While CBS has not announced when season three of Star Trek Discovery will launch on their All-Access platform, we do know, at the very least, that there will be more Star Trek before that, as there are a couple of shows in development, most notably the as-yet-untitled Jean-Luc Picard series, which has just started production and should be live some time around the end of the year, if all goes well.
And, of course, there’s always licensed fiction. Both Simon & Schuster in prose form and IDW in comics form have new Discovery content in the hopper.
I covered this after season one ended, but to repeat for folks who might have missed it: Licensed fiction, or media tie-in fiction, has been around forever. It’s most commonly seen in the SF/fantasy field, though it’s hardly exclusive (as but one example, there was a long line of CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: NY novels in the 2000s; I wrote one of the CSI: NY books). Most large bookstores have a bookcase full of tie-ins at the end of the alphabet in the SF/F section, with books based on TV shows, movies, comic books, and games.
The way the process works is that a publisher buys the rights to do novels or short stories or comic books based on a particular property, and then turns around and hires creative people to produce those works of fiction. And every stage of the process has to be approved by the owner of the property—for TV and movies, it’s usually the studio that produces it, though not always. How closely the licensor works with the licensees varies from property to property, of course. Lucasfilm has famously managed the Star Wars tie-ins very closely, which has continued into the Disney era; Blizzard Games is much the same with World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. Other licensors pretty much just rubber-stamp things, or only make minor corrections based on inside information that the writer may not have.
Having said that, regardless of how much involvement the owners of the property have, the books themselves are almost never considered a main part of the continuity. They can be—as an example, the name Coruscant came from Star Wars novels and was later used on screen. Every once in a while, something from tie-in fiction will wind up in the mainline continuity. It’s happened three times in Trek involving characters’ names: Sulu was given the first name of Hikaru by Vonda N. McIntyre in The Entropy Effect in 1981 and that given name was established on screen ten years later in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The 2009 Star Trek gave us Uhura’s first name of Nyota, first seen in Star Trek II: Biographies by William Rotsler in 1982, and Kirk’s parents names of George and Winona, as established by McIntyre in her Enterprise: The First Adventure novel from 1986. And most recently Discovery had Pike call Number One “Una,” the first name given to her in the 2016 Star Trek: Legacies trilogy by Greg Cox, David Mack, and Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore.
Anyhow, here’s what we’ve got for reading matter to tide you over.
We start with stuff that’s already out. Following the first three novels that focused on Michael Burnham, Captains Georgiou and Lorca, and Saru, Una McCormack (the Trek author after whom Cox, Mack, Ward, and Dilmore named Number One as a tribute to her excellent work) focuses on Sylvia Tilly in The Way to the Stars. Here’s the back cover copy:
Despite being an inexperienced Starfleet cadet, Sylvia Tilly became essential to the U.S.S. Discovery finding its way back home from the Mirror Universe. But how did she find that courage? From where did she get that steel? Who nurtured that spark of brilliance? The Way to the Stars recounts for fans everywhere the untold story of Tilly’s past.
It’s not easy being sixteen, especially when everyone expects great things from Tilly. It’s even harder when her mother and father are Federation luminaries, not to mention pressing her to attend one of the best schools that the Federation has to offer. Tilly wants to achieve great things—even though she hasn’t quite worked out how to do that or what it is she wants to do. But this year, everything will change for Tilly, as she is about to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime—an adventure that will take her ever closer to the stars…
The Way to the Stars came out in January of this year, and is a nice companion piece to the Short Treks episode “Runaway,” as McCormack fleshes out Tilly’s contentious relationship with her mother, hinted at in that short, as well as other episodes. We get a fun look at Tilly’s pre-Starfleet life and what led her to the bridge of Discovery.
McCormack’s previous Trek work includes several novels focusing on the Cardassians—she’s done tremendous work with the character of Garak in particular—and more besides. She’s also one of the few authors to write for both Star Trek and Doctor Who, having penned four Who novels, as well as short stories and audio dramas.
Having done one novel this year featuring season one’s breakout character, the next 2019 release from S&S will be by John Jackson Miller, and feature season two’s breakout, Christopher Pike. The Enterprise War will focus on Pike, Spock, Number One, and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise and show us what they were doing during the Klingon War. As established in “Brother,” Enterprise was deliberately kept out of the war that raged through the first season of Discovery, and Miller’s novel will let us know what they were doing.
The cover copy:
A shattered ship, a divided crew—trapped in the infernal nightmare of conflict!
Hearing of the outbreak of hostilities between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, Captain Christopher Pike attempts to bring the U.S.S. Enterprise home to join in the fight. But in the hellish nebula known as the Pergamum, the stalwart commander instead finds an epic battle of his own, pitting ancient enemies against one another—with not just the Enterprise, but her crew as the spoils of war.
