With the inaugural season completed, and the second not set to air until the fall, fans of Star Trek Discovery might be wondering what to do with all their free time. Good thing the adventure is actually continuing (well, in a non-canonical way, of course), with the new prequel novel Star Trek Discovery Drastic Measures (paperback, Kindle) by veteran Trek novelist — and confessed Rush fan — Dayton Ward.
To coincide with the launch of a new Star Trek series, Star Trek Discovery, the good people at Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster who oversee the literary adventures of Kirk, Picard, and the rest have commissioned longtime Star Trek novelist David Mack to pen the non-canonical prequel novel Star Trek Discovery Desperate Hours (paperback, digital). But while Mack has written a number of Star Trek novels over the years — including 2004’s Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Time To Kill, 2012’s Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven, and the upcoming Star Trek: Titan: Fortune Of War — as he admitted in the following email interview, writing a book based on a show that’s still on the air made this experience rather unique.
While the most recent Star Trek movies kind of, sort of, but not really rebooted the saga, the Trek novels have continued the timeline of the original series, the other shows, and the previous movies. Which is how we get to Dayton Ward’s Star Trek The Next Generation Headlong Flight (paperback, digital), a new adventure for Captain Picard and crew. Though in talking to Ward about the novel, it turns out we also get there by going through a certain Canadian rock band…
Considering that it was only supposed to be a five year mission, it’s kind of amazing that Star Trek is still going strong more than forty-five years later. And not just in the movies. Pocket Book publishes more than a dozen new Trek novels and ebook novellas every year. But in talking to Greg Cox, who wrote the new Star Trek: The Original Series: Foul Deeds Will Rise (paperback, digital), and David Mack, author of Star Trek: Section 31: Disavowed (paperback, digital), about their new Trek novels, it’s clear there’s plenty of places for these characters to boldly go.