Just read the latest book in the Titan series. I must say, of all the current Trek novel series, for me, this is turning into the most "Trek" of them all. After initially being snagged into the politics of the Alpha Quadrant post Nemesis and then getting pulled into the Borg Invasion covered in Destiny, for the most part, the adventures of Riker's first command HAVE been stories about boldly going. They truly have been getting out there in uncharted areas of the galaxy and have been exploring some REALLY amazing phenomenae and cool science fiction ideas. British writer James Swallow takes the baton from Christopher L Bennett who dazzled us last with Over a Torrent Sea and takes Titan and co into an area of space rent by strange phenomena making it difficult to travel in. They also encounter a race of AIs unlike any you have met before (though I wondered whether the race that created V'Ger may have been these beings, or ones like them). The AIs are at war, too, which has made them reclusive, conservative and paranoid. And it's into this cauldron Titan is plunged. Great stuff, thoroughly enjoyed.
Yes, it was quite good. I'm enjoying the Titan's crew and Ree's progressing character. His declaration in "Taking Wing" that he wasn't an empath was just a Chekovian Gun waiting to be pulled. I think it's also good we finally get to go into the Beta Quandrant, that unknown abyss of non-Trekness (until now).
Well, technically half the Federation's in the Beta Quadrant, and Earth spends half of every year there, since the dividing line goes straight through Sol. Klingon and Romulan territory are in the Beta Quadrant, pretty much all of the worlds attacked by the Borg in Destiny were there, and Titan's entire active lifetime has been spent there except when it was in more farflung parts of the universe. The DS9 tendency to refer to the entire territory of the UFP and its neighbors as "the Alpha Quadrant" is kind of like how Europe is considered part of "the West" even though the vast majority of it is in the Eastern Hemisphere.
While I know Earth is defined as the boundary between the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, it always seemed to me that since the Romulan and Klingon Empires were there, the Federation's expansion was checked in that direction. It also seemed that the Romulan/Federation border was closer to Earth than the Cardassian border was, and that the bulk of the Federation's expansion had occurred in the Alpha Quadrant. So a 2380 map of the Federation would not show Earth as being in the geographic centre of the Federation any more. That's just my two cents worth. Do Trek writers have a publicly available map that they prefer to use to help continuity when working out the geography for prospective stories? In the series it always seemed to me that they never really gave much exposure to the Beta Quadrant, especially after the Cardassians debuted in TNG.
Just to clarify a few things, here is a map of the territories in this part of the galaxy. it's taken from the Star Trek Starcharts, pages 36, 37, 56 and 57.
We just discussed this on Literary Treks as Bruce Gibson returns to help us cover the rest of the 24th Century books!
Thanks all for the kind words about Synthesis - and it was great to hear the Literary Treks deep-dive on the book, it sent me back to revisit some of my notes on the novel... Geoff Mandel's Star Charts is my go-to for Trek astrogeographic reference. It's an excellent book, and I'm not just saying that because he named a nebula after me....
It is always so fun to dig into these books and I am always thankful when they have themes worth chewing on long after I've read the book!