I assume a phaser, which also appeared blue on the cover of the last Romulan War book (and have quite a history in Trek lit of being described by the wrong colours, and it seems now that the covers are keeping that proud tradition!)
Yep (along with red and yellow), but not in ENT, TNG or DS9, which consistently made them orange. I suspect there are RGB sliders on the tactical console
I believe TOS had a loose convention of blue for stun, red for kill, but I'm not sure how consistent they were about it. Although, really, a blue beam should be more powerful, since shorter wavelength means higher energy. We're conditioned to think of red and orange as hot because of fire and blue as cool because of water, but that's kind of backward. Blue stars are much hotter than red stars.
When Tears of Eridanus came out, someone commented on the fact that in the alternate timeline, photon torpedoes were blue-- but I intended nothing divergent by it! My perceptions were conditioned at a young age by 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites, where phasers were red, and photons were blue. I always default to imagining photons as blue unless otherwise indicated.
Personally I prefer to think that phaser beams are invisible in vacuum and that characters only see them on viewscreens due to computer enhancement, while viewers see them due to poetic license. So they can be whatever color one wants. (In atmosphere, they might well be visible. I don't have a link, but I recently saw a YouTube video of someone using a powerful, real laser beam, and there was a pretty clearly visible blue beam in the air, since the light was bright enough that even the small percentage scattered by the atmosphere was significant.)
Another cool note on the title, its referenced in the Cardassia: The Lotus Flower. Towards the end of the book, when Garak is walking home, it goes: "Dark skies and darker dreams, but still the city of crimson shadows."
Please refresh my memory...what are the titles of The Fall miniseries and when are they due out? And does each book focus on a specific series, like DS9 or TNG, or are they all-inclusive like Destiny?
Revelations and dust is the first book the second book is Crimson shadow. The books are a tng&Ds9 crossover book series there will be five books coming out.Losing the peace is one of the book in this crossover series .I'm sorry I can't recall all of the titles right now.
1. Revelation and Dust by David R. George III (August 27) 2. The Crimson Shadow by Una McCormack (September 24) 3. A Ceremony of Losses by David Mack (October 29) 4. The Poisoned Chalice by James Swallow (November 26) 5. Peaceable Kingdoms by Dayton Ward (December 31)
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Fall http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Fall