skygiants | Entries tagged with diane duane

I don't actually remember why

genarti decided I should read Doctor's Orders, Diane Duane's Star Trek McCoy-centric TOS novel, but it ended up on my shelf and so I did.

BECCA: all of Duane's TOS characters are always so pleasant and philosophical and well-intentioned and consistently competent
I don't know if I believe it but it is soothing to read
GEN: heee, right?
I am very fond of that part
also they all stop and think fondly about astrophysics in ways that I do not think fits what's actually onscreen but DO think fits what ought to be true of people in this career path so I'm good with it
BECCA: 'snappy banter,' says McCoy, thinking earnestly about how the crankiness is a useful persona that he puts on when it's convenient for the well-being of the rest of the crew
GEN: hahahahahahahaha
and for his own entertainment, but yes
BECCA: they DO stop and think fondly about astrophysics with GREAT FREQUENCY
and biology
and the value of gathering scientific data for the sake of gathering scientific data
way more than any character on TOS ever has

I mean it feels -- and it is -- very much the kind of fanfic in which the author firmly writes all their own ethics backwards into canon.

GEN: To me it's always felt like she's writing the attitudes of 70s/80s TOS fandom into TOS
like, "I know all of these super geeky writers who are really into space and whom I really like as people, THIS IS THE STAR TREK OF THEIR HEARTS"
BECCA: hah that is probably also true
I mean it also very much does feel like fanfic
'Chekhov's catchphrase!' says Checkhov, in his first appearance, and then wanders off to be competent somewhere offscreen
'Nurse Chapel's off taking her doctoral exams!' says a throwaway line, a/n: 'ok it's always been my headcanon that Nurse Chapel eventually moves up to MD'

The actual plot involves the Enterprise going to investigate a planet where three different intelligent species have independently evolved and trying to convince them to join the Federation; everyone frantically runs around taking soil samples and trying to get enough linguistics data to calibrate the universal translators, Kirk leaves McCoy in charge as a joke and then beams down and gets lost while having a philosophical discussion with an alien, some cranky Klingons show up and everyone rolls their eyes at them, there's one or two space battles but mostly, you know, it's philosophical discussions and harassed linguists complaining about verbs. As I said, it's a pleasantly soothing read! And significantly more invested in the actual day-to-day labor of the scientific and exploratory process than any episode of Star Trek ever has been or will be.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/446505.html

Next up in Books I Read for Yuletide And Therefore Technically Could Not Talk About Until January: Diane Duane's super eighties fantasy series The Door Into Fire, The Door Into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset, which I read in order to beta

genarti's excellent fic Outdwelling.

I think I should mention that all I knew about these books going in was that they are dearly beloved by many of my friends, and that the series as it currently stands ( spoiler! )

I did not know in advance about the undead dragon mpreg, but that is also a thing that happens. SO NOW YOU KNOW.

Anyway, the first book follows Herewiss, a dude who is on a quest to tap into his latent magical powers and also rescue his prince-in-exile boyfriend from the various consequences of his own stupidity. Along the way he bumps into an amoral fire elemental who eventually falls in love with him and love triangle ensues, but not really, because polyamory; also he overcomes his backstory angst.

Then in the second book it turns out that this is actually an EPIC about how the prince-in-exile boyfriend really needs to retake the throne to stop the LONE POWER -- er, sorry, I mean THE DARK -- from destroying the world, in a vague and amorphously entropic fashion. I do not care much about this. But I do like the protagonist of this one, a lady sorceress who abruptly finds herself the unwilling mental host of a whole bunch of UNDEAD DRAGONS, after which culture clash ensues. (Warnings, though, for an unexpectedly graphic and disturbing sequence in Segnbora's backstory angst, and also for ( spoilers )

The third book is mostly epic battles and discussions of the responsibility of ruling. At the end of it I remain ( slightly confused about several things )

But MOSTLY I am just full of fond nostalgia for super eighties fantasy epics set in sexually Utopian fantasy worlds where no one had homophobic hangups and all the plots featured some kind of cheerful pansexual polyamory. I kind of want to compile a master list, but for this I need assistance!

