Hello all, I was just wondering about a timeline of books in the different trek eras. I know that the paperback books are numbered and such, but where do the Hardcovers fit into the series?? Or are each of the books just like "episodes" so to speak that don't really have any continuity to them. Also, as I've never really been able to watch Enterprise or Voyager, I was wondering if I just read the novelizations of the episodes, would I be able to understand all that was going on in the other novels that had came out and the relaunch of both shows as novels. Thanks for all you help, I'm glad I stumbled upon this website!
Your best bet is to pick up a copy of Voyages of the Imagination, by Jeff Ayers. It contains what you're looking for and so much more.
Actually, the numbered books aren't chronological, but take place in various points of the series run, sometimes going back and forth (sorry). As for continuity, pretty much all the numbered books and a good deal of the non-numbered ones are self-contained as you describe. Most recent releases are more closely tied together, but with a few exceptions are still self-contained. The FAQ thread at the top of the forum has good lists of what books belong to specific continuities, and what order they are best read in. Absolutely. In fact, reading the novelization of the episodes isn't at all needed to understand what happens in the other books. As for the Relaunches, so far for ENT there's only one (The Good that Men Do), with another one due out next year. For Voyager, there are 4 Relaunch books: Homecoming, The Farther Shore and the Spirit Walk duology. Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
As Trent said, the numbers don't matter. They haven't even been used for years, and one of the main reasons they were given up is that they didn't mean anything with regard to book chronology or continuity and were just confusing people. For most of the time that Trek novels have been published, they've generally been standalone books without shared continuity. There was a time in the mid- to late-'80s when many of them did share a loose continuity, but they could still be read on their own without familiarity with the others, and the numbering had no bearing on their order. These days, there is a lot more continuity among books, but no numbering except in things that are out-and-out subseries in and of themselves -- including various duologies and trilogies, the DS9 Mission: Gamma tetralogy, and the 9-volume TNG A Time to... series (plus the first several SCE collections in mass-market paperback). For other things, books in a given series will generally have lists of prior books in that series inside the front cover. There are few novelizations of VGR or ENT episodes -- just the pilots and a few season finale/premiere 2-parters. As a rule, novels are written so that you can understand them without having read or seen anything previous. If a book refers back to something earlier that's significant to the plot, it will be explained in the text -- just as if an original novel were referring back to something that happened in the characters' lives before the book started.