Hello everyone. I hope this is the right place on this forums to post this, if not, sorry for the inconvenience. I am looking to treat me a Star Trek book for holidays and I'm thinking about some of the tech manuals, but after extensive reading on Memory Alpha I found there was a sea of ink running along all these fifty years I'm finally opting between two: the 2019 "Star Trek: The U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Illustrated Handbook" or the 2006: "Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual". What are your suggestions? I read some reviews about the 2019 one and had a sneak peak and it had good illustrations, but as far as the writing goes, some people were disappointed for it being quite basic and not very explicative. Some people also mentioned that it missed blueprints and cutaway views of equipment or weapons other manuals had. Positive reviews I read mentioned the old one had incorrect lore and the new one was a good bounding of all the overall information available. Is it worth buying for a newbie like me, or I will be missing something? It's a good place to start? Thank you for taking the time.
Depends on your interests? There are a lot of technical manuals out there, including ones for TNG and Deep Space Nine. Of the two you listed, I'd go with the "Star Trek: Star Fleet Technical Manual" (I love mine and have bought several copies over the decades). But, the book itself was written in the mid-1970's. Great book, but out of step with what comes later.
I have both. If you like colorful photos and sketches, then go with "Star Trek: The U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Illustrated Handbook".
Many of the older fan-made manuals from the 80’s and 90’s are now available on Cygnus X-1 in PDF format if you’re looking to print them out yourself. Just make sure the ink/toner in your printer is full.
What a marvelous source of info. I'll be sure to check it thoroughly. Specially the blueprints. Thanks everyone for their answers too.
There isn't much of any good merchandise worth getting nowadays. Except for blu-ray sets, but that's sorta a given. And some books but I'd rather go to a bookstore and look through a few pages to get a proper idea before purchasing. I hate fan consensus, mostly because the opinion of the gestalt may not be 100% correct. It depends on the issue, of course. But with 50+ years of Trek, you're going to find a surfeit of beliefs within the gamut for sure.
These came out recently: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1858755409/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-En...SFSN3JKAEHD&psc=1&refRID=2XMV9KTTHSFSN3JKAEHD It seems to be collections of those lovely isometric cutaway drawings of the ships' rooms and systems that were featured in Star Trek: The Magazine.
Yep, those are all from Ben Johnson and the Eaglemoss folks, many of whom contributed directly to the Magazine as well as the Star Trek Fact Files (from which the magazine derived many assets). There are also the collections of all their Ships of the Line and Official Ships orthos. Plus some earlier books, Volumes 1, 2 and 3. Got 'em all.
Of those two, I’d also go with the newer 1701 handbook, or the 1701-D book if TNG is more your jam. The newer book have more text to read, colorful illustrations and be more up to date. The original tech manual is very cool (I’ve owned it since 1975), but it’s a snapshot of Star Trek as interpreted in the mid-70s and a lot has changed. It’s probably worth mentioning that about two thirds of that book are technical illustrations with little explanatory text, while the other third of the book features pages of text featuring “historical documents” that some might not find terribly interesting, such as the Articles of the Federation.
I’d start with the smallish Haynes bird-of-prey manual, and if it turns out you like that sort of in-depth publication, keep going with even more detailed TNG and DS9 manuals, followed by anything else with Rick Sternbach as one of the authors. The important part here is that Rick Sternbach was (Senior) Illustrator / Technical Consultant on the bulk of the TNG era, so the background materials he was involved in are very close to production; he wrote much of the text.
Thank you, you are being really helpful. Probably this is what I am going to do, being that it was released this year and I am new to the series, I'd rather read the most actual info and skip so many years of changes over the conception of the series for when I become a veteran Looks very good and with plenty info. I will consider it. Thanks for the author recommendation too, for it will be a good guide of what to search for.
Lora Johnson's Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise Will always be a favourite tech manual of mine. Along with FASA's The Next Generation Officer's Manual. Just don't expect them to line up with the modern versions of Trek. They made a lot of assumptions about what was then a much smaller universe.