Authors on their latest TOS books

A couple of authors have been speaking about their new TOS novels lately:

TrekFM's latest Literary Treks episode included an interview with Greg Cox, where he talked about, amongst other things, his new novel, The Weight of Worlds. One of his aims with the book was to made better use of secondary characters, which eh felt he had neglected somewhat before. He summarised the placement of the characters in his book:

Kirk and Spock are stuck in another dimension for most of the book; Sulu is trapped behind enemy lines on his own, getting to do some hero stuff; and Uhura ends up taking command of the Enterprise, which was way overdue I felt.

Hi also outlined the basic themes of the book:

The basic theme of the book, which I tried to keep finding ways to work in, was basically to pit good old fashion Star Trek multi-multiculturalism, against absolutism, purism, religion fundamentalism. Star Trek has always been very much about diversity, combinations, meeting different races, and not assuming humanity has the answers to everything. The opposite of that would be my villains, who are basically evil religious fundamentalists from another dimension.

The bad guys aren't just generic do-baders, Cox also explained the origins of their zeal (which sounds rather like the rationale of the Krikkit robots in Hitchhiker's Guide to me):

They discovered their dimension was not the only dimension, and that was just a huge trauma to their society. They lived in a dimension where in fact they were the only intelligent race. Big cultural jolt to the system that was producing a big cultural backlash.

Cox also mentioned he is currently discussing another Star Trek book with Pocket.

Meanwhile Scoop has interviewed Jeff Mariotte, who is returning to the Star Trek universe next month with his new TOS novel, The Folded World. He gave this summary of the book:

The Enterprise is on a diplomatic mission, ferrying some diplomats and bureaucrats (Kirk's favorite people!) to a planet that is being favorably considered for Federation membership. They're following the approximate course of another Starfleet starship, the McRaven, which is ahead of them, on a mission that's too classified for even Kirk to know. Then they get a distress call from the McRaven...and then nothing. When they find the starship, it appears to be caught inside a strange anomaly, along with dozens of other ships, of various origins--all of them clustered around an enormous, and apparently ancient, starship. Investigating the anomaly before they risk entering it, they discover that it is what they can only describe as a "dimensional fold," in which the dimensions science has identified (and the ones it hasn't) are all folded around each other, and the usual rules of physics don't apply. Which makes going in a challenge--but the McRaven is in there, so...

He also talked about where the idea for the book came from:

It really was sparked by the desire to do a true science fiction novel within the Star Trek universe. I had been doing some reading that pertained to some of the concepts explored in the book, and wanted to dig into those. Plus I wanted to pit Kirk against some rigidly bureaucratic types, just for fun.

You can listen to/reader more about both authors' previous Star Trek work, and their general writing careers, on TrekFM, and Scoop. If they've piqued your interest about their new books, you can order them via the links below:

• The Weight of Worlds: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp, Forbidden Planet.
  
• The Folded World: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp.