My favorite book? Really?

I’ve written 72 of them, y’know. And that’s not counting comic books, TV scripts, etc. And you’re asking me to name my favorite?

Hmm…I’ve naturally got to consider my most recent novels, all of which bear the noble Crazy 8 Press insignia. After all, these are my purest visions, the tales closest to my heart.

For instance, Fight The Gods, the roller-coaster-ride of a New York City cop who finds out he’s not what he seems. At all. One reader described this novel as “Percy Jackson for adults.” Not a bad tag line, that.

And then there are the Aztlan stories, noir murder mysteries set in an alternate-reality, 21st-century Aztec Empire. As I often tell readers of these novellas, you’re gonna love Maxtla Colhua, Imperial Investigator. I do. (Then again, I invented him…)

Of course, no list of my favorite “kids” would be complete without I Am The Salamander, set to be released this fall, in which young cancer survivor Tim Cruz endures a metamorphosis even Kafka never dreamed of. You think it’d be nifty to have super-powers? Think again.

The Hammer and the Horn–a swords-and-sorcery adventure steeped in Norse mythology–would have to be up there too. It was, after all, the first book I ever sold, way back in the 1980s. And it paved the way for The Seekers and The Sword and The Fortress and The Fire, the rest of the Vidar Saga trilogy, all of which is being re-released here at Crazy 8 Press.

But my favorite? That might be Starfleet: Year One. And I’ll tell you why.

About fifteen years ago, then-Star Trek editor John Ordover asked me to write a serial that would appear in the back of every Trek novel for twelve consecutive months. I’d long been intrigued by an unexplored territory: the beginnings of Starfleet, 200 years before Captain Kirk, and the captains that would have been the first to boldly go.

I based my serial loosely on The Right Stuff, except the dividing line that ran through the first crop of Starfleet captains was whether they were a) pilots forged in the furnace of the Romulan War or b) scientists–”butterfly catchers” I called them. As we Trek historians know, Starfleet ended up drawing on the perspectives of both camps. But which of these captains-in-conflict would end up commanding the new, state-of-the-art Daedalus–the prize in their philosophical struggle?

I loved writing this story. I loved the characters. I loved the way it dovetailed with Trek continuity. I loved the way it advanced the greater epic. This, I thought at the time, was my best work.

Anyway, the serial was well-received. The plan, after a while, was to add a little more material and turn it into a freestanding novel called Starfleet: Year One, which would soon be followed by Years Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven. I was stoked.

Until I found myself sitting next to Rick Berman’s sister at a party. Her name was Judy, and she was a lovely woman whom I had met before. Rick, her brother, was Gene Roddenberry’s successor as honcho of the Trek franchise at Paramount. “Judy,” I said, “you’ve got to tell me about this fifth series that’s coming out. You know I won’t tell anyone.” Judy looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping and said beneath her breath, “Think two hundred years before Kirk.”

Which was pretty much what Starfleet: Year One was about.

In the days that followed, Paramount almost put the kibosh on the Starfleet: Year One book. The compromise we obtained was that it would come out, but there would be no Year Two, etc. And Year One would bear a disclaimer that it had nothing to do with the events depicted in Star Trek: Enterprise.

So all those captains I invented, painstakingly modeling their origins and personalities, carefully intertwining them with established Trek history? You’ll only see them in Starfleet: Year One.

On the other hand, as we know all too well, nothing in science fiction is defunct forever…

By Paul Kupperberg

I was listening to a writer being interviewed on NPR the other day and the interviewer asked Stock Question #27: “So out of all your books, which is your favorite?” The write responded with Stock Answer #27: “All my books are like my children. How do you pick a favorite?”

Yeah. Sure. Look, every writer knows when they’ve screwed the pooch and written something that just doesn’t stack up against the rest of what they’ve done, or just flat out sucks. If you’re a believer in Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is crud.”) than 90% of what every writer writes has to be crud (unless you’ve revised it as I have to make it Sturgeon’s Law–Now Improved With Face Saving Rationalization!: “90% of everything by everybody except me is crud.”). But even if you don’t accept the Law, I can understand using Stock Answer #27 instead of responding truthfully; why open yourself up to the follow-up question, “So which one of your books, etc. do you think isn’t so good?” Which can also be asked as, “Which of your books shouldn’t readers waste their money on?”

(See, this is why I only had the one kid.)

But to the question at hand: I do have some books, stories, comic books, whatever that I’ve written that I like more than others. I can’t really think of many things I’ve worked on that I outright hate, even if I wasn’t happy with it at the time I finished it (oh wait…I almost forgot The Adventures of Goggleman, an instructional comic I wrote in 1992 for the Power Tool Institute. I kid you not. “Always wear your safety goggles and always read, understand, and follow the owner’s manual!”). Usually, with the softening effect of a little time and emotional distance between the actual work and taking another look, I find it’s really not as bad as I thought. Maybe not my best but I usually put it down with an, at worst, mildly satisfied, “Well, maybe that didn’t suck as much as I thought.” (Usually, although there’ll be a few epic fails, like the one I discussed here, in an earlier blog post.)

Conversely, there are projects that I’ve pushed away from after typing “the end” and said, “Okay, this almost doesn’t suck!” (That’s understatement, so as not to jinx anything or, as my people say, put the kina horah, or evil eye, on it.)

One such project was The Same Old Story (available, I’m obliged to remind you, right here from Crazy 8 Press). It was one of those times when, once I got going, everything just seemed to come together and roll merrily along to a wonderfully (to me) satisfying conclusion.

Another of my babies to which I can point with some pride is Jew-Jitsu: The Hebrew Hands of Fury, a humor book I wrote for Kensington Publishing in 2008. It’s written as an instruction manual for a Jewish-based martial arts but is, in reality, a repository of Jewish jokes, Yiddish humor, and silly plays on religious traditions. It’s no longer in print, but if you want to learn such moves as the Davening Headbutt, the Payess of Fury, the Deadly Punch in the Kishkes, and how to use the throwing star of David, it’s still available for the Kindle here.

The third of my babies was, if you’ll pardon the disturbing comparison, stillborn. In 2004, I signed with Byron Preiss’ iBooks to write a trilogy of Justice Society of America novels. Book One, JSA: Ragnarok was finished in July 2005, just weeks after Byron’s early, tragic death in a traffic accident. Others tried to keep iBooks going, but they weren’t able to hold the company together and were forced to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on February 22, 2006…the very week Ragnarok was supposed to go to the printer. I have a PDF of the uncorrected proof, and, within the last year or so, have been in touch with the publishing concern that acquired iBooks’ assets (Ragnarok included) about getting the book to market. However, the new company and DC haven’t been able to come to terms (DC owns the rights to the JSA; the other publisher owns the rights to the manuscript, meaning neither can publish the book without the cooperation of the other) so it’s unlikely Ragnarok will ever make it to print. (You can, however, check out a few excerpts I’ve posted to my website, here, here, here, and here.)

I really do love all my “children,” but as it is with the people we love in our lives, there are some I definitely like better than others. But don’t tell that to Goggleman. There’s really no reason to hurt his feelings.

A rule of advice to authors is to kill your darlings. You might love a line or a character or a scene but if it does not help the overall work, it should ruthlessly be excised without looking back. But, authors are infrequently asked about which of your darlings would you save. Who is your favorite? Most authors will tell you it’s like asking which of your children you love most. You love them all the same, you tell people.

The truth is we don’t love our written works with equal fervor. Recently, I addressed Time Station Berlin, a work I wish I had a chance to redo.  I’ve written books with zero editorial direction and while good, could have been better. Even with good editorial input I know I could have written a few better but circumstances interfered.  I’ve written books as a favor to the editor so it was a job. I wrote a book on desserts, easily the most boring book I’ve written, because no one else offered me work at the time. So no, I don’t love them all differently.

I’ve written some pieces to take on the personal challenge, as I did when I tackled The Nature of Energy. Not being a science guy, I figured if I could make sense out of it for myself, I can convey that to middle schoolers. A huge baseball fan, I wrote the biography of Wilt Chamberlain just so the editor could see what I can do and be in her mind when a baseball opportunity rolled around leading to the Lou Gehrig assignment.

Out of personal pride, I loved working on The Essential Batman Encyclopedia which may be a bit of esoteric for some but a labor of love and something I remain incredibly proud of. Similarly, I dove into the research with deep interest and feel out of all the young adult work I have done to date, the Bataan Death March was the best of the bunch.

But, do I have an all-time favorite?

Well, you always remember your first. In this case, it was my first solo novel, Star Trek: TNG – The Romulan Stratagem. Having cut my fiction teeth on collaborations, the time had finally come to write something on my own. I relished the notion that we had not really seen Jean-Luc Picard lose a conflict with an opposing race. From that simple concept, I spun a story that brought in the then-underused Romulans and even the emotionally charged figure of Sela. It worked out pretty well and I note over at Goodreads that it remains one of my best reviewed works, which I think still holds up.

And maybe the next one I write will bump that off the pedestal.