Spoilers TOS: Harm's Way by David Mack Review Thread

[DEWLine]

Finally got my own copy a week or two ago!

Just got to the description of Vanguard's general location...and as I am now working on a map of rimward space in the general region of the Taurus Reach as part of my hobby map-making, I am going to have some additional fun with the description of Vanguard's location, trying to reconcile the text with the published location in Stellar Cartography. 400 light-years from Andoria!

Honest, this is fun! I started with one project to help a new friend out a couple of years back, and now I'm up to five! I enjoy doing the digging and I learn about about the local region of our Galaxy in the process, and it keeps me excited!

 

[David Mack]

Or, you could … y'know … just ask me.

 

[DEWLine]

That's also true. I'd be interested to know what led you to that choice. Consider the question asked.

 

[Christopher]

Just got to the description of Vanguard's general location...and as I am now working on a map of rimward space in the general region of the Taurus Reach as part of my hobby map-making, I am going to have some additional fun with the description of Vanguard's location, trying to reconcile the text with the published location in Stellar Cartography. 400 light-years from Andoria!

Which I assume you'll do by setting the Z-axis distance above or below the plane of the page to whatever value is needed to make the hypotenuse come out to 400 ly. It's always annoyed me that the Star Charts/Stellar Cartography maps (except in the first few pages of the former) are strictly 2D and do nothing to acknowledge the Z axis, but it does give a lot of wiggle room for setting distances.

 

[David Mack]

It was a request from my editor, Marco Palmieri, that Starbase 47, aka Starbase Vanguard, be situated fairly far from the Federation’s core systems of 2265–2269, and because of the overall plot of the Vanguard saga, the station needed to be located between the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly.

I can't recall if it was me or Marco who chose to name this region of unclaimed interstellar space “the Taurus Reach,” but I recall the name was inspired by the fact that it lies along a straight-line path between the Sol system and the Taurus Dark Cloud (which is actually MUCH farther out). Consequently, we ended up overlaying the Shedai’s territory upon that of the former Tkon Empire.

Using the Star Charts Alpha/Beta quadrant overview maps, that puts Vanguard only about 200 ly from the core systems on a straight line, but we need to assume it’s either above or below the galactic equator in order to yield a stated distance of 400 ly from Sol. To create that level of two-dimensional compression, it would need to be +/- approximately 350 ly from the ecliptic. Pretty close to the galactic barrier, which tracks perfectly with the story of book one, which entails Enterprise encountering the station unexpectedly after its return from the galactic barrier in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

 

[DEWLine]

Okay, so going by the X-Y neighbourhood roughly, I narrow it to this particular "column" of interstellar space...which I am going to define as +150 to -150 parsecs (489.45 ly) along the Z-axis...and if memory serves, @David Mack, you, Dayton and Kevin - with input from Marco - wanted it to be a standalone facility, not orbiting any star or planet?

HYGMap

Also, because "Taurus Reach", it still has to be somewhat proximate to stars in that constellation...

Aim point RA: 3h 29m 14s Dec: +4°48'10"

So, that general neighbourhood as viewed from Sol system and Andoria?

 

[David Mack]

Okay, so going by the X-Y neighbourhood roughly, I narrow it to this particular "column" of interstellar space...which I am going to define as +150 to -150 parsecs (489.45 ly) along the Z-axis...and if memory serves, @David Mack, you, Dayton and Kevin - with input from Marco - wanted it to be a standalone facility, not orbiting any star or planet?

Correct. The station was constructed in interstellar space.

HYGMap

Also, because "Taurus Reach", it still has to be somewhat proximate to stars in that constellation...

Aim point RA: 3h 29m 14s Dec: +4°48'10"

So, that general neighbourhood as viewed from Sol system and Andoria?

I won’t even pretend I understand what I’m looking at when I open those links. I see names and numbers and lines, but I’ll have to take your word for it.

If you have a copy of Star Charts handy, the position I marked for Starbase Vanguard, just so that all of us working on the series would have the same point of reference, is found on page 37, the political map of the Alpha Quadrant. It lies just left of the Alpha/Beta meridian, just above the orange radius line beneath the R in “TKON EMPIRE”.

 

[DEWLine]

So...from this...
Alpha Quadrant - Star Trek_ Vanguard by Dwight Williams, on Flickr

...to this?

Excerpt from Research by Dwight Williams, on Flickr

I added the sector grid myself as part of my design process.

I've got it roughly at Alpha Quadrant, X: + 20 to 0 ly, Y: -180 to -200 ly. Based on the information I cobbled together from HYGMap.space and Fourmilab.ch up-thread, Z axis positioning is probably in the negative numbers somewhere within at least -150 to -250.

 

[Ronald Held]

Mr. Mack, was the intent to put Vanguard close to the galsctic barrier?

 

[David Mack]

Mr. Mack, was the intent to put Vanguard close to the galsctic barrier?

I hadn't consciously planned it that way, no. But we'd always meant for it to be waaaaay out there, so that Enterprise could encounter it while limping home from Delta Vega. This latest realization that it would have needed to be far enough +/- the galactic ecliptic plane just reinforces that story choice. Happy accident.

 

[David Mack]

So...from this...
Alpha Quadrant - Star Trek_ Vanguard by Dwight Williams, on Flickr

...to this?

Excerpt from Research by Dwight Williams, on Flickr

I added the sector grid myself as part of my design process.

I've got it roughly at Alpha Quadrant, X: + 20 to 0 ly, Y: -180 to -200 ly. Based on the information I cobbled together from HYGMap.space and Fourmilab.ch up-thread, Z axis positioning is probably in the negative numbers somewhere within at least -150 to -250.

Yeah, that looks about right.