data:STvSW (Trek Novel Count vs Wars)

I've always salivated on the raw number of genre books whilst losing myself in the local Waldenbooks, a B.Dalton, Borders or Crown.  I'm no spring chicken, so I can tell you how fantasy, for example, which popularly started with Tolkien, ramped up from two shelves with no label (falling, generically, under 'fiction') to taking up two entire bookshelves, then onto an entire row.  Star Trek (ST) and Star Wars (SW) novels are no exception to the rapid expansion across store shelves.  As ST preceded SW by a decade (the first ST novel was January of '67), it obviates that those novels were readily available.  By the time I was a little lad, they were in easy rotation at the used bookstores (Book Baron, Anaheim, was a favorite and a weekly habit).  SW would first come out in advance of the movie in 1976 (SW the movie would come out in May of the next year).

The first marked difference though is that ST novels first came out as compendiums, or a combination of short stories.  This was the fashion of the time, culling the works of several authors per consolidated novella.  The very first of these were meant for young readers - equating, again at the time, for readers 'of age' (maybe as early as 10 but up to 17).

SW novels, contrarily, started as straight novelizations of the movies: populist for the most part.  However, quickly shifting with extensions of its universe by 1978 with Splinter of the Mind's Eye.  From there, demand exploded with subsequent extensions of the universe, including the exploits of smuggler extraordinaire Han Solo and he ..at Star's End.  It was of these popular novels that the affinity for Solo appeared to strengthen above the Skywalkers.

Now for the raw numbers...I was reveling in the picture I took at Barnes & Noble last weekend, and simply wondering how many books have come out for SW (and then ST)...from there I used GoodReads as the foundation for the count:

There are 251 Star Trek novelizations overall.
There are 376 Star Wars novelizations overall.

That's a whopping 125 book difference, despite the decade lead on SW.

Yes - I acknowledge the differences of each respective zeitgeist.  I would also make an argument in the quality of those novels.  I have found, over many a year reading them, that ST is much more cerebral than SW.  It's more 'hard' science fiction (if there is such a thing, knowing it is a loaded definition), then the populist trappings of what could be assumed as fantasy more than science with SW.

Out of either series, I personally recommend the first 12 of the ST novels, probably avoiding number one and going straight into any other number.  For SW, I am enjoying the latest canon books by James Luceno (Catalyst, Darth Plagueis).

Also pitching to support your local bookstore, so I'm throwing in links for Anaheim:

BOOKTOWN: https://www.yelp.com/biz/booktown-usa-anaheim 
POP COMICS: https://www.yelp.com/biz/pop-comics-and-culture-emporium-anaheim
PHAT COLLECTIBLES: https://www.yelp.com/biz/phat-collectibles-anaheim-2


PS - for Shlitz and giggles, I had to look up the most prolific series and came up quickly with the Perry Rhodan series - Wikipedia states, As of April 2017, more than 2900 booklet novels of the original series plus 850 spinoff novels of the sister series;plus over 400 paperbacks and 200 hardcovers have been published, totalling over 300,000 pages. Having sold approximately two billion copies worldwide alone, (including over one billion in Germany), it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written. The first billion of worldwide sales was celebrated in 1986."

Wowzers - never heard of Rhodan.

...“La Guitarra de Martín Sanchez” CHAPTER 5: Excerpt...

“La Guitarra de Martín Sanchez”
CHAPTER 5: Excerpt

1933, San Diego

The room did not exist until, in an instant, it returned into view like the burst of a bubble.  The light and color of the world rushed upon her, Abigaíl didn’t realize she had fallen into the parlor chair.

Her mother sat calmly across from her, with a look of sadness that was certainly not meant, her eyes tinged in a glow of triumph.  She would say that this was what was expected of a shiftless musician.  She would say that they shouldn't have gone down to Mexico, seeking unsubstantiated fortune.  She would say Martín's name as if she were spitting a rich illness from her throat.  Her mother's lips moved like pantomime, as if a moving picture reel had been slowed.  She had seen such a thing at the cinema house on the main street.  The projectionist was embarrassed at the mistake, but it lit the theatre with laughter.

