The Psi-Phi Project: Re(8550): Dissappointments

But it does no good to vent your spleen if you simultaneously assure them that you’ll keep buying the books no matter what they do. The only way to get the message through to them is NOT to buy the books. Otherwise, what incentive do they have to change?

Ah, the Catch-22. You buy stuff you don’t want at the risk of missing something, but by buying what you don’t want you’re feeding the ego of those in Pocket’s editorial and marketing departments, those same egos that think taking a five-hundred page book and chopping it in two pieces is a good thing, without realizing that two books slots are being filled by one story and thus depriving fans of storytelling.

Wow, that was a little harsh. No slam intended on anyone.

But that very much describes how I feel on Trek novel matters. I see us getting the same number of books per year as we did five, ten years ago, but now we’re getting fewer discrete stories now than we did then because of the “duology” chop-in-two phenomenon.

I don’t want people to think I’m prejuding Maximum Warp, because I’m not. I’ve read Battlelines, and I’m not prejudging Maximum Warp on the basis of that prior work. Neither will I say a story must be bad because it’s a duology.

The story is what matters, after all. I just have problems with the format.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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