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Announcing STAR TREK: DTI and other CLB news

Mr. Bennett, thank you and congratulations on your news!!:bolian: Thank you for sharing this news, since with all the recent changes at Pocket, primarily Marco and Margaret "leaving", and the cancellation of all the summer "Abramsverse" novels, I was quite frankly a little worried over what Pocket and their "parent" were going to do with the Star Trek novel line. This news, however, shows that they still have some faith in this line and are willing to take risks with the non-movie universe line, and something that can bring in aspects of long-standing continuity.

I was curious, however, is the impetus for this novel something you came up with, or something that Pocket approached you to write, if you can share that information? And, has the idea for this novel been floating around for some time, or something that's relatively new? Given CBS' success with the "alphabet" shows (CSI, NCIS), this novel seems to be following that vein, not that I'm complaining, mind you, since you seem to be uniquely qualified to take this idea and ground it in long-standing Trek lore, and open up a part of the Trek universe that's ripe with possibilities and hasn't been explored in this way before!

In any case, thank you and congratulations once again!!
 
This is great news. You're my favorite current Trek author, and your absence from this year's schedule is a shame. This sounds like a great, great project and I'm sure you're gonna hit it out of the park. Looking forward to picking this up in...a year or so!
 
Very excited for this book and hopefully series! Your attention to Trek detail and great facility with selling the SCI in SCI-FI makes this a great pairing of author and idea.

Would it be gluttonous of me to hope that we see EVERY iteration of time-travel in Trek canon to this point? From the Temporal Cold War/Future Guy/Daniels, red matter black holes, the Guardian of Forever and sling shots around the sun to Bajoran Orbs, Borg Spheres, Admiral Janeway and Captain Braxton and the USS Relativity?! (and whatever I'm forgetting?)

In any case this sounds awesome.
 
Its probably the most original idea I've heard in a while. I hope the author is able to capture Dulmer and Lucsly's unique personalities. "Joke?" "Yeah". "We hate those too". :guffaw:

Dulmer and Lucsly had a wonderfully Joe Friday/Bill Gannon/Dragnet-esque energy about them. I believe William Leisner referenced this more overtly in his depiction of them and the DTI in the short story "Gods, Fates, and Fractals" from Strange New Worlds.

ETA:

For my money, I hope that Christopher manages to make a few allusions to Dragnet in his novel in that vein. I'm very excited to hear that DTI won't be just another Starfleet department, too! :)
 
I was curious, however, is the impetus for this novel something you came up with, or something that Pocket approached you to write, if you can share that information? And, has the idea for this novel been floating around for some time, or something that's relatively new?

The idea originated with me. I guess I was musing about Trek time travel, on the one hand being tired of it as a plot device, but on the other hand wanting to tackle the issue and try to make sense of it. So the DTI angle occurred to me as a suitably different way of approaching the subject. I pitched it to Marco at New York Comic-Con a few years ago and he passed on it, not being a great fan of time travel stories either. I don't recall if I ever pitched it to Margaret; if I did, I don't think she ever showed any interest. But different editors have different tastes. When the new editor, Jaime Costas, asked me for pitches, I threw this one in with several others, but I figured it was a long shot. It was pretty much the last one I would've expected them to go for.


Given CBS' success with the "alphabet" shows (CSI, NCIS), this novel seems to be following that vein

Well, Star Trek: DTI is just my working title, something I picked a couple of days ago so I'd have some way of referring to it in the announcement. It's probably influenced by the fact that I've become somewhat hooked on CSI reruns on SpikeTV over the past couple of months. But that's just a title in-joke on my part, nothing to do with any kind of CBS marketing strategy (at least, not yet -- they might decide to go that way anyway).


Would it be gluttonous of me to hope that we see EVERY iteration of time-travel in Trek canon to this point? From the Temporal Cold War/Future Guy/Daniels, red matter black holes, the Guardian of Forever and sling shots around the sun to Bajoran Orbs, Borg Spheres, Admiral Janeway and Captain Braxton and the USS Relativity?! (and whatever I'm forgetting?)

Probably not all of them, but there will be a broad sampling, I'm sure.


Dulmer and Lucsly had a wonderfully Joe Friday/Bill Gannon/Dragnet-esque energy about them. I believe William Leisner referenced this more overtly in his depiction of them and the DTI in the short story "Gods, Fates, and Fractals" from Strange New Worlds.

Yep, that's a fun Dragnet pastiche. I'll probably be influenced by that, but won't take it quite as far.
 
Great Idea!

My favorite Science Fiction subject - Time Travel + Written by my favorite Trek Lit Author = Must Buy for me!
 
This has always been something I've wanted to see. Congratulations! I'm kind of hoping they don't have the ability to time travel themselves, but on the other hand it would be kind of interesting to see them trying to solve a mystery across the ages.

So many different ways to approach it.

Christopher, what is the projected release date?
 
This is a cool idea, and it's a wonder it hasn't been done already. I think the only place where I've seen the concept of a DTI "series" fleshed out was in the All Our Yesterdays time-travel supplement for the Last Unicorn Games Star Trek RPG. And I've always wondered if the other galactic powers have their own timecops/meddlers...
 
This is a cool idea, and it's a wonder it hasn't been done already.

Certainly with Dulmer and Lucsly. I imagine there have been plenty of temporal cold war pitches (who is future guy, and all that) and plenty of Braxton/29th century pitches, but no DTI ones...
 
another series?

aw, cripes.
I love the fact that we can go from, "I've been given a contract to write this one, single book that will be out next year" to "are there plans to more than this one, single book that has only just been contracted?" to "oh no, not another long series of books based on this one, single, as-yet-unwritten book!!" all in the course of 48 hours.
 
Congrat, Christopher:techman:. This is fantastic news! I love when books that aren't tied to one single series appear on the shelves. Articles of the Federation and A Singular Destiny come to mind. I can't wait to read the back and forth between Dulmer and Lucsly. It was the best part of their time on DS9. I think Jaime Costas has the right person for the job ;).
 
Good news!

I remember many years ago John Ordover asked on the Psi Phi board for readers to list all of the various timelines in Trek they can think of for an upcoming project he was working on. Nothing ever came of it but I imagined it would have been something like what you are announcing. Looking forward to it!
 
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