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Thursday 2 June 2016

Latest Star Trek book covers: Legacies, novelisations, Encylopedia, and more

Lots of Star Trek book covers for you today, including the 50th anniversary novel trilogy in print and audiobook form, a new omnibus of classic novelisations, the latest Star Trek Encyclopedia, and more!

The big prose event of the fiftieth anniversary year is the Legacies trilogy, and the first two covers have now been released, which you can see below. To mark just how big an event this is, Simon and Schuster are not just releasing this in print and ebook form, but also as audiobooks! Author Dayton Ward broke this news on his blog, revealing the unabridged recordings will be read by actor Robert Petkoff. The novelisations of the first two nuTrek movies got audiobook releases, but the last original novel to get an (English language) audio version was Vulcan Soul: Epiphany, way back 2007!

The first of those audiobooks is already available to pre-order on Amazon, alongside the print and ebook version's of Greg Cox's Captain to Captain. Here's the cover, which features a special extended version of the cover art:


And here's the cover in book-shape:


For a refresh of the blurb, here's the back cover too!


Book two is David Mack's Best Defense, and the covers of both the written and audio versions are out for that too. This one follows in August.



And again here's the blurb on the back cover:


The covers for Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore's final book in the series, Purgatory's Key, have yet to be revealed. That concluding part of the series will arrive bang on the anniversary in September.

Already available to fill you with TOS goodness is Star Trek: The Classic Episodes, an omnibus of the James Blish and J. A. Lawrence novelisations of TOS episodes in a single leather-bound volume from Barnes and Noble. The book doesn't quite contain the whole series, edited down to bit over half of the best episodes, forty-five episodes in total, as StarTrek.com explained:
Our editorial team had been wanting for some time to add a Star Trek-themed title to our collectible editions line and when we realized that 2016 would mark the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek television series we saw a golden opportunity. The book’s editor remembered reading as a teenager the twelve Star Trek collections published between 1967 and 1977 for which science fiction writer James Blish adapted the scripts for all of the episodes from the original series as short stories. Working with our partners at Penguin Random House, who published the original story collections, we chose the forty-five episodes that we thought Star Trek fans would instantly recognize as classics: “The Menagerie” and “The City on the Edge of Forever,” both of whose scripts won science fiction’s prestigious Hugo Award;  “The Trouble with Tribbles”; “The Doomsday Machine;” and episodes that had originally been scripted by Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, David Gerrold, and other leading science fiction writers. CBS generously provided our design team with the artwork that adorns the book’s bonded-leather case, and production stills of the cast and the USS Enterprise that we use for endpapers. The result is a book that we hope will thrill Star Trek fans and pay tribute to a landmark of our popular culture.
There is also an excerpt from the new introduction by Norman Spinrad (who wrote The Doomsday Machine) on StarTrek.com. Here's the cover:


Meanwhile another returning title is the Star Trek Encyclopedia. A newly updated two-hardcover-volume release, written once more by Michael and Denise Okuda, is due in October. Amazon has given us the first look at the covers, mostly obscured by the slipcase:


There is also a new blurb for the set:
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the classic show, a fully authorized revision of the popular reference companion: a two-volume encyclopedia featuring a completely new design, stunning new full-color photographs and illustrations, and 300 pages of new entries, packaged in a specially designed and shrink-wrapped deluxe slipcase.

When it debuted in 1966, the Star Trek series quickly became a pop culture phenomenon, inspiring six spin-off series and thirteen films—including Star Trek Beyond, opening July 22, 2016—as well as books, comics, games, toys, and more. One of the largest franchises of all time, Star Trek’s overall box office revenue totals more than $1.93 billion to date.

Since it’s initial publication twenty-five years ago, The Star Trek Encyclopedia has been the go-to source for everything related to the franchise’s canon. Packed with highly detailed information, including brief episode and film synopses, no other book has come close to offering the same wealth of insight into the Star Trek universe. Now, The Star Trek Encyclopedia has been thoroughly revised and redesigned for a new generation of fans. This updated and expanded edition includes 300 more pages, information, photographs and illustrations, and offers exhaustively researched and detailed entries on the characters, ships, and events from the last fifteen years of Star Trek television shows and films, including Star Trek: Voyager seasons 4-7, Star Trek: Enterprise seasons 1-4, and Star Trek Nemesis. It also features material detailing the recent big-screen films Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Packaged in a stunning deluxe slipcase, this two-volume set is a must-have for every Star Trek fan’s library.

A somewhat less grand release came last month in the latest Star Trek Miniature Edition from Running Press. The Light and Sound Communicator is a small model of the TOS prop, accompanied with a booklet, by Chip Carter, detailing the object. Here's the latest image:


The communicator follows similar previous releases of a TOS phaser and the USS Enterprise, and due in August is another entry in the series, a shuttlecraft.


To keep track of all the latest releases, hit the books buttons on my 2016 and 2017 schedule pages. You can also find series reading lists and author bibliographies on my dedicated Star Trek lists site.



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1 comment:

  1. Unknown3 June 2016 at 11:57

    I'm curious if Captain to Captain uses the same Number One as Peter David's New Frontier books. The character reveal, though in many cases it was used for comic effect, was rather inspired, and one of my favourite nods.

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