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"Voyages of Imagination"

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01.10.2007

EDITOR'S PICK: "Voyages of Imagination"

 

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Not until Star Trek enters a rare period of actual production downtime — such as the hiatus since the cancellation of Enterprise in spring 2005 — does anyone but fans seem to realize that Gene Roddenberry's wonderful universe is actually ongoing. There are websites, magazines and the recently revitalized comics, but for most fans Star Trek has always lived on, thick and thin, through the novels. Hard to believe, but as Star Trek celebrated its 40th last fall, the franchise's publishing program turned 40 all by itself in January '07! It was hard enough keeping up with 700+ aired episodes, but for the novels' faithful readers it had become a difficult trek just to keep all of them straight as well.

Of course, in the early days Bantam had the fiction license, and there was even a more juvenile version printed by Western Publishing's Whitman in its line of TV novelizations. Pocket Books has handled the program since "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" itself debuted as the first movie in 1979, but now here comes a tome that recaps it all, in basic publishing order, along with a separate chronology that tries to set the books by title into the wider Star Trek timeline of the aired adventures — a welcome third updating and expansion of the first version by Alex Rosenzweig and Jim McCain that appeared as a special addendum from Pocket in 1999's "Star Trek: Adventures in Time and Space," and next updated in "Gateways: What Lay Beyond."

 

The hefty volume of 782 pages offers a leisurely layout for each entry, which includes not just plot synopses but comments by authors and editors — including even each short story! — as well every book cover. Best thing, Ayers and Pocket Books include it ALL — even the early Bantam novels, the animation novels from Ballantine, all the juvenile fiction and a few other odd birds; the non-fiction reference manuals are not here, however. If there is any disappointment, it is in the usual budget limits that don't allow color printing for the covers, but they are still a welcome sight.

 

Personally, I must admit that as an early fan I bought each novel faithfully, but had to give them up as the years and filmed Star Trek both piled up while my remaining free brain cells declined! But it's also interesting to realize how the many titles reflect the changes in philosophy and direction of the fiction program over time, just as Star Trek itself evolved in its focus and frequency. In that vein, a real jewel here is Ayers' coverage of "behind the scenes” for the books. For the first time anywhere in one combined overview, he offers straight-ahead and refreshingly frank glimpses into the various editors and their oversight at both Bantam and Pocket over the years, as well as Paramount Pictures' licensing agents and their goals. These chapter intros run from the more wide-open hiatus 1970s to the movie era of the '80s to the boom of multiple Trek series in the '90s and the format and crossover experiments that followed.

 

All in all, the book is an incredible guide, finally, to not just the books and their "canon” tie-ins but the big picture of Star Trek itself — still a fitting, if belated, 40th anniversary gift for any fan.

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