Books bits: More Voyager, Seekers tease, comic commentary, and fun books

The latest updates from the world of Trek publishing: Starting with news of the next next Voyager book! With the next book in the Voyager relaunch series, Protectors, due for release in February, Kirsten Beyer has announced she is already under-way on the next instalment. Posting on the TrekBBS, she revealed she is busy working on, Acts of Contrition, which will continue to tell a "bigger story" in the series, which she hopes to conclude in a third book. Beyer isn't yet aware of a release date for this one, but she is meant to be finishing it by mid-December, so I'd guess it has a good chance of being one of the gaps towards the end of the year in the 2014 schedule - Which would mean a triple Voyager year, if you count the TOS crossover in Greg Cox's No Time Like the Past.

Beyer also teased one thing to look forward to in Protectors, a meeting of Janeway and Picard:

Janeway comes to Picard seekeing a little perspective from somoene with whom she has shared many common experiences. One of the oddest realities to confront while writing it was that despite the fact that these two have a great deal in common, they really don't know each other all that well.

In another prose tease, I didn't spot it when he first posted, but looking at David Mack's recent post about Seekers, I noticed the teaser cover (ie not the real one) for the his first book in the series, Second Nature, has now been updated, with not just the new title, but a Klingon Bird of Prey menacing the USS Sagittarius:

Meanwhile, in the world of Trek comics, StarTrek.com have posted their second Writer's Log feature, this time Mike Johnson explains some of choices he made in Khan #2, including taking the series out of real world history (spoilers):

Here we see that the nuclear nightmare of the Cold War did in fact take place within the timeline of the STAR TREK universe, but not as a result of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Augments were responsible. Their attacks on Moscow and Washington D.C. signaled the beginning of their worldwide takeover.

Initially we discussed the Augments launching a singular attack on New York City, but in developing the story we realized that an attack on the capitals of the Cold War, the two most powerful nations of the time, was both logical and appropriately symbolic. Logical in that the attacks would immediately reset the balance of power in the world and create a void that the Augments could fill themselves, and symbolic in that the ascension of the Augments represented the end of our historical timeline and the beginning of the new one that leads to the 23rd century as we know it in STAR TREK.

This was the biggest point of discussion in developing the story: whether to make a clean break from “our” timeline, or whether to attempt to preserve history as we know it from the “real” 1990’s and early 2000’s. Ultimately the deciding factor was to embrace canon as we know it from STAR TREK itself, and in “Space Seed” it is clear that the 1990’s did not play out as we lived them. It’s a question that every story set in a specified future time period has to address eventually, given that our present will eventually catch up to it on the calendar. In fact, we’re only fifty years away from first contact with the Vulcans!

In the more whimsical realms of Star Trek publishing, Amazon have recently added a listing (which I found via Allyn Gibson on the TrekBBS. UPDATE: And may-not-be-final cover via the Simon and Schuster catalog), for a new Star Trek children's book from Cider Mill Press. Fun with Kirk and Spock, is due out in April, and the blurb tells you all about it:

See the Enterprise. See the Enterprise go boldly. Go Go Go, Enterprise! Go Boldly! Join Kirk and Spock as they go boldly where no parody has gone before!

Since the 1930’s, the book Fun with Dick and Jane and its various adaptations have helped children learn to read. It’s inspired several parodies and movie and television references, but none as amusing as this clever spoof, written with Trekkies in mind! The characteristic simplicity of the classic book is used in Fun with Kirk and Spock, delighting Trek fans with creative sequences and humorous illustrations.

Finally, Amazon have also updated their listing for Running Press' forthcoming miniature book and light-up USS Enterprise set, with a new image showing the, presumably, final form of the model: