Pocket Books Launches New Exclusive eBook Trek Line

Pocket Books, the publisher of the Star Trek books line, today made a surprising announcement - they've launched a completely new Star Trek novel series, to be published exclusively in electronic format. The first title in the series, 'Star Trek S.C.E. Book One - The Belly of the Beast', written by Dean Wesley Smith, is already available now, with more books expected in the coming months.

The new novel series, called 'Star Trek: S.C.E.', features the original adventures of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, and will be available only in digital form. Publication in print would also be impractical, as the Trek eBooks will only be about 30% the size of regular paperback novels, though one could speculate that in the future Pocket might publish paperback reprints of several of the installments in the series together.

The novel series is based around the crew of the U.S.S. Da Vinci, one of the ships of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, overseen by Captain Montgomery Scott. In 'The Belly of the Beast', the first book in the series, Enterprise Engineer Geordi LaForge is temporarily assigned to assist Captain David Gold and the rest of the Da Vinci crew to explore the hulk of a gigantic starship from an unknown part of space. Later books in the series will feature just the crew of the Da Vinci itself, which includes several characters previously seen on TNG and DS9. In September, Pocket will be publishing the second installment in the series, Keith R.A. DeCandido's 'Fatal Error', followed by Christie Golden's 'Hard Crash' in October.

The new novel series will be available first in the Microsoft Reader format as part of a promotional program for this eBook format, and after that will become available for other formats as well. You will be able to buy the novels from the eBook store at Barnes & Noble.

More information on this, including a full plot description of the first book in the series, the actual press release from Pocket, links to articles on eBooks in general and answers from Pocket Books editor John Ordover on this, can be found on the What's New page at Psi Phi.

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