Pocket Books News

Over at Psi Phi's Star Trek Books BBS, David Henderson has posted an edited chat log of yesterday's live 'Star Trek: New Earth' chat. Here are some of the more newsworthy parts of the chat:

HOST ETV Bina: John, JMBarsalou wants to know the title of the series with the USS Challenger. If you mentioned this already, I missed it; sorry.

John Ordover: I'm leaning toward Challenger, and that's what it will most likely be. It's just that New Earth is selling so well, it's tempting to use the marketing hook of continuing the name. [...] It'll probably be 'From the pages of the New Earth saga - Star Trek: Challenger'.

HOST ETV Bina: MJJCK would like to know when the 2nd Challenger book will be in stores.

John Ordover: MJJCK, the second Challenger book will be in next year's crossover. After that, "Your Future is Hazy. Ask Again Later."

HOST ETV Bina: Purplechris3: Q: Anything special planned for TOS # 100? That'll be here before too much longer.

John Ordover: The last books that run up to 100 will bring our TOS numbered line to an end.The will be immediatel followed by a continuing series called... Star Trek: The Original Series. It will start the line over just after Corbomite Maneuver, and take the story forward, with a lot of attention paid to the Lower Decks characters.

We will probably turn that into a six-book event of its own... call it "New Life" for now. Diane will do the first three, that end the line, and L.A. Graf are slated for the first trilogy in this continuing line.

[By] Lower Decks characters, I mean people like Angela Martine, Tomlinson, etc. etc. The real, honest-to-gosh lower decks characters. Plus, for instance, a red shirt who died in mid-second-season would be built up so that by the time he dies, you care - kind of like what we did in the Brother's Keeper books with Gary Mitchell - when you go back to WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE, we hope you'll feel a bit more punch because of the background we gave in the novels.

If you stare at the lower decks characters long enough, you can find lots of stuff going on - for instance, Angela Martine was marrying one guy in Balance of Terror, but then he died - and in Shore Leave, she showed up dating someone else. What was -that- story about?:)

So we'll let Kirk, Spock, and the primary and secondary cast run the command stuff from a bit offstage, while focusing in on the lower decks characters. We're not dropping any other approach to TOS publishing save the rote numbered line. We're just going to add in this approach as well. It'll progress in single-author trilogies, so will be intermitent since one author will have to actually -read- the books of another author to be able to continue the story.:) Maybe we'll even show the christmas party where Kirk and Helen Noel hooked up.:)

We've been working on this for a while now, but a month ago Star Trek Monthly coincidentally did a run-down of all the minor players, so we have a bible in hand now.:) That's all the answers I have right now. First books will be in 2002 at the earliest.

In other news, the official Star Trek site has put up two articles dealing with new Pocket Books products. In the first article, Kevin Dilmore also writes about the 'New Earth' novel series, including comments from John Ordover and many of the authors working on the series. The second article is reporting that the 2001 set of Star Trek Calendars from Pocket Books has arrived. More info on the six calendars can be found by clicking any of the links below, which will take you to Amazon's description pages for them:

• The Original Series 20001 Calendar

• The Next Generation 2001 Calendar

• Deep Space Nine 2001 Calendar

• Voyager 2001 Calendar

• Ships of the Line 2001 Calendar

• Stardate 2001 Calendar

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