2026 Novel Releases

[The Wormhole]

Five years after the Dominion War would be roughly around the same time as the Lower Decks episode that visited DS9.

Five years after the Dominion War ended would be 2380, which is one year prior to the first season of Lower Decks.

I do wonder if this will take the comics featuring both Jake and Captain Sisko into account, given Jake having a serious role there, so contributing to his post-DS9 development. It’s not been tradition for the comics and novels to be that connected, but we have seen more connective tissue between mediums in recent years.

Doubtful, as this novel will be more concerned with being accurate to onscreen canon, which has contradicted those comics, more on that with this next part.

In What You Leave Behind, Sisko suggested he could be back in a year, but for some reason only the Novelverse made it happen. In IDW continuity, he came back after 3 years and in Star Trek Online continuity, it's been 36 years and he still hasn't come back.

And now the blurb of The Peacemakers says it's been 5 years since the end of the Dominion War and refers to Sisko as a "departed Emissary".

If I remember correctly, it was Avery Brooks who suggested the line about Sisko coming back in a year because he didn't want to fulfill the stereotype of a black man abandoning his pregnant girlfriend/wife.

Spoiler: Starfleet Academy series

Well, we know from the Starfleet Academy trailer that as of the 32nd century, Sisko never returned.

 

[Ronald Held]

So the DS9 novel will fit into the first splinter universe,or conform to the current onscreen continuity?

 

[Christopher]

True. Though I remember getting the possibly-unsupported feeling during his last scene with Kassidy that, seeing things from a higher level as he was now, “our” linear time was a bit more blurred and dreamlike for him now, and he was saying that it might be a year or yesterday because he couldn’t actually specify exactly when he’d reappear.

Well, yes, that's my point, that he didn't know for sure. That's not a vague implication, it's what he explicitly said in as many words.

Spoiler: Starfleet Academy series

Well, we know from the Starfleet Academy trailer that as of the 32nd century, Sisko never returned.

I wouldn't say we know that, just that it seems the most likely interpretation of the one piece of evidence we've been shown.

 

[David Mack]

So the DS9 novel will fit into the first splinter universe,or conform to the current onscreen continuity?

First Splinter continuity is over. New Star Trek tie-in novels created now have to conform to on-screen continuity as it exists now, at the time of their creation.

 

[Tuskin38]

Honestly doesn’t sound too interesting to me. I hope to be proven wrong.

I've yet to read a Una McCormack Star Trek novel that wasn't interesting.

 

[Tosk]

Una McCormack. Cardassia.
What's not to like?

 

[ryan123450]

Jake

 

[Tuskin38]

I like Jake

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I wouldn't say we know that, just that it seems the most likely interpretation of the one piece of evidence we've been shown.

Between need-to-know information, time travel, alternate timelines, memory wipes, and the nature of where he went, there are any number of possibilities - one, the other, both, or neither can be true.

 

[JD]

The graphic is Starfleet Academy just raises the question about Sisko's fate, but it doesn't actually answer it, so unless we get an episode that specifically addresses answers that question, there are still ways he could have come back.
The only thing we know for sure is that he probably hasn't come yet by Season 4 of Lower Decks since there was no sign of him when the Cerritos visited DS9, but even then he could have just been off the station at the time.

 

[Christopher]

The graphic is Starfleet Academy just raises the question about Sisko's fate, but it doesn't actually answer it, so unless we get an episode that specifically addresses answers that question, there are still ways he could have come back.

Except a course description at a school would not have a clickbait headline pretending something was a mystery if it actually wasn't. It would only suggest that something was an unanswered question to be explored in the class if it actually were unanswered. So either the 32nd-century Academy has dismal academic standards, or Sisko never returned as far as history records. Though I suppose it's possible he could've returned and the records of it could've been lost over the centuries.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Lost, hidden, destroyed.

 

[Christopher]

Lost, hidden, destroyed.

Ugh, I hate it when prequels resort to conspiracies and coverups and memory wipes to paper over inconsistencies. We've gotten enough of that with Strange New Worlds this season.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Or he came back to the past, not the future.

Of course, not all cover-ups involve evil machinations; hiding the truth to protect people and preserve life rather than harm (maybe preserve the prime directive - if you're supposedly predestined to do something, without which a society would be hurt, then you'd hide it from those who might try to stop you)

 

[Christopher]

Of course, not all cover-ups involve evil machinations

That's not the point. It's not about the characters' motives, it's about it being an overused and contrived plot device, whether it's a cover-up or a memory erasure or whatever.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

IMO it's more tiresome if there's a malicious conspiracy behind every tree. The occasional altruistic one doesn't bother me.

Anyway, back to the thread topic.

 

[Christopher]

IMO it's more tiresome if there's a malicious conspiracy behind every tree. The occasional altruistic one doesn't bother me.

The point is not about conspiracies, the point is about creating plot inconsistencies, like having characters know about the Mirror Universe or the Gorn before Kirk's encounters with them, and then papering them over by claiming that something led to them being forgotten or hidden. As I said, I'm not talking about in-story motives, I'm talking about the plot devices writers choose to employ. Using secrecy as an excuse to introduce or reconcile inconsistency feels like a cheat to me.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Yeah, it would be better if they worked with what they had instead of always reframing and reconciling everything. It cheapens everything people do or find by saying, "actually, you're perhaps the only people who don't know" and makes them look like latecomers to the party or ignorant idiots living in a fool's paradise. (Of course, we do sometimes find in real life that people knew, suspected, or discovered what we've only recently confirmed and affirmed - knowledge lost to time, prejudice, and classification.)

 

[JD]

Except a course description at a school would not have a clickbait headline pretending something was a mystery if it actually wasn't. It would only suggest that something was an unanswered question to be explored in the class if it actually were unanswered. So either the 32nd-century Academy has dismal academic standards, or Sisko never returned as far as history records. Though I suppose it's possible he could've returned and the records of it could've been lost over the centuries.

That's a fair point, I was just thinking of it purely from the point of few of the show's producers teases the fans with the hint at the possibility of resolving an old plot thread. Although in universe there could be some reason that non-Starfleet people don't know the truth, and they are only getting to learn now that they're in Starfleet. I'm just really, really hoping he did come home, because the thought of him breaking his promise to Kasidy really pisses me off.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Yeah. It's not a mystery from the days of un(der)recorded history that archaeologists and historians haven't solved yet.

How prevalent would such mysteries be in the future day, compared to our past and present? Missing ships, artifacts, and individuals whose fate is still unknown, sure, but whether or not something that was said to have happened really happened? What with all the illusions, visions, holograms, lies, conspiracies, dreams, alternate timelines, and alterations to the past there are...

Is there some question about whether who/what did come back was really Sisko or an impostor? Was he there and gone again too quickly to verify his return?

Disappearance of Bobby Dunbar - Wikipedia

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