I've been looking forward to this book. The Temporal Cold War plotline somewhat diminishes that excitement (as I gave up on Enterprise very quickly after sitting through seven years of Voyager), but it's good to hear that it's only one plotline among many.
I had no idea that the DTI weren't part of Starfleet, it makes sense though (I'm assuming they're a branch of the Federation?) and glad to know the blurb will be corrected. I just found that to be an odd phrase in the description.
You are reading the 'idiot' too literally. Perhaps it's best not to try and reconcile 1960s portrayals of women on TV with the tougher character of the movies.
Well, Lucsly & Dulmur were wearing business suits, not uniforms. And "Agent" is not a military title, as far as I know. Basically, the DTI is an investigative arm of the UFP government. The gaming supplement All Our Yesterdays: The Time Travel Sourcebook postulated that it was a branch of the Federation Science Council, and I chose to go with that. I've long felt that there's far too much of a tendency in the Trek audience to assume that Starfleet is the end-all and be-all of the Federation, to treat the two interchangeably and forget the existence of the civilian government and institutions to which Starfleet must answer. I've even heard some people claim that the Federation is a military dictatorship because of this assumption that Starfleet does everything. So I welcome the opportunity to explore the civilian side of UFP life. In The Buried Age, I got to depict civilian-style science and exploration in portions of the book; and here I get to write a whole novel from a civilian perspective (although naturally the DTI's work frequently involves dealing with Starfleet personnel, because Starfleet types do have this nasty habit of stumbling across temporal phenomena...).
I thought I was excited before! Can't wait to read this. Christopher has yet to disappoint me when it comes to his trek work and it looks like he won't be starting anytime soon
^Your time machine would have overshot. It's the May book, meaning it should be out as early as late April.
Now, now. They've only screwed up one book so far. Once they screw up Indistinguishable from Magic, then it's fair to worry about DTI.
It's a wonder the DTI isn't under stringent review, after they failed to save the lives of billions of Vulcans. Were Lucsly and Dulmur napping on the job?
I agree, and I've always wanted to see more of the civilian side of things. There must be a Federation Police force of some kind, in addition to the Merchant Service (referenced I believe in Bread and Circuses) and the Federation Science Council (who we did occasionally see on TNG). And they're likely the tip of the iceberg.
That's outside the DTI's jurisdiction. It happened in a timeline they don't have access to and have no knowledge of. Also, its triggering event happens five years after this novel. And as far as the Abrams timeline goes, its DTI presumably wouldn't even exist yet in the timeframe of the 2009 movie -- although it or an equivalent agency might be founded sooner in that timeline as a reaction to Nero's attacks.
This is why i am really looking forward to this, as you said starfleet seems to take over most of trek life and i really want to see more of the behind the scenes stuff. I loved Articles of the Federation by KRAD as well and would have loved a sequal to that. Star trek meets the west wing yes please
Dulmur (or was it Lucsly?) has knowledge of it. He told Jake Sisko as much in Needs of the Many. Not only that...what about the Federation timeships from the 29th century? I assume those grew out of the DTI. Cool, is this point addressed in the novel? I ask because every other time there's been a temporal incursion, Starfleet's gone out of its way to fix it, even if the changes were relatively minor.