Book bits: Post-The Fall hints, Rise of the Federation, and more

Next time on TNG and DS9...

A few bits of books news for you, starting with the new hints of Trek-lit to come after The Fall. In a recent interview with Trek FM's Literary Treks podcast, Dayton Ward, mainly discussing his finale to The Fall, Peaceable Kingdoms, also briefly discussed what's coming next, giving the first hint of what Una McCormack's Home Again might be dealing with, and also seeming to give further confirmation David R. George III will be continue the DS9 story at some point, as well as maybe seeming to imply he is himself in line to continue the TNG adventures:

I think it takes place fairly soon after Peaceable Kingdoms, at least in the continuity. In fact I believe it's going to follow up on a thread. Because right now Crusher, the way I had it at the end of Peaceable Kingdoms, Crusher's on her way to DS9 to act as an interim chief medical officer, until they can find a permanent replacement for Bashir. Now whether she stays there or not, remains to be seen, but given her family situation, I don't expect that she'll stay there very long. Plus I kind of said at the end of Peaceable Kingdoms, that she's going to meet up with the Enterprise at some point soon. But I think Una wants to tell a story with her at DS9, before I, or whoever, gets to pick them up again. It will be fun with, David George is writing a story where she is going to be the CMO of Deep Space 9, so you know, who knows...

Meanwhile in another podcast, Trek Mate's Ten Forward, James Swallow, also primarily talking about his The Fall entry, The Poisoned Chalice, also briefly discussed next month's Titan ebook, Absent Enemies, confirming John Jackson Miller's novella will picking up the Titan thread following The Fall:

That follows directly on from the events of The Poisoned Chalice. It's a bit more of a stand-alone story, but that's got some interesting stuff. Again, it has Riker as Admiral, trying to fit that in with the role that Titan's portrayed in previous books.

Meanwhile, looking ahead to April's release of the next Enterprise: Rise of the Federation novel, Tower of Babel, Christopher L. Bennett has updated his website, with commentary on the development of the novel, including discussion of what the book will be exploring:

It's hard for me to look at Tower of Babel objectively, since the writing process was so turbulent. There are probably things I could've done better, but now that I think about it, there are a number of things I'm rather proud of. In particular, I had fun with the worldbuilding of the Rigel system, taking all the disparate references to Rigel this and Rigel that in the screen canon, along with the ones in the current novel continuity, and building a cohesive whole out of them. Why did I choose Rigel as the first major addition to the young Federation? Because I wanted Archer to go after a major prize, a coalition of worlds whose addition to the union would increase its size and power significantly in one fell swoop, so that the stakes would be as high as possible. And I didn't just want to create some hitherto-unknown civilization, since that would raise the question of why it was never heard of later on. Rigel has so many distinct worlds and cultures that it gave me a rich multispecies community in a single system -- although it did come with certain conceptual problems and contradictions that I had to navigate my way around. Also, ENT's "Demons" and "Terra Prime" had included Rigelians among the delegates to the initial Coalition of Planets talks, and a couple of earlier sources (the classic Spaceflight Chronology and the novel Starfleet Year One) had postulated Rigel as a founding or very early member of the Federation, in contrast to the traditionally accepted founders of Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar, and Alpha Centauri. So the idea of Rigel being in at the beginning, or nearly so, had some precedent.

A little closer still, next month's Voyager novel, Kirsten Beyer's Protectors, is starting to show up right now, and Simon and Schuster have put up an excerpt to tempt you with. You can find all of chapter one, here.

Continue after the jump for a little more from the authors of The Fall books:

With The Fall concluding in this month's novel, Peaceable Kingdoms, Dayton Ward wrote on StarTrek.com about his book. So if you've not read it yet, here's what you've got to look forward to:

My book features Captain Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, dispatched on what amounts to a last-ditch effort to expose the truth behind the assassination of Federation President Nanietta Bacco and the increasingly hawkish approach to the interstellar political landscape championed by her successor, interim President Ishan Anjar. While there is no hard evidence implicating anyone in Bacco’s murder, suspicions about Anjar and those who elevated him to power continue to grow. When new information about the temporary president comes to light, Picard and his crew set out to find the truth, once and for all.

Everything’s been building to this, I suppose, and after the superb work performed by my fellow wordsmiths, it’s up to me to stick the landing. It was tremendous fun working with the other authors on this project, all the more so because I consider each of them friends. I’d like to think I did their efforts justice, but that’s for readers to decide. As for what might be next for the crews of the Enterprise, Deep Space Nine, Titan and Aventine? Let’s just say that plans definitely are afoot!

You can hear Dayton talking much more extensively about his book in the aforementioned Literary Treks podcast.

And finally, here's another sample from James Swallow's interview on Ten Forward, where in discussing his book, The Poisoned Chalice, he revealed the origins of some of the interesting new characters he introduced for a new ship that featured, which were initially envisioned for an original audio series from Big Finish:

We talked, just vaguely; wouldn't it be cool if we could do a Star Trek audiodrama series, like we do with the Doctor Who ones. What would it be like? What would we do? And we kicked around a bunch of ideas, and I wrote up a proposal document, and it was going to be the USS Lionheart. And we had these ideas, and I had these vague sketches of these characters, and it never went anywhere, and it ended up just sitting on my hard-drive. And then years later here I am putting this stuff together, and I realised I needed a ship and a crew, and I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could actually bring the Lionheart characters to life somewhere.