Star Trek author Christopher L. Bennett ("Ex Machina", "Over a Torrent Sea") has announced that he is writing about book about the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations, introduced in the Deep Space Nine "Trials and Tribble-ations". The novel is expected to be released by Pocket Books in 2011. Details on that along with some more Trek book updates below.
Star Trek: DTI – the novel
Christopher L. Bennett made the book announcement on his blog, saying the working title of his next Trek project is "Star Trek: DTI" (with a more specific title to come later). After being introduced in "Trials and Tribble-ations" the Department of Temporal Investigations has shown up in some short stories and been referenced in some other novels, but this will be the first novel to focus on the time travel investigators. According to Bennett the book will be "like an FBI procedural". Bennett writes on his blog:
…don’t expect the conventional, done-to-death kind of time travel story where the heroes go back into the past and try to prevent or reverse a change in history. ST:DTI will have its own distinctive approach to time travel, its mechanics, and its consequences, and will explore numerous facets of the Department’s responsibilities.
It’s an exciting challenge to do this book. With Lucsly and Dulmur being the only established DTI members, and with them being virtual blank slates, this is closer to a fully original creation than any commissioned novel I’ve ever done (though you can expect to see a few more familiar faces showing up here and there). And it’s my chance to take the byzantine logic of Trek-universe time travel and offer a unifying theory with some degree of scientific credibility to it — while still having fun with it. On the other hand, with so few established characters or situations to draw on and a lot of ideas to cover, I’ve got my work cut out for me.
[more at Bennett’s blog]
Agents Lucsly and Dulmur were introduced in "Trials and Tribble-ations", here is the opening of that episode where they question Captain Sisko after he went back in time.
Hopefully we will learn more about the rest of Pocket’s Star Trek plans for 2011 soon. Traditionally Pocket Books announces the schedule for their upcoming Star Trek books in July, timed for the annual Shore Leave convention. However, TrekMovie has not been able confirm if Pocket will continue that tradition this year.
Other Book News: Covers & Clarifications
Simon & Schuster has revealed a covers for a couple of its upcoming Star Trek reprints. First up is a preliminary cover for "Star Trek: SCE: What’s Past
Heather Jarman, and Many Splendors by Keith R.A. DeCandido.
Pocket is also planning a second SCE compilation "Star Trek: SCE: Out of the Cocoon
S&S also posted the new cover for the reprint of "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Nightshade", which now touts how writer Laurell K. Hamilton is a "#1 New York Times Bestselling Author". "Nightshade" was written by Hamilton in 1992, before she went on to bestseller status with her series of "Anita Black: Vampire Hunter" novels.
Comparison of original and reprint cover
In other news, we recently reported that the next Peter David New Frontier novel (due next January) was going to be titled "Star Trek: New Frontier: Resolutions" but according to Pocket Books that was actually just a working title and the book is actually titled "Star Trek: New Frontier: Blind Man’s Bluff".
We also previously reported that Simon & Schuster were planning two young adult Star Trek movie "Starfleet Academy" tie-ins to be released in November. We have now confirmed "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Untitled Paperback #1" is being written by Rudy Josephs and "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Untitled Paperback #2" is being written by Rick Barba. These will be the first Star Trek novels for both, although Josephs wrote a Trek story for the "Shards and Shadows" compilation from 2009. Right now both Amazon and the Simon & Schuster site are listing both books as coming in both trade
paperback and hardcover. That is a bit unusual and TrekMovie has not been able to confirm this. Look for more info in our next books update.
DTI sounds good. But the SCE book didn’t say which stories are being reprinted.
Great stuff! Love Lucsley and Dulmer. This is an area ripe for exploration.
Give us the rest of the Romulan war!
What’s the status of the Haynes Manual?
Ah good.
#1, if you want to know, go to either Wikipedia or Memory Beta and it’ll tell you what’s being reprinted.
I’d like to see the covers for the Typhon Pact books.
Christopher L Bennett is the perfect choice to write this book — his attention to Trek history and detail as well as his dedication to serious world-building with a clear eye on the SCI in SCI-FI has me very excited to read this!
Maybe he can finally connect a Red-Matter black hole with a sling shot around the sun?!
Also I hope we get to see Daniels and Captain Braxton! Every thing Trek-time-travel! If anybody can do it, its Bennett.
GOOD LUCK SIR!
It took me a while to warm up to CLB’s books, but now he’s like Peter David and Diane Carey — automatic purchase. :) I can’t wait!
By the way, which SCE story features the Klingon-Jewish wedding? This sounds like something I must read for the lulz.
Too bad none of that helps the screwup they did by pulling the JJVerse novels this year.
#2 – Agreed!
#7 – OTOH, Pocket now will not go for four months without getting money from me. ;)
The DTI book sounds intriguing, and I think Christopher is a good choice to write it, too.
I’m also hoping for more Vanguard and Titan in 2011, and while it might be asking a bit much, another Excelsior book wouldn’t be at all unwelcome. ;)
Best,
Alex
Let me see if I’ve got this right…..the new movie has relaunched the franchise on the basis that the time travel premise has changed. You go back in time NOW and it becomes an alternate reality. No returning to where you came from…how then do you publish novels on the old Trek premise of going back and returning to the present to where they have to investigate what you did??
Talk about Paramount wanting their timelines and eating it, too!
Good point, Harry.
Sounds as if Pocket, with it’s reduced management, has lost track of Star Trek’s new direction re: time travel. ‘Temporal Investigations’ could be fun, though, if we just ignore it.
#11: Or they just decided that the half-assed “the science made us do it” rationale for the quarter-assed reboot approach wasn’t their cuppa.
Or, more likely, they really are making an honest attempt at reconciling the whole magilla (and if so, my hat’s off in sympathy). When we did our Trek time-travel sourcebook for Last Unicorn Games back in the creaky olden days, nonlinear time had already been on-screen in Trek, so we had to include both approaches and treat them as mutually compatible, where there are both full-on parallels created at every juncture, _and_ the possibility of traveling along a single, mutable timeline (sadly, the author of the Parallels chapter had to make such extensive use of the word “quantum” that it was unavailable to buzzword-heavy pop-science journalists for nearly a week afterward … I heard rumors that some committed suicide, literally unable to write an article without it).
Re: time travel, I think we just have to accept that both types of time travel exist, regardless of what the current movie regime insist. It’s that, or ignore most of the last 40 odd years of existing Trek time travel stories.
Works for me. :)
I think I can safely say that once you’ve read my new book, you’ll see how the different presentations of time travel in ST can be reconciled.
Mr. Bennett,
I must say you are an excellent writer. From reading Ex Machina and The Buried Age, you have a great understanding of the Star Trek universe. Thank you for all the great stories you have given us readers! I wish you the best of luck on Star Trek: DTI!!
From a thankful fan,
Zac (aka Gorn)
If Christopher Bennett is writing it, I’m buying it. :-)
Terry Farrell in a mini. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
This is all fine and dandy, but I want more Enterprise!!
Finnish the Romulan war saga i can’t wait to see what happens espically with Trip and Travis. Plus this new tempral investigations sounds Great.
(P.S)
more new E audio book on iTunes
I love Trek and also time travel stories, so I can’t wait for the DTI novel.
I’d also like to see more of Enterprise novels, there’s so few of them.
14
So it wil acknowledge the diff styles from linear time travel to predestination paradox to new universe time travels?
I’m surprised they haven’t done a DTI novel before this. Christopher’s a good writer. Looking forward to this.
Seriously, the last chapter in the Temporal Investigations should be Agents Lucsly and Dulmur waking up in the JJ-verse, squinting at all the lens flare and shiny consoles and just be like, “Aw, what the hell just happened now?!”
*POOM* LOST
Or something like that.
Seriously, if this book can somehow reconcile all the reboots and resets (both JJ and Voyager) and alternate realities and Guardians of Forever time travelling, slingshotting around the sun, and just-what-the-heck-was-that-thing-in-FC-that-got-the-Ent-E-back-to-the-24th-Century into a coherent whole, I would be very excited.
No, dagnabbit, give me more of the DS9 relaunch before I go crazy! D: Or–or I’ll have to write it myself! And then no one will be happy.
The “DTI” novel sounds interesting. Those guys make me laugh. xD They’re so THIS IS SRS BSNS in “Trials”.
Lucsly and Dulmur = Scully and Muldur (X-Files)
Ron Moore confirmed it himself.
I am very excited about this book! I’ve been wanting to see more of the DTI ever since “Trials and Tribble-ations”, and now we get a whole book about them–and by no less a talent than CLB himself! I can’t wait!!
Yeah, DTI will be sweet indeed.
Lets hope we find out who “Future Guy” from Enterprise was.
His outline sure looked Romulan to me, but who knows?
#25–A new DS9 book is due out later this year (part of the Typhon Pact).
#10–I think Abrams time travel/alternate universe idea was not meant to replace all the other versions we saw. His is simply another way of doing it. His time travel story resulted in a permanent new universe that could not be reset, like many of the previous stories
I actually do believe there are multiple effects of time travel in Trek. There’s the universes where the changes ripple along and the characters experience it yet don’t remember it, (think Year of Hell), characters experience the change and do remember it (City on the Edge of Forever) and each one creates an alternate reality (like in Star Trek) it’s just one big hellova multiverse out there, and the particular window that we’ve been watching on Star Trek is the one where the characters react and try to fix the changes ala Temporal Investigations or Relativity.
I think it’s a great idea. They can roshambo JJ.