Strange Novel Worlds

Since the publication of the first James Blish novelizations of Star Trek episodes in 1967, close to 900 tie-in novels, anthologies, and omnibus editions have been published. Star Trek tie-in novels have had a significant influence on Western popular culture. The works of beloved science fiction authors have shaped the way fans understand Star Trek and its universe, and many stand as near equal builders of the Star Trek franchise, next to Gene Roddenberry, his producers, and the many creators of the later series. With such a vast and varied body of work, tie-in books form a rich and deep cultural phenomenon, the history and content of which are worthy of concerted study.
Despite the enduring popularity of the franchise they are based on, no previous essay collection has ever focused on the numerous and widely diverse books of Star Trek tie-in novels. This collection does just that by examining the tie-in works as relevant literature. The essays primarily focus on tie-in books published from 1990 to 2022, and each author discusses the plot and context of separate novels while simultaneously exploring major themes such as canon vs. fanfiction and merits of the genre. The collection ends with an exploration of the continuity of this period of Star Trek as it stands following a narrative conclusion announced in 2021.

Caroline-Isabelle Caron is an associate professor at Queen’s University’s history department. She specializes in 19th and 20th-century Francophone cultural history and on North American popular culture. Her research looks alternatively at representations of the past and of the future and their intersections in the present.
Kristin Noone is an English instructor and writing center faculty at Irvine Valley College in Southern California; her research interests include medievalism and adaptation, heterotemporalities, superheroes, fantasy and the fantastic, and popular romance, and she has published on topics from ethics in the work of Terry Pratchett to the symbolism of Dean Winchester’s pie in Supernatural.

Edited by Caroline-Isabelle Caron with Kristin Noone
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 296
Bibliographic Info: bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9319-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5335-8
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments v
Abbreviations ix
Introduction: Into the Vastness of the Novelverse
­Caroline-Isabelle Caron and Kristin Noone 1
Official, but Not Canon: The ­Tie-In Writer’s Dilemma
David Mack 19
Feinting Forward, Barging Backward: Philosophical Analysis
of Spock, Messiah!
Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith 37
Growing Up with Deep Space Nine: Recruiting New Fans and Teaching Ideology Through YA Literature
Judith Clemens-Smucker 52
“300 ­full-color action scenes”: The Star Trek Fotonovels, Multimodal Storytelling as Paper Television?
Caroline-Isabelle Caron 69
Putting the Romance Back into Space Opera
Valerie Estelle Frankel 90
“The dream of stars”: Judith and Garfield ­Reeves-Stevens and the Star Trek Epic
Geoffrey Reiter 107
Imzadi, (Almost) Happily Ever After and the Female Gothic Tradition
Carey Millsap-Spears 124
The ­Tie-In Novels of History: Adaptation and Expansion in Diane Carey’s Star Trek Fiction
Kristin Noone 141
“What’s in a life?” Grappling with Genre, Gender, and Liberal Humanism in The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway
Mareike Spychala 159
Wind-Riders, Divers, and Merry Whales: Vonda N. McIntyre’s Star Trek Novels
Una McCormack 174
“The sheer unpredictability of the insane, demented galaxy”: Peter David’s New Frontier Novels
Val Nolan 192
The Hurt and the Comfort in J.M. Dillard’s Mindshadow: ­Tie-In Novels and/as Fanfiction
Agnieszka Urbańczyk 209
Surviving the Borg? Exploring Vengeance and Humanity in Peter David’s Vendetta
Brian de Ruiter 226
Contaminated Community in Jean Lorrah’s The IDIC Epidemic
Leah Faye Norris 243
Kira Nerys: Bajor and Beyond
Sherry Ginn 255
A Coda on Coda
Caroline-Isabelle Caron 266
About the Contributors 271
Index 273