much like it could’ve easily been a two-part episode of other spin-off; and – in all honesty – it probably would’ve turned out to be quite good, well received amongst fans.
Not long after the Enterprise-D thwarts a Cardassian attack (see TNG’s “Chain Of Command” two-parter), Admiral Nechayev seeks out Captain Jean-Luc Picard – ailing from being tortured by Gul Madred in those same episodes – requesting his assistance in negotiating the Cardassian withdrawal from the space station Terek Nor (aka Deep Space Nine). Seeing this as an opportunity to aid the healing process, Picard agrees … only to find that the Cardassian Union has sent Madred to the central seat at the negotiating table. While the set-up sounds pretty interesting, it’s (sadly) essentially wasted as the story pivots between two subplots, one involving incarcerated Bajorans on a distant world (with Ensign Ro figuring prominently into the action) and another exploring an act of horticultural terrorism down on the surface of Bajor (with Dr. Beverly Crusher, Kira Nerys, and Keiko O’Brien taking center stage).
I’ve been assured by those who still follow Trek literature closely that Dayton Ward is one of the more highly regarded creators still dabbling in that universe, and more power to the man. On many levels, Pliable Truths feels very much like a throwback to the time when The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were actively in production, delivering meaningful stories in Trek’s traditional ‘morality tale’ format, something that’s been sorely missing from the JJ Abrams films as well as the awful TV incarnations that’ve followed. Like comfort food, Truths is always inviting – with a few modest exceptions – and sticks to the recipe so many Trekkers, Trekkies, and general Trek enthusiasts devour when given the chance. Although its ending is somewhat predictable – there’s little if any tension in any of it given the fact that audiences already know none of these characters are truly in any jeopardy – the novel still hits its marks and gets out without any real controversy along the way.
But … that’s my issue with it to a small degree.
Because it’s set in a very narrow time frame and its original characters are so bland, there’s just no real excitement in any of it. I appreciated being swept off into what I accept as one era of Trek’s television broadcast heyday; and yet the big finish was still a bit underwhelming as nothing all that much changed in my perception of what was and should be possible in a Trek novel. It was a bit too much like what had already come before, leaving this visit to the Final Frontier more like a bit a déjà vu than it was one more chapter wherein the human adventure was just beginning.
Good? Yes. But that’s about it.
-- EZ
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