With the start of two new ongoing book-only series (Vanguard and Titan) this year, for the first time there are more of them than series directly based on Star Trek TV shows. We now have the five novel series that tie in with Star Trek, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise; and on the other side we have the book-only New Frontier, Stargazer, S.C.E., I.K.S. Gorkon, Titan, and Vanguard. I thought this would be a good time to look at the advantages and disadvantages, and the history of Star Trek’s book-only series.

One of the things that is probably advantageous for the TV-based series in contrast to book-only series, from the publisher’s point of view, is that they already have a big potential fanbase from their TV runs. While naturally not everyone who watched the respective TV series will automatically buy the books, there is a bigger chance that they will pick up a book about their favourite characters in a familiar surrounding than a book with a main cast they don’t know yet. That could be one of the reasons why the opening books of book-only Star Trek series featured at least one well-known TV character if the main cast doesn’t include one of them like in Stargazer or Titan – Spock in New Frontier, Martok and Worf in I.K.S. Gorkon, La Forge in S.C.E., and Kirk and the Enterprise crew in Vanguard.

A disadvantage of book-only series could be that the featured characters and universes in TV-based series often already have been given a solid background that the authors can draw from, and as a result they can concentrate on the story they want to tell, whereas book-only series have to introduce the reader to the characters and places first. But this argument can also be turned around, since the same known background can be like a corset which could hinder the authors to tell the stories exactly like they want to, because every major change must be reset at the end of the story to fit with the things we know about the series at these point of time.

Here the big plus for book-only series comes into play: the editors and authors have far more leeway in the way they can tell their stories and implement their ideas. They still have to respect certain long-standing basics of the Star Trek universe, but they can create their own little sandbox in the big playground called Star Trek.

The first Pocket Books non-TV Trek, which started almost ten years ago, was the Peter David series New Frontier. Although his work often splits the Star Trek literature fandom in half, his crew of Starfleet misfits, filled up with guest characters from TNG, and their sometimes bizarre adventures obviously were able to create a big enough group of followers to not only make Pocket Books publish the series for eight years and more than a dozen novels now, but also gave them reason to start additional book-only series. He paved the way for Michael Jan Friedman’s Stargazer, Keith R.A. DeCandido’s I.K.S. Gorkon, and the new multi-author series Vanguard and Titan. One special case among them is the monthly eBook Starfleet Corps of Engineers series. It started as an eBook-exclusive series, but soon was reprinted in paper form. While the schedule for the reprints still is way behind the eBook schedule, the S.C.E. series has acquired a loyal fanbase among the ‘dead tree society’, too. Besides being focused on eBooks, another thing special about the S.C.E. series is that it has become a chance for new authors, be it authors who are just starting their careers or people coming from different branches, like comic books or other genres, to make their first steps in the Star Trek universe.

The premises among the book only series are wide-ranging: we a have a series that fills gaps in a character’s history (Stargazer), a series that carries a ball brought into play by the latest movie (Titan), a series written from an alien point of view (I.K.S. Gorkon), a series with characteristics of a serial story (S.C.E.), and a series showing a familiar timeframe from a different point of view (Vanguard). But despite the different starting points, they all have one thing in common: they all show an interesting part of the Star Trek universe the TV hasn’t exposed, and therefore they add more depth to the Star Trek mythos and enhance the enjoyment of it for those who are able to look beyond what’s on TV.

I want to end with my impressions of the different book-only series:

New Frontier: Although the series has been running for nearly a decade now, it never gets boring, because Peter David knows when he has to shake things up a bit. And although his characters are often eccentric, he is able to make them likeable and they grow to your heart. Still my favourite among the book only series.

Stargazer: One thing Stargazer presents throughout most of the series is the great character work. The plots often aren’t really innovative, but what Michael Jan Friedman does with his characters rescues the novels more often than not. The series quality has decreased in my opinion in the last two instalments, though.

Starfleet Corps of Engineers: I’ve only read the stories published on paper, but those have made an S.C.E. fan out of me. With the exception of a few stories the series displays at least a decent quality, most of the time even more.

I.K.S. Gorkon: The series shows the Klingon culture from the inside and does so without humanising the Klingons. And although the characters remain alien to the reader, Keith R.A. DeCandido’s writing allows you to care for them and their fate.

Titan and Vanguard: Since there is only one book out for each of the series it’s not really possible to comment on the series, but the basic premises are interesting and the ‘pilots’ were a good start in both series.

Titan launched with Taking Wing and Vanguard with Harbinger, released by Pocket Books in April and August 2005 respectively.