Book bits: Cool new German cover, hints of books to come, and better look at new DS9

Remember how disappointing Fallen Gods' cover was? The one with a big Riker head, and reuse of the USS Titan image from Sword of Damocles. Well there's good news for German readers; unlike all the previous Titan translations from Cross Cult (not counting crossover series books), the new German release of Fallen Gods (due in July next year) will have a brand new cover by Martin Frei, featuring Tuvok and a whole bunch of Andorians. Here's the first draft (released on the German Star Trek books Facebook page):

In other books news, Christopher L. Bennett has updated his website with a set of annotations for his most recent Star Trek book, the new Enterprise novel, Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures. Check them out for details of all the references to Star Trek, real science, and more.

TrekCore recently interviewed David R. George III, including getting him to spill a few beans on his 2014 Star Trek novel:

All right. I’ll give you this: my next Star Trek novel will take place during the so-called Lost Era, the large gap of time between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the launch of the Enterprise-D in "Encounter at Farpoint."

Later teasing:

At the moment, I am very much into the time period 2303-2319.

Quite a wide span of time for one novel, I'm intrigued! George also spoke a little about his latest novel, the freshly published first book in The Fall series, Revelation and Dust:

The story I developed for Revelation and Dust essentially had to serve three different masters. On the one hand, my tale needed to launch the five-book arc that would continue with Una McCormack's The Crimson Shadow, David Mack’s A Ceremony of Losses, James Swallow’s The Poisoned Chalice, and conclude with Dayton Ward’s Peaceable Kingdoms.

On the second hand, it would have to renew the ongoing Deep Space Nine saga, which in the Star Trek literary world has continued forward from the end of the television series. And on the third hand (this is science fiction, so I’m sure none of us will have any trouble positing a third hand), my novel would have to introduce the brand-new Deep Space 9 space station.

Although I already had in mind some DS9 elements that I wanted to write, I first met with editor Margaret Clark and the other writers of The Fall to determine the overall tale we wanted to tell. Our idea was that we would each produce a novel that would satisfy in and of itself, but that when read with the other entries in the series would tell a larger tale as well. Ms. Clark and all of the writers are consummate, creative professionals.

As for the overall story, I’ll simply say that in Revelation and Dust, a major event takes places in the Star Trek universe that will have significant repercussions throughout the Federation and well beyond its borders.

You can reader more from George about many of his books on TrekCore. Meanwhile, hiding in plain sight on his Twitter page I found the cover art for Revelation and Dust, without the titles. This is also a slightly wider crop than the cover image, giving us an even better look at the new Deep Space 9:

Finally, TrekFM's Literary Treks has also posted a new interview, with Dayton Ward. They talk primarily about his new novel, From History's Shadow. They speak at length about the book, including how Ward got into the period setting:

I had to emerse myself in the period: How people talk, what they worked with; the technology that was available at the time. Everybody smoked; it was good for you. Where things were, like the airforce bases were either army bases, or were named differently. Places that we take for granted didn't exist yet. It was a lot of fun, a lot of research.

Particularly for the UFO lore, for lack of a better term, I really wanted it to be as close as I could get to being right on. But obviously I had to make some concessions for the Star Trek take on certain events. But I really wanted, when you read about so-and-so is the commanding officer of the Blue Book Project, if you check the timeline for those projects, that's the guy who was running it back in the day.

They also discuss some of the characters that appear, and some of the plot points in the book. But that's all I'll say about that, as depending how much you know about the book, you might consider it quite spoilery. So have a listen, before or after reading, depending on your spoiler-level preferences.

Ward also gave an overview of the format for the new Vanguard spin-off series, Seekers. Giving some idea of the directions the series could take as they develop it:

The stories will be more stand-alone than Vanguard was, in terms of there's not this huge meta-story-arc that's driving the entire series; but there'll be character development and character arcs that covers multiple books. The stories themselves will be largely stand-alone, you'll be able to read them in any order. And then of course the format lends itself to us teaming up for the occasional two-parter or mutli-book story line if we want to.