Wing Commander novels

D

Dougly

Spaceman
I have rather fond memories of reading the WC novels. I think End Run and Freedom Flight were probably my favorites, with the game novelizations my least favorite (I preferred to play Wing Commander III and IV, not read about them).

I realize there’s not much chance of any new Wing Commander novels being written anytime soon. However, I am curious about opinions about two things:

1) If they were to start writing WC novels again, who do you think the author should be? Should they bring back Forstchen, or bring in someone new?

2) What time period do you think the novel should be set in? Pre-Wing Commander I (like Action Stations), Wing Commander I (like Freedom Flight), Wing Commander II (End Run, Fleet Action), Wing Commander III, Wing Commander IV (False Colors), or Wing Commander Prophecy?

I think Forstchen did an excellent job, so I wouldn’t mind having him again… But, at the same time, I also wouldn’t mind seeing what a “fresh perspective” could do.

In terms of time period, I actually think the pre and post Wing Commander IV era would be interesting to look at in greater detail. There are a lot of unanswered questions about Confed and the Union of Border Worlds (Did all of the Union’s planets leave at the same time, or was it gradual? Did their relationship with Confed remain tense after the Black Lance incident, or did things cool down?) that I think a novel could tackle.
 
Well, I agree with you about Forstchen. I think he did the best work on the novels and I would love to see him write some more. At the same time I would like to see a fresh perspective myself.

As far as setting, I would like another book set in Wing Commander 1 time. In retrospect I don't think Freedom Flight was very good and I'd like to see more done in that era.

My favorite of them is End Run by the way. I love that book through and through. Second would be Fleet Action, but I find the middle part too boring for it to be my favorite. On the other hand, the finale is terrific. I've been rereading it recently; it's a great companion for Standoff.
 
I think a novelization of the original privateer would be an interesting read. I like that most of it would be taking place during the kilrathi war. It would kinda be cool to see things from a different perspective than from a military stand point.

End Run was my favorite out of the three I read so far (Fleet Action, False Colors)
 
Personally, I thought Freedom Flight was the most boring of all the novels. I thought all the other novels were practically epic, but FF fell flat for me.

1) Most definitely Forstchen.

2) I'd be interested in three eras: AS-WC1, WC4-WCP, and post-Prophecy. I think there's a lot of potential for good stories in each of them.
 
To go contrary: I don't like Forstchen very much. He's a good craftsman, but his characters become somewhat alike if you read several of the novels, and his penchant for graphic violence is a bit too overdone for my taste: The infamous ejector-seat-release-inside-the-hangar scene still makes me shudder with disgust.

No, I'd really like someone to try a new narrative stance, a bit different from the usual military overtones (J.A.G.-style: "0600 - Bridge..."). Maybe a story with a Kilrathi perspective on the war, or a human civilian - or just trying techniques form a different genre, like a crime/detection novel, or a comedy would be interesting (but definitely to be considered unsafe by a publisher).

For the era, I'd be interested in very early Confederation history, or first contact.
 
Personally, I thought Freedom Flight was the most boring of all the novels. I thought all the other novels were practically epic, but FF fell flat for me.
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I find that as I get older, I respect Freedom Flight more and more, and the Forstchen novels a little less.

Freedom Flight tries above all to feel like Wing Commander -- it's as close to the games which were around in 1992 as it could possibly be (obviously, a big part of that is because it was written by Ellen Guon... but that was simply a good call on Baen's part.)

End Run and Fleet Action don't. We adapted to their 'military science fiction' universe rather than vice versa. The very reason I loved them as a kid -- the fact that they're big epic military stories -- isn't so great in retrospect. Once you become familiar with this particular genre of science fiction, it gets kind of weary -- taking historical wars and putting them in space isn't permanently interesting, and as odd a genre as it is there are people who do it better than the Wing Commander books.