The ones that spring initially to mind:
- these books
- Tanya Huff's Quarter series

Which doesn't seem like much, but I know there are more! I know there are more that I've read! BRAIN.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/321251.html

Drabble roundup, part 2!

For

oneechan19: ( Howl's Moving Castle/Young Wizards crossover: Howl as a YW!verse wizard )

For

varadia: ( Milliwaysverse: That time Dave walked by when Mary and Galadan were discussing her future career path )

And also for

varadia because that was terrible: ( Homeward Bounders/Ouran crossover: Jamie stuck in Ouranverse )

For

shati: ( Avatar: Dangerous ladies! )

And then I felt bad, so I wrote

shati another: ( Avatar: Appa )

And then somehow that still did not quite work out to cheerful, so, also for

shati: ( Avatar: Zuko attempting to write poetry for Mai, and Sokka's reaction )

For

elspeth_vimes: ( Monster/20th Century Boys crossover: post-series Tenma meets Kenji )

Also for

elspeth_vimes: ( Sun Sword/20th Century Boys crossover: Kallandras gives Kenji singing lessons )

And, since that one was very short, also for

elspeth_vimes: ( Sun Sword/Fullmetal Alchemist crossover: Serra Teresa and Hawkeye discuss political strategies )

For

lacewood: ( Fullmetal Alchemist: Mustang/Hawkeye shippiness or UST, OH TWIST MY ARM )

LAST ONE. Also for

lacewood: ( Fullmetal Alchemist: Team Mustang hijinks, also Briggs hijinks, CUNNINGLY COMBINED )

AND OKAY THAT IS ALL.

I kind of want to play a drinking game with Diane Duane's Star Trek novels. Every time she mentions entropy: sip! Every time she references Hortas just because she thinks they're loltastic: sip! Every time she does a hilariously blatant crossover over with the Young Wizards books: drain the glass!

Which is to say, I finally read the two other Star Trek novels that

genarti lent me this summer, The Wounded Sky and Spock's World.

The Wounded Sky . . . okay, it really is hilarious just HOW MUCH of a Young Wizards crossover it is. The crew teams up with an alien glass spider ~~wizard~~ physicist who explains that their physics work by defining something, and then changing that definition! ( Spoilers ) I honestly kept expecting Kit and Nita to show up with their manuals.

Also, I kind of shipped Scotty/Alien Glass Spider Physicist, and I don't think I'm wrong to do so.

Spock's World is less of a blatant crossover, but the word entropy still shows up often enough that you could get relatively tipsy if you chose to play my drinking game with the book. Premise: Vulcan is debating whether or not to secede from the Federation. Sarek gets called back to argue for secession, Kirk and McCoy and Spock to argue against, and Diane Duane basically takes the whole premise as an excuse to point out "HEY YOU KNOW PLANETS ARE COMPLEX PLACES AND NOT ALL VULCANS ARE THE SAME," which is a thing very much worth pointing out, and it's kind of adorable. She also intersperses the narrative with short-story snippets from along the course of Vulcan's development, most of which are full of TRAGEDY, except for the Sarek/Amanda one which is basically the book wavig its ship flag high. It's all a lot of fun, except for one thing . . . ( Spoilers for a problematic lady! ) There certainly were several awesome lady characters that popped up over the course of the story, so it's not like it ruined the book for me, but . . . it did make me sort of depressed. Problematic portrayals of ladies: like Kate Beaton's pony, in a way.

Also, something that made me the opposite of depressed: receiving all those lovely snow cookies! Every time I look at my profile now I make a :DDDDDDDDD-face. Thank you guys so much! <3

Last time I was up in Boston was shortly after Star Trek came out, and

genarti handed me two of Diane Duane's Star Trek tie-in novels, My Enemy, My Ally and The Romulan Way, and told me they were very interesting and I should read them.

