shadowscast

yourlibrarian mentioned Star Trek tie-in novels in a post today. The reference had to do with the gender split of the writers and the way it's been changing over time, if you're interested in going and checking out her post, but it incidentally got me thinking about my own relationship with tie-in novels.

When I was a teenager, I read quite a few Star Trek tie-in novels. I enjoyed them. But then I discovered fanfic when I was 21-ish, and I pretty much stopped reading official tie-in novels after that (even though I hardly ever read Star Trek fics, oddly enough). And I think I've read literally two Buffy tie-in novels, ever (Pretty Maids All in a Row by Christopher Golden, which somebody gave me as a gift; and a French translation of Halloween Rain by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder, which I read for the French practice).

So, why did I decide that I liked fanfic so much better than tie-in novels? I mean, tie-in novels are novel-length, curated, nicely copy-edited, and generally of a fairly high quality of writing—which are all things that I like! Sure, fanfic is free and tie-in novels potentially aren't, but that's not a big deal; I do have a good job, and anyway it's easy to get books cheap at second-hand shops or book sales or yard sales, or free at the library.

No, the real reason that I turned towards fanfic and away from tie-in novels is, frankly, a bit quirky and weird.

Let's start with the idea of canon: canon is the stuff that really, actually happened to the characters. (For Star Trek, admittedly, canon is a concept without well-defined edges; is the animated series canon? Are the video games? The Short Treks webisodes? etc. But anyway, the live-action shows and the movies are canon for sure. Let's assume for now that canon is a thing that exists.)

Now, the thing about the Star Trek tie-in novels (many of which I read and enjoyed as a teenager, I will remind you!) is that I always understood them to be taking place within the canonical universe, in an officially-sanctioned way. That was the real Captain Picard beaming down to that planet and having that adventure—yep, the same guy who was going to be onscreen next week trapped in a turbolift.

So the books were in the official universe ... but nothing that happened in the books could affect the official universe. While they were living in the books, the characters could refer to events that had happened in the TV show, but never vice versa. And at the end of each book, the characters all had to be right back where they'd started, so that they could return to the TV show without a hair out of place.

So after a while it felt to me like nothing that happened in the books mattered. The things that happened in them didn't really happen, so what was the point?

But how is that different from fanfic, you might ask?

Well, here's how I see it: Official tie-in novels take place within the official canonical universe, and so they have to tread lightly and can't really affect anything. But every fanfic splits off into its own brand new divergent-timeline universe. (Like the JJ Abrams Star Trek films!) And in these new universes, everything is real, actions have consequences, and anything can happen!

In fic, characters can grow and change. And sure, whatever happens only matters for the space of that one fic, and when I'm done reading the fic I need to reset everybody back to canonical values before starting to read a different fic—but that fic-universe exists, those versions of the characters exist, and the experiences that they had matter.

Is that super weird? Does anybody else's brain work like mine does?

Hey look, I'm posting again! And it's about Star Trek, again!

Don't worry, it's not going to be All Star Trek, All The Time around here now; it's only that I just saw the new Star Trek movie, so it's fresh in my mind.

And here's a thing I've been thinking: I want the new Sulu to be gay.

( I will explain myself! )