Star Trek: Section 31: Disavowed - Dec. 2014?

Great! It doesn't hurt to have a future Game of Thrones star on the cover

 

That's a fabulous cover.

Great covers lately, in general, I think. Only semi-shirtless awkward-TMP-era Kirk was kind of weak, I've liked all the rest this year.

 

Exactly what I was thinking.

 

Fantastic cover! Tim Bradstreet is one of the best in the comic book cover business. It's nice to see his talents being used on Trek covers.

So...it seems Julian was promoted to full commander in 2381. Cool . I don't think we knew that yet, did we? did David mention it in Zero Sum Game?

 

If not in ZSG, it was definitely mentioned in Plagues of Night or Raise the Dawn.

 

Ah. Ok. I don't recall it being said what prompted his bump to full commander. What was it?

 

I was wondering if that is an actual recent picture they of Alexandre Siddig or if they just added the beard to a DS9 promo pic? Would they have access to pictures taken after the show ended for stuff like this?

 

Cover artists have used non-Trek reference photos for Trek actors before. The image of young Carol Marcus on the cover of Inception was based on a publicity photo of Bibi Besch from a 1970s TV movie. It depends on the actor, though. Some actors are picky about the images they'll clear for use.

 

That's a fantastic cover art with Julian Bashir . I just saw the article at Star trek.com. I can't wait to read this Section 31 book.

 

Tim Bradstreet is known for his art being very photo realistic, so it could have been drawn from all different kinds of reference pics. It's probably not just a re-touched older pic.

 

I hope the next DS9 novel after The Missing will have Ro on the cover. I don't know how they created it, but Star Trek Magazine #156 has a picture of 2382 Captain Ro for a Zero Sum Game article.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Ro_Laren

Oh yeah, and the same article had this picture of 2382 Bashir.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/File:Bashir_2382.jpg

 

I don't recall the reasons for his promotion, I just remember that he was a full commander in PoN/RtD.

 

Oh. Well he was a full commander in ZSG, they just didn't mention what prompted the promotion. I thought that you meant that it was stated in PoN/RtD WHY he was promoted. As you were.

 

I've just seen the cover. Brilliant!

 

Okay question. Someone mentioned in the thread about not being a Section 31 novel since 2001?!?! So is this novel basically continuing Abyss where Vaughn tells Bashir that they would tackle Section 31 in the future?!?!

 

Basically. When the Star Trek: Section 31 miniseries was published in the summer of 2001, the authors and editors were careful to end each book with the respective captains of TOS, TNG, and VOY learning about the existence of Section 31 and vowing to do what was necessary to bring them down. The DSN entry, Section 31: Abyss, ended on a similar note by having Vaughn recruit Bashir into the anti-Section 31 conspiracy that Captain Kirk founded in the TOS entry, Section 31: Cloak.

The idea was obviously that they were foreshadowing a future storyline in which Our Heroes would bring down Section 31, but for various and sundry reasons, this foreshadowed storyline never came about. Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels, in their 2007 ENT novel The Good That Men Do, tried to revive this storyline by depicting a 25th Century in which Section 31 had long since been publicly exposed and brought to justice, but the impression I get is that real life interfered with the Pocket crew's ability to bring this storyline about. First there were troubles getting the continuation of DSN's Mirror Universe arc, Fearful Symmetry, to publication (one author departed and was replaced partly through the process, and then the new author realized the story needed another entry, hence The Soul Key). Then Marco Palmieri was laid off and the entire Trek line made the responsibility of only one editor after the Great Recession hit in 2008.

I would date the revival of the Section 31 arc to David Mack's 2010 novel Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game. He and David R. George III were clearly starting to set the arc up again throughout their 2010-2013 novels (Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game; Typhon Pact: Plagues of Night; Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn; The Fall: A Ceremony of Losses). And I imagine that the success of 2012's Cold Equations trilogy made the publisher more amenable to the idea of re-visiting old plot arcs, since it was a direct sequel to 2002's Immortal Coil.

So, even though a decade's worth of events got in the way, I'm pretty excited to see the seeds planted in the original Section 31 miniseries are finally starting to bloom.

 

I'd like to take this opportunity again to put this bit of information out there, for those who might not have heard it or read it yet:

Section 31: Disavowed follows up directly on the events of several of my previous novels. In tandem with The Fall: A Ceremony of Losses and Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game, it forms the third installment of Julian Bashir's ongoing post-finale DS9 story arc. It also will follow up on the events depicted in the Mirror Universe novel Rise Like Lions. And there will be links to my second Cold Equations novel, Silent Weapons.

Chew on those tidbits until October…

 

Oh good, all books I've already read.

 

David, how was it decided that Section 31 would go from being the title of an interseries miniseries to being a banner title of its own?