Wait Tables, Don’t Write Tie-In Novels!
2 min read1980’s Star Trek novelist Vonda N. McIntyre found out that some people would have rather seen her as a waitress rather than a tie-in author.
As reported by Book View Cafe Blog, some of McIntyre’s colleagues were appalled when they found out that she was writing tie-in novels for Star Trek. “Some of my colleagues took exception to my polluting my precious bodily fluids with evil tie-in novels,” she said. “You’d’ve thought they believed they had to save my soul, blathering about the improvement in my moral character that would result if instead I took an honest job as a waitress. (A job that to be done well requires character traits that I both admire and am well aware I don’t possess.)”But those tie-in novels helped subsidize her original fiction, some of which is available on her website. Plus she enjoyed writing the Star Trek books. “I’d been a big fan of the original Star Trek when I was in college (class of 1970); I wrote a teleplay that (I was told) got all the way to Gene Roddenberry’s desk.” The teleplay, The Entropy Effect, was rejected.
But that was not the end for The Entropy Effect. “Years later, the opportunity to write a Star Trek novel came along,” said McIntyre. “The folks who invited me to write it knew I’d been fond of the series and they trusted me to treat the characters with some respect.” The Entropy Effect was first published in 1981 and was reprinted several years ago.
After The Entropy Effect, McIntyre wrote three of the movie tie-in novels, beginning with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Then she wrote Enterprise: The First Adventure, a “giant novel,” for the 20th anniversary of Star Trek.
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