Her brother, Earnesto, so much younger, sat bored in another chair, staring out the windows that lined the ceiling.  Where the angle of the ceiling sloped toward the front of the house, her father felt that stain glass was perfect there.  The only problem in the design is that the colored light was never struck by the sun.  It never floated its way across the room the way he expected.

Earnesto should have had the stereographs in his hand, but he was probably told not to.  He did not understand death.  Nor should he yet.

Rosa was crying and shaking in her chair, Abigaíl knew it would take weeks for her to regain her composure.  It was not as if Martín was her fiancée.  Abigaíl now knew Rosa had thought much more about them then she realized.  Seeing the poor maid and the terrible face she made: it struck her heart.  There will be physical pain with Martín’s passing.  Abuelo Cassius was missing from the scene.

Abigaíl could not moved, the telegram in her hand.  What of his mother?  Does Lucia know?

Her mother put a hand on hers.  It was cold.  Abigaíl did not blink in her gaze, "He is not dead.”  Her mother leaned back in her chair, an amused glow on her face.

“What?”  She almost wanted to laugh and Abigaíl caught it and would hate her for it.

“Was there a body?  I won’t believe it until I see a body.”

“Dear…the telegram comes from the Mayor’s Office of San Simeon.  They sent his affects to his mother.”

“You spoke with her?”

“Yes.”

“What affects?”

Her mother shivered.  She shivered in a way that showed she, at least, felt for a maternal spirit.  “His papers.  In fact, all the papers of all the men came back here.  They followed the telegram.  Lucia also spoke, brokenly, about a story in the newspapers down there.”  Her mother made a sound on the verge of a chortle, “You know it was the first time her and I ever spoke.”  Her mother let that go, continuing to pace the room.  She cut the shaft of lighted dust, cast by the large bay window, of the setting sun, across her waist.  “Your father called some of his people.  The story from the papers is that one cartel fought another.  The mariachi were playing and were killed along with them.  It is a sensation and a scandal.  Those men are American.  I don’t think the cartel realized that.”

“What good is it now?”

“There will be an official inquest.  The federal government will get involved.”  Her mother sat back down.  The dying light of day reflect warm colors on her permanent.  She smiled in a way that Abigaíl had not seen since she was a child.  Her hands fell up on hers again.  “I’m so sorry, Abigaíl.  I truly am.”

It almost sounded as if she meant it.  “Where is abuelo?”

“He didn’t…”

“I don’t want to see him ever again.”

“Abigaíl.”

“He hated Martín.  He told him he wanted him to die.  There: he is dead!”

…

...Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus...

"When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation.  I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base."
- 9.6 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein

What's fascinating about the success of Frankenstein is that its genesis is as queer a tale as the titular horrors of the doctor's story.  As well known as it is, that Mary Shelley wrote this at the urging of her lover, Lord Byron, during a lightless summer of 1816, when possessed by 'grim terrors'.  She had struggled for several days to come up with a ghost story, until the galvanizing effects of stress struck this visual chord within her.

If you have not read it, and with Halloween mere weeks away, I'd entreat you to try.  It is not only Gothic, and, both, Romantic - it is the height of fantastical fiction, or science fiction, or fantasy.  Mary wrote it as if the factual world of Dr. Frankenstein existed in some other universe and she fully culled all of his resources as if it were a research document.

And, if you have a chance, or the money, I was lucky to be introduced to artist Bernie Wrightson's rendition of the novel back in '83.  Of all the illustrations his is the most haunting and the most familiar.  The creature is the height of perversity and failure of Science - and, yes, Science does fail at times.  Yet, the outcome of the experiment brought forth a creature we fear, but ultimately pity.  He has no place in the world.

Wrightson drew 47 black ink plates, each one will sear into your memory.

The most inexpensive place to purchase it is Barnes and Noble either as a hardcover or as an e-book.  The illustrations are all over the web, of course, but I would hope that you would want to hold the book as was meant, with the light striking from its surface and not glowing into your retina.  (No, I don't hate technology, in fact, I wrangle it more than I come across!)  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bernie-wrightsons-frankenstein-mary-shelley/1102472254?ean=9781595822000#productInfoTabs

The Romantics include William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.  http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics