Publishing bits: Next Voyager novel, Enterprise relaunch uniforms, more calendars, and French comics

A variety of bits and pieces from all corners of the Star Trek publishing world for you: First up, Kirsten Beyer's next Voyager novel appears to have a title and publication slot. Simon and Schuster now list a Voyager book called Protectors, which is expected in late January, making it nominally the February book, and the first book of the 2014 publishing schedule. Oddly this book is not appearing very widely on the Simon and Schuster site, it only comes up under the author page, not if you just look for Star Trek, or even specifically Voyager novels. I only became aware of thanks to TrekBBS user Madzilla pointing it out.

Much closer to the present, next month's book, the first in the new Enterprise relaunch, Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures, is starting to appear right now. The author, Christopher L. Bennett, posted a sketch of his uniform design for the series on his website. The design combines elements from uniforms before and after the early Federation setting of the novel, and also notes a nice explanation of the different insignias we saw in TOS.

In a completely different area of publishing, there's potentially worrying news for UK Star Trek calendar fans. Last year Danilo published two Star Trek calendars in the UK market, a TOS design, and a nuTrek ships collection. As a result the US calendars, including Ships of the Line, from Universe Publishing, were not distributed in the UK. We were looking safe this year, but now two 2014 calendars from Danilo have appeared, offering either a "movie" or "ships" calendar. At the moment both Universe and Danilo's calendars have been listed by Amazon in the US and the UK, but if it's like last year only each country's calendars will only be distributed locally, so you'll have to rely on secondary sellers if you'd prefer designs from the opposite side of the ocean (which ever side you're on).

There is also going to be a German Star Trek calendar this year, like last year it is being published by Panini. Listings for this initially suggested a May release, but that has now been pushed back to July.

If you are a Ships of the Line fan, be sure to check out Mark Rademaker's latest blog post, he has written about how he has come to design an almost real-world warp ring-ship for NASA, which is also his contribution to the 2014 calendar. He's also posted lots of artwork, like the following image, check out his blog for much more,

Finally good news Star Trek comic fans in France, a couple of days ago Countdown to Darkness was released in French, on Kindle. There doesn't appear to be a physical version at the moment. Unusually for foreign language releases, IDW itself is listed as the publisher, rather than selling on the rights to a local company.

If you're curious about French Star Trek comics, check out my 8of5 Archives report, which lists every comic that's ever been released in a French translation.