I think you're saying that you advise folks to support Traveller because it's Traveller, which is OK up to a point. Problem is, if everything sells because it's got that logo on it, there's no real incentive to put out quality product. Where's my incentive to make sure that Shadow of the Storm feels right for the OTU, if you'd be just as willing to pay for it if I handed in a typo-riddled mess that I'd not even bothered to look at the source material for? I can produce about twice as much drek in the same time as one decent piece.
No, I do think that fans have a right to decide what they like and what they do not, and to expect quality product. Conversely, the publisher does not have a right to expect fans to pay for substandard work because it's got a logo on it.
I'm not commening on FotK here - I've not had time to look at it. I'm talking about products in general. Apart from anything else, I would like to think that my efforts to produce quality product would be rewarded with getting repeat commisisons where others who had not put the same amount of work in might not.
At the end of the day MJD, there will be Travellers who purchase books (be they rule books, source books or novels etc), because it says Traveller. Why? Because we love Traveller. If the books are not high on the quality scale it is ultimately the fans who suffer, along with Travellers well earned reputation. So if your responsible for assisting with the quality and source material then it would be great if you could stress that the quality and attention to detail are valued by Traveller fans, myself included. This first novel was in all honesty a bit of a space turd, but that said, I got a few laughs out of it and if nothing else I was in the Traveller universe(even if the characters were sadly lame), that's why I read a Traveller novel, because I want to share an adventure with someone elses ideas and possibly gain a nice idea for my own games etc.
Personally I just accept the fact that not every single release is going to be the next holy grail of Science Fiction literature or fulfill every single one of my desires. To expect that is to invite disappointment. All I can do is assess each title on it's own merit. Personally I'd like to see the quality of each and every Traveller product match that of the Digest Group Publishing material (The Alien books and the Starship Operators Manual being amongst the best products I've ever seen for Traveller period).
I gave Fate Of The Kinunir 4/10 at the end of the day. It is a shame that this had to be the first novel for Traveller since the release of T5 as it doesn't really do much to enhance or attract new audiences.
Having said that I hope that the new novels to come out after it are of better quality(at least a spell check would be nice) and as others have mentioned, worthy of the Traveller name.
A possible suggestion to someone who is involved with this project would be to try a compilation novel, featuring the best stories from Traveller fans. Personally I'd really love to share some of the adventures fellow Travellers have had and a novel is a great way to share them. Recently Big Finish did a novel like this for one of there productions where they had a competition to be in the next novel they released, a compilation of several fan written stories. The only restrictions are to set the word limit for each of the submissions to keep it manageable.
In any case, here's to the success of the novels and as I've said before, it can only get better from here.
PS. Maybe that's it fellow fans, perhaps this was a lame laugh to show us how much better the other novels will be?