Lost and out of contact with Earth for an entire year, Pike and his trusted first officer, Number One, struggle to find and reunite the ship’s crew—all while Science Officer Spock confronts a mystery that puts even his exceptional skills to the test… with more than their own survival possibly riding on the outcome…
The Enterprise War will be out in July. Miller is another who’s written in two major SF tie-in lines, but in his case besides the half-a-dozen Trek novels he’s penned, he’s also a veteran of Star Wars, most recently the novels Kenobi and A New Dawn.
On the comics side of things, IDW recently released the Captain Saru one-shot by Kirsten Beyer, Mike Johnson, and Angel Hernandez. This story took place between scenes in the season one finale “Will You Take My Hand?” before Discovery heads to Vulcan for their fateful encounter with the Enterprise, as Saru, still in charge following the death of the Mirror Gabriel Lorca, answers a distress call.
IDW has also released the comics I mentioned in the last article, Star Trek Discovery Annual 2018 and Succession, the former a Stamets-focused one-shot, the latter a look at the Mirror Universe.
The only new comic IDW has announced so far is one that is in the same vein as The Enterprise War, but in the other direction as Beyer, Johnson, and Tony Shasteen give us the three-issue miniseries Aftermath. While season three of the show will be showing us what happened to Discovery after they bopped ahead to the future, Aftermath will focus on those left behind, as Spock, Pike, Number One, and the gang must deal with the fallout of Discovery’s disappearance.
The miniseries will debut in August, and wasn’t even announced until after the second season ended to avoid spoilers.
Presumably, there will be more novels and comics announced soon, not just to tie into Discovery, but also to the upcoming Picard series. Meantime, this is plenty to tide you over…
Keith R.A. DeCandido, who has reviewed every episode of Star Trek Discovery for this site, has made a career of writing tie-in fiction, and was even given a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as both a writer and editor of licensed fiction in 2009 by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. His resumé includes quite a bit of Star Trek fiction, including prose for Simon & Schuster and comics for IDW. All together he’s worked in more than thirty different licensed universes, from Aliens to Zorro.
“It’s happened three times in Trek involving characters’ names”
Four times, with five names. The names George and Winona for Kirk’s parents were coined by Vonda McIntyre in Enterprise: The First Adventure and canonized in the 2009 movie.
Licensed fiction, or media tie-in fiction, has been around forever.
You probably didn’t mean for that sentenced to be parsed strictly, but it made me wonder: What’s the earliest commonly accepted example of licensed fiction? I always thought Trek broke new ground here with the Blish novelizations and then the Marshak and Culbreath New Voyages volumes (forerunners of Strange New Worlds, woo-hoo!) – and Mission to Horatius, of course – but Wikipedia says Leave it to Beaver, of all properties, also had licensed fiction (and written by Beverly Cleary, no less!)
I know there were volumes of fiction published under Alfred Hitchcock’s imprimatur and with introductions “by” him – Solve Them Yourself Mysteries was my favorite as a kid – but do those count, since there was no “Hitchcock universe” to play in at the time. Likewise for any Twilight Zone books that were published — not the same thing as extra “adventures” of characters onscreen.
A cousin of mine had Ding Dong School books with Miss Francis’ picture on them from the 1950s, but I feel like we’re outside the genre there… ditto with any Sesame Street books…
Anyway, another fun article and thanks for the entertaining tangent! I want to pick up that Tilly novel sometime… she’s my favorite DSC character.
@1/ – Not arguing, just asking: Is Winona’s name given on-screen in the 09 film? Certainly George’s is, and maybe Winona’s is given in the credits, but I don’t believe it is said aloud (an unfortunate oversight – how hard would it have been to write a line in which George says his wife’s name during those last few minutes on the Kelvin’s bridge?)
Star Trek licensed fiction. Fixing plotholes since 1966. They’ve got a lot of material to work with here though.
@2/mpoteet: I think the 1899 Sherlock Holmes play by William Gillette would qualify as licensed fiction, since its producer obtained the stage rights to the character from Arthur Conan Doyle. Although that’s a dramatic work based on prose works instead of the other way around.
There was a 1942 novel, The Adventures of Superman, written by George Lowther, a writer for the Superman radio series. That could be considered a tie-in novel to the radio show as well as the comics.
@3/mpoteet: Winona’s name is given in the credits, though not in dialogue.
I just got the new Dayton Ward TNG novel, Available Light, and am really looking forward to this minor relaunch of the TNG novels. Is the publisher going to continue with those storylines and keep the Picard series separate? Or does the Picard series officially mean the end of the TNG continuity in the novels? (Like the EU being axed for Star Wars when TFA came out.) I know we’re not supposed to worry about canon so much anymore, but Picard’s my favorite character, so I just keep hoping the new show won’t screw it up.