For the record: I saw and enjoyed the new Trek movie - twice, actually, once with each parent - and I have vague knowledge of the various series' due to them all being on in the background all the time when I was growing up, but no more than vague. For one thing, I spent many years of my childhood completely convinced that Spock and Data were the same character. This caused a lot of confusion when they showed us The One With Whales in my fourth-grade class and there was a scene with Amanda Grayson -

TINY BECCA: What! What! ROBOTS ARE NOT HALF-HUMAN, THEY DO NOT HAVE MOMS. (Obviously at this point I had not yet seen Battlestar Galactica. Has anyone written Hera-Spock fic yet? If not, WHY NOT?)

Around the same era, Tiny Becca also got into a long argument with her mother about why the hell elves were coming out of a spaceship in that one Trek movie.

BECCA'S MOM: POINTY EARS DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN ELVES, CHILD. Aliens can have pointy ears too! Is that so hard to understand!

But I am getting off topic here, and anyway, my point is that I do not have vast or extensive knowledge at all of Original Trek, but that does not mean that I enjoyed any less Diane Duane thoroughly getting her geek on and desperately trying to make the Romulans make sense. I accidentally read The Romulan Way first, which is out of order (and got thoroughly chewed out by

batyatoon and

fire_and_a_rose for doing so, too) but I am actually kind of glad I did. Half of The Romulan Way is Diane Duane building Romulan culture and history from the ground up, which is very cool to see. The whole plot with A Deep Cover Spy and McCoy Among The Romulans is kind of secondary, although she is also an interesting character.

My Enemy, My Ally is more plot-related, but just as full of hilarious dorkery - it really does not get geekier than the bit where Kirk and Uhura watch Doctor Who. It is also very, very endearingly earnest and all about ~learning to understand the enemy~ and ~working together~, and features an extremely badass Romulan lady captain making Difficult Moral Choices! Also, 4-D chess. I mean it as a compliment when I say it reads like very good fanfic, with a well put-together plot, some metaphors about chess as character exploration, a lot of fanwanking to make the universe make sense, and ton of references that are clearly thrown in just because the author is having fun with it. It is very easy for the reader to get caught up in that fun, too, and I totally did, even knowing that half the references were passing me by.

Lunch break booklogging!

Only a year or so after I promised I would, I finally caught all the way up to the latest in the Young Wizards saga, Diane Duane's Wizards at War. Most prominent reaction: Carmela is the awesomest awesome to ever awesome. I so very love characters who stand up for non-wizarding badassery! Seeing her develop has been my favorite thing about the later books.

However, ( you knew a spoilery reaction was coming )

My slow but . . . all right, not even steady, but at least somewhat progressing trek through the new Young Wizards books (being a crotchety old-timer, I consider all the books after High Wizardry 'new') continues! And Wizard's Holiday, which I finished yesterday, is most definitely my favorite of the new ones I've read.

( Semi-spoilery thoughts, and possible overanalysis. )

Once upon a time, I made a bargain with

dictator_duck. She was going to read The Fionavar Tapestry, and I was going to read the rest of the Young Wizard books, which I had dropped many years ago after reading A Wizard Abroad.

TL not only read Fionavar in a prompt and timely fashion, but also several other books I flailingly recommended to her after that. Meanwhile, I failed horribly to acquire the Young Wizards book I needed and brought an oathbreaker's shame down upon my head. However! When I visited The Strand over my Thanksgiving break, I finally acquired and read A Wizard's Dilemma, mitigating at least of my guilt, and when I went back this past weekend I found the next book and read it on the plane back. So! ( A Wizard Alone, with mild spoilers for the series )

Conclusion: I had some problems with the book, but I did enjoy it, and will be going on to read the next two. Partly to fulfill my promise to TL, and partly because I am still very fond of the characters, and in large part because MOAR CARMELA! And Filif, soon!