Over Thanksgiving I read Patrick Stewart’s new memoir, Making It So, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading it put me in mind of Star Trek, even though Stewart’s time on the show and the films make up a relatively small portion of the book. I know little Star Trek lore beyond what most casual viewers of the show know. Indeed, I’ve never seen most episodes of the original series. The series with which I am most familiar is The Next Generation, and even there I have large gaps in my viewing. Deep Space Nine, and Voyagers are unknown to me. I have seen and enjoyed the newer films, but I understand that there are supposed to take place on an alternate timeline.
And thus begins the complications of the last few days. Arriving back from a long holiday weekend in New York, and needing a break from the long run of nonfiction I’ve been reading lately (18 out of the last 20 books), I was looking for something fun and entertaining to read and it occurred to me: what about a Star Trek novel?
I can hear those of your with much greater Star Trek knowledge than I possess laughing. It is one thing to want to read a Star Trek novel. It is something else entirely to figure out where to begin. Within 20 minutes of searching, I discovered the Star Trek “Lit-verse” and it is as vast as Gene Roddenberry’s galaxy. In a situation like this, the easiest thing for me is to begin at the beginning. But I couldn’t even find a list of all of the Star Trek novels in publication order. The Wikipedia page that lists Star Trek novels is huge, and contains multiple, overlapping lists. A single sub-list (“numbered novels”) contains 97 entries between 1979-2002.
More searching led me to The Trek Collective which had a Trek-Lit Reading Order Flow Chart, the complexity of which reminded me of a diagram one might find in Engineering on the Enterprise. While impressive in its detail and complexity, it made it no clearer where to start. The Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Guide broke things down by series, but it still didn’t answer the simple question, “Where should I start?” It did offer a useful piece of advice, however:
My goal here was to include every link possible and leave the continuity problems up to the reader to resolve. If you don’t want a book in your personal continuity, then just ignore it. Don’t become so invested in continuity that you forget to enjoy the stories themselves.
Ultimately, I opted for three books from different series to start with, mostly by hunt-and-peck method:
- Captain to Captain by Greg Cox
- The Captain’s Oath by Christopher L. Bennett
- The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway by Una McCormack
I began reading Captain to Captain yesterday and, so far, it has been a lot of fun. Just the kind of fun that I was looking for.
I asked ChatGPT the following just after I started reading Captain to Captain: “I want to start reading some novels in the Star Trek universe, but there are so many of them I don’t even know where to begin. Can you suggest a pathway through these novels that makes sense?” ChatGPT responded with the following list to start with:
The Original Series
- Spock’s World by Diane Duane
- The Entropy Effect by Vonda N. McIntyre
The Next Generation
- Q-Squared by Peter David
- Imzadi by Peter David
Deep Space Nine
- The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack
- A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson
Voyager
- Full Circle by Kirsten Beyer
Enterprise
- The Good That Men Do by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin
Crossover Novels
- Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
New Frontier series by Peter David
“Discovery” and “Picard” novels
Obviously, I’m still figuring out which direction to go here. If anyone has advice or suggestions as to how to tackle this thorny problem, or if anyone knows of a list that guides one through a good selection of the novels and stories in the Star Trek universe, I’d be grateful if you shared your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.
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I can give you a list of the ones I own (these are all Original Series novels):
You really can’t go wrong with anything by Diane Duane, but The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally are excellent. Also check out her underrated Doctor’s Orders.
The Tears of the Singers by Melinda Snodgrass (she also wrote TNG’s outstanding episode, “The Measure of a Man”)
Uhura’s Song by Janet Kagan
Yesterday’s Son and Time for Yesterday by A.C. Crispin
Bonnie, great recommendations! I’ve added them to my list. Thank you!
This year I read A Stitch in Time by Andrew Robinson because the audiobook was just released (read by the author). I’m also almost done with The 34th Rule by Armin Shimerman. Both of them were written by the actors and it was fun to get the additional insight into the backstories of Garak and Quark respectively. I’m not sure if there are any other books written by the actors off the top of my head though.
Isaiah, that is so cool that some of the actors have gone on to write Star Trek books. Thanks for calling them to my attention.
You had to go there! Once upon a time, working as a teenage grocery store bag boy at night while in high school, I would race home on Thursday night to get there one minute before the original tv show started at 9pm…..like it was only yesterday…..instead of 60 years ago. Really….thanks for the memories. ‘Live long…and prosper!’ 🖖
Hope you enjoy CAPTAIN TO CAPTAIN!
FYI: That’s Book One of a trilogy!
Greg, the book was a lot of fun. And going in, I did not know it was anything other than a stand-alone, until basically the last couple of pages. 🙂 Now I have to read the others to find out how it ends.
Greg Cox has asked me to inform you that his book is the first one in a trilogy.
Thanks for passing the message, Michael. Greg commented about the same time you did.
Since you admit you’re not that fluent in the original series, why not start at the ACTUAL beginning with the Star Trek novelizations by James Blish? Then move on to the novelizations of the original cast movies. And then, with a now-firm grounding in canon, you can move on to the various original fiction stuff which can’t really ever be considered canon, given the number of different authors and series. I’d recommend the works of Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, btw.