Christopher: Thank you for that reminder! I’ve edited the post to include George and Winona. :)
writermpoteet: Star Trek didn’t even come close to breaking new ground. First of all, Blish’s novelizations and one original novel weren’t the first Trek tie-in fiction, the first was Mission to Horatius by Mack Reynolds in 1968, and it was one of several tie-ins that Whitman Publishing did around that time. But TV tie-ins started being published in the early 1960s, way before Trek. (To give two examples off the top of my head, both Gunsmoke and the short-lived This Man Dawson had tie-in novels published before Trek was a gleam in Gene Roddenberry’s eye.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Sounds good. I will check those out. Some of the coolest tie-in novels I’ve seen where for the TV show Castle. Nathan Fillion played a mystery writer following a cop around and the books he wrote in the show were actually written and released in real life, complete with Nathan Fillion’s picture on the back cover.
@5/ {smacking myself on the head) Lowther’s novel, of course! When I worked in rare books I got to handle several first editions of that, in dust jacket – they are very hard to find in collectible condition. That’s where the Kents are named Eben and Sarah, yes?
@7/ I should’ve guessed such a long-running and wildly popular show as Gunsmoke would have licensed fiction. Thanks for the reply.
The Way to the Stars is a masterpiece, and I’ve been eagerly suggesting it to non-fans –it’s less a “Star Trek” novel than a perfect Young Adult novel that happens to be set in the Star Trek universe, no previous canon knowledge needed.
Thanks for the shout-out, but one correction. The name “Una” was introduced in the LEGACIES trilogy, not the DESTINIES trilogy.
Thanks for the plug! Loved writing this one — it should be a lot of fun for readers.
What I always assumed to be the first licensed fiction product (as opposed to a performance) was the first Lone Ranger novel in 1936. Gaylord Dubois wrote that one, with radio series creator Fran Striker writing the later ones. It was a case where the author had set guidelines from the owners of the source material.
And for the things the licensed novelists can’t or won’t touch, there’s always fan fiction. :-) Much of it is dreck, of course, but I’ve read a few really wonderful stories.
My favorite is probably the story in which Spock transforms a horrific prison — one he’s incarcerated in at the time — through the sheer power of his goodness. That’s “Report from the Rim” by Carolyn Spencer.
(I should note that although I DO write fan fiction, I am NOT Carolyn Spencer. :-D)
Greg: it’s fixed, thanks!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Amending my above comment to go beyond full-length novels, I always forget the Big Little Books, which stretch back to 1932 starting with Dick Tracy, though some of those earliest books (like the earliest comic books) seem to have been comic strip reprints. Striker wrote a Lone Ranger Big Little Book in 1933, which I presume was an original story.
#15 An earlier tie-in even than that was The Living Shadow, published in 1931 as the first issue of The Shadow Magazine, a spin-off of the popular Shadow radio series, which had become so popular that people started visiting newsstands and asking for “that Shadow magazine.” Walter B. Gibson was hired to create the prose version of The Shadow, which lasted for many years and itself spawned various tie-ins, like comic books and movie serials.
Una of One, One of Una. Does she have a last name?
@6. Kallie: Just picked up Available Light as well. Interesting that it starts after the exposure of Section 31 and the possible repercussions for Picard. Looking forward to Picard. I’m putting a lot of faith in Chabon not to screw it up. Discovery S3 seems too far away.
@17/Sunspear: The Legacies trilogy borrowed an idea from D.C. Fontana’s novel Vulcan’s Glory that Number One was from a world called Ilyria whose citizens were bred for genetic perfection (this was well before DS9 invented the idea of a Federation ban on genetic engineering) and that Pike’s first officer had been the most perfect member of her age cohort, so she was actually called “Number One” as her personal designation and had no other name (which is a huge coincidence given that “Number One” is just a general term of address for first officers, one we’ve also seen applied to Riker, Burnham, and Saru). So “Una” was a nickname derived from that title. Although just the use of the name in DSC doesn’t necessarily make the rest of it real.
I still find it an good meta-joke. Maybe if they had used Oona, which has a different meaning than One.
It’s like an XO who’s asked their name and they say “XO.” “I know you are, but what’s your name…?” “XO”. “First base!”
It’s a small detail, but I was disappointed Discovery didn’t establish a full name for Number One. Come on, writers, just flip through a phone book (if you can still find one) and pick out some names. There. Mystery solved.
I thought Number One’s name was officially Number One, given to her as a reward for being the top ranked being on her planet of origin? Or am I just remembering fanon as canon?
I too am looking forward to other novel lines starting back up again after a long hiatus. I’ve already pre-purchased CLB’s next TOS novel.
@21/Kate: “Or am I just remembering fanon as canon?”
Yep — see my remarks in comment #18. It’s from the books and possibly fan lore. As far as “The Cage” was concerned, “Number One” was just her title as first officer, the same as Riker in TNG, rather than something unique to her. Her real name and background were deliberately kept mysterious. Maybe something would’ve been filled in if the show had kept her as first officer, but since she was only in the pilot, it never got that far. Everything else was fan/novelist speculation.
And thanks for the novel buy!