I think I realized this basic problem when Dr. Forstchen wrote a Star Trek novel... and suddenly Captain Picard and Commander Riker were uncomfortably acting about in the same world as his Wing Commander. The stories that we thought altered how we felt about Wing Commander suddenly weren't *for* us, they were a pre-existing outline. A fairly upstanding, fun one which I do still love, but not the ultimate in tie-in literature I believed them to be ten years ago. Freedom Flight, however 'silly' it seems to our current sensibilities (and lets face it, ick on us for having to think that), *did* go through the effort to help create a 'Wing Commander' feel.

and his penchant for graphic violence is a bit too overdone for my taste: The infamous ejector-seat-release-inside-the-hangar scene still makes me shudder with disgust.
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Eh, that seems like a bit much to say about an entire series that's about a violent space war.

Also, shuddering with disgust when you read a scene that's supposed to be disgusting is, in terms of writing at least, a good thing -- it's the intended impact.
 
criticalmass said:
The infamous ejector-seat-release-inside-the-hangar scene still makes me shudder with disgust.
contact.
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I dont remember this ejector-seat-release-inside-the-hangar scene, which book is it from?

also, I dont really like Freedom Flight, to me the plot just kept plodding along and finally something interesting happens and they spend the last 30 or so pages rescuing the Firekkan prisoners.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I find that as I get older, I respect Freedom Flight more and more, and the Forstchen novels a little less.

Freedom Flight tries above all to feel like Wing Commander -- it's as close to the games which were around in 1992 as it could possibly be (obviously, a big part of that is because it was written by Ellen Guon... but that was simply a good call on Baen's part.)

End Run and Fleet Action don't. We adapted to their 'military science fiction' universe rather than vice versa. The very reason I loved them as a kid -- the fact that they're big epic military stories -- isn't so great in retrospect. Once you become familiar with this particular genre of science fiction, it gets kind of weary -- taking historical wars and putting them in space isn't permanently interesting, and as odd a genre as it is there are people who do it better than the Wing Commander books.
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Ellen Guon AND Mercedes Lackey...they've written a number of novels together!

End Run and Fleet Action are MUCH less compelling without the Wing Commander II and III universes as a backdrop.

By themselves, they're fun and quick, but hardly that engrossing!

Freedom Flight wasn't as slash/dash as the Forstchen serials...but it made huge strides in plot. It didn't get into waxing prosaically about the evils of inept academia and the struggle of the miscellaneous maverick soldier.

I enjoyed all of them, but I'm with LOAF on this one...FF is a VERY well written book that helps really push the plot and develop character "capital" that is used to great effect by Stasheff and Forstchen later to fill in big gaps in the story between WCII and WCIII
 
btw...

I find that I enjoy the first half of End Run more every time i read it... I originally, as a teenager, found it rote and boring ("why am I reading about five people crammed into a Venture-Class corvette? Where are the carriers and explosions!!")

Probably an artifact of growing older... I'm more interested in the big picture ("those carriers and explosions are cool..but how did the stage get set to allow for this big battle?")
 
I agree with you there...for a while I used to skip the first part of ER just because when I was younger I thought it was boring.
 
Out of all the books, I always enjoyed Freedom Flight to a higher extent. As LOAF said it tried harder to be Wing Commander than some of the other books. The antics of Hunter (IIRC, didn't he get chewed out by the cap'n for trying to land manually in SM2?) and the smaller feel of it went well with the games. Wing Commander for me, was the Two-Pilots-And-A-Carrier demolition service, and as interesting as the Forstchen books were, they seemed to lack that personality. Things got too big and we were watching too many people at the same time, and it tried to hard to say 'Wing Commander is terribly violent!' when, more often than not, it wasn't. Doomsday's Broadsword being peppered with the bloody chunks of a pilot, Landreich kamikazi Ferrets, and the accidental dangers of jumping without calibration, uber fletchette mines... just seemed so out of place... Wing Commander was the romanticised exploits of overblown personalities, and here the books tried to inject it with this overly serious war-gore tale.
 
