Hello Christopher!
 CT> I'd agree with you up to a point, Jay.  The shows are a
 CT> starting point, as well as the movies.  But the novels have a couple of
 CT> benefits that the shows dont have, including one you pointed out.  The
 CT> novels serve to fill in the blanks between the movies, and take off
 CT> from the shows as a starting point.
Yes as long as you don't take information that is only presented in a
novel and try to force it down the throats of other fans that it is most
definately the truth.  For example. You can take Imzadi and look at it as
the background of Troi meeting Riker.  But you can't take the fact that
Data had command of the E in the future to mean that in the aired world
Will Riker will not be the next captain but that Data will.
 CT> There actually is no difference between a book and the actual
 CT> series episode, in fact all the Trek episodes start out as books
 CT> (stories) that end up in a nice little one hour audio/visual format.
True but there is a difference.  The aired episodes very usually tie in
well.  There is almost never a blatant error like O'Brian's rank. That
happens very rarely. But the novels sometimes contradict each other the
very next book. And they can contradict the TV episodes.
 CT> Now, on the canon issue, a novel author invariably draws from
 CT> the movies and the series for his/her inspiration.  It's necessary for
 CT> continuity's sake.  But they also have the luxury of more time between
 CT> publication for a individual author to get a handle on the technical
 CT> aspects of the story.  No author sets out to write an inaccurate book,
 CT> even a piece of fiction.
That is not what JPH was saying.
 CT> You can hold a book in your hand and see the words in black
 CT> and white, and that's about as close to canon as you're going to get
 CT> with any media.
Depends on your interpretation of canon.  Most (most not all) ST fans
consider the shows and the movies as canon.
Perhaps canon isn't the best term for it. Maybe the idea of an order of
precedence which I use is better.  If a movie or episode says something and
a book says something that can not be resolved with the aired version, the
aired version comes out ahead in my mind.  For example, Strangers from the 
ky
(a novel) says that Earth's first contact came with Vulcans who crashed into
the ocean.  The movie First Contact shows a completely different scenario.
IMHO the FC version is the one that happened not the book version.
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... Tariq Abdel-Razaq ||  Mister_green@juno.com
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... "Flowers!  Is there a .. 'John-Luck Pickerd' here??"
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