t.c.cgi said:
The antics of Hunter (IIRC, didn't he get chewed out by the cap'n for trying to land manually in SM2?) and the smaller feel of it went well with the games. Wing Commander for me, was the Two-Pilots-And-A-Carrier demolition service, and as interesting as the Forstchen books were, they seemed to lack that personality. Things got too big and we were watching too many people at the same time, and it tried to hard to say 'Wing Commander is terribly violent!' when, more often than not, it wasn't.
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" 'At's the way, isn't it, mate? Just you and some hairball, twistin' about, tryin' t'get a missile lock... Formations, uniforms, medals, wingmen ... that's all sheepdip. All a bruce can count on out there is 'imself and 'is missiles."

:)
 
Ellen Guon AND Mercedes Lackey...they've written a number of novels together!
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That's correct. In this case, Mercedes Lackey wrote the outline and Ellen Guon wrote the prose. Baen packages novels this way frequently -- with a big name on the cover because they did the outline and then an unknown writing the actual novel.

(The WC3/4 novelizations and False Colors are the same way - they have Forstchen's name on them because he wrote the outlines.)

I find that I enjoy the first half of End Run more every time i read it... I originally, as a teenager, found it rote and boring ("why am I reading about five people crammed into a Venture-Class corvette? Where are the carriers and explosions!!")
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I find this, too -- but Milk Run is a very strangely written story, regardless (try figuring out all the characters names in your first read-through). It does feel (and probably rightfully so) that Stasheff wrote the story and then an editor with a WC bible cleaned it up a little.

Things got too big and we were watching too many people at the same time, and it tried to hard to say 'Wing Commander is terribly violent!' when, more often than not, it wasn't. Doomsday's Broadsword being peppered with the bloody chunks of a pilot, Landreich kamikazi Ferrets, and the accidental dangers of jumping without calibration, uber fletchette mines... just seemed so out of place... Wing Commander was the romanticised exploits of overblown personalities, and here the books tried to inject it with this overly serious war-gore tale.
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I think that's going a bit far - the novels aren't *overly* violent compared to the games... look at Thrakhath gutting Angel (and Blair) in WC3, Spirit killing herself, Iceman's kids being tortured by the Kilrathi, little torso bits floating around in Privateer...
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I find this, too -- but Milk Run is a very strangely written story, regardless (try figuring out all the characters names in your first read-through). It does feel (and probably rightfully so) that Stasheff wrote the story and then an editor with a WC bible cleaned it up a little.
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What always confused me about Milk Run is that it exists at all. I mean, I like Milk Run much more than End Run itself... but how exactly did it happen, that we've got a short novella by one author attached to a book by another author? I don't think I've encountered that kind of structure anywhere else. It's almost as if it had been written for a short story collection rather than as part of a book.
 
I can't say i understand how people can call "Milk Run" boring. Granted, I was 14 or 15 when I read it, so I might have been past the worst "boredom" age, but it seemed amazing to me... A handfull of people having been trapped on a increasingly banged up ship for years. Which is then finally refitted and sent on a dangerous and important mission where they actually have to *think* to make it through sure works for me.
 
What always confused me about Milk Run is that it exists at all. I mean, I like Milk Run much more than End Run itself... but how exactly did it happen, that we've got a short novella by one author attached to a book by another author? I don't think I've encountered that kind of structure anywhere else. It's almost as if it had been written for a short story collection rather than as part of a book.
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Same idea as the other novels -- a big name (Stasheff) is paired with an unknown (Forstchen, at the time) to sell the books to a larger audience.
 
Freedom Flight was awesome in my opinion, I enjoyed the look through Hunters eyes and the part with the Dralthi. Drinking on Firekka? Come on :)

It's probably the most "Wing Commander" of all the books, with End Run/Fleet Action(I consider them to be a two part book) coming in close second.
 
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