Boldly going
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Written before First Contact, it's interesting how many commonalities this story has with that. There's Borg technology, there's Zefram Cochrane, the guy who started the Star Trek. However this book is a lot more loyal to pre-established Star Trek lore and is a much different, some might say more mature story.
It takes place in three timelines. In the first we follow the life of Cochrane from just after his invention of the warp drive technology, and his first encounter with the Optimal Movement, a Fascist group that has overtaken Great Britain in the future and seeks to find military uses for Cochrane's technology. The second finds us aboard the Enterprise during Kirk's five year mission, with Kirk (who had encountered Cochrane in one of the TV shows) discovering that someone has attacked Cochrane, even though no one should know where he is. The third is Next Generation era, with Picard encountering Ferengi who want to sell him Borg technology.
The three timelines come together by the end of the story, showing how Cochrane's technology improves mankind's future, how Cochrane's very involvement helps to advance mankind, despite attempts by fascists to keep human spirit restrained. In many ways, it is a true expression of the philosophy Gene Rodenberry put behind Trek.
What else? Oh, you can imagine the characters speaking the lines. The authors capture Kirk and Picard and their respective crews perfectly. There are some wonderful science fiction ideas behind the story, what with binary singularities and nanotech at play.
It's only spin-off fiction, but it's top notch spin-off fiction.
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The Story that Should have been used for ST:Generations
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A great and complex Story that i can read time and time again!
the Story that should have been used as the bases for the Generations script and not that drivel were Kirk died.
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Excellent science fiction at it's best
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This is the best Star Trek book I've ever read. It covers both Classic and the Next Generation, but also the past too. It's very intelligently writtian from a scientific basis, many parts of trek science are explained along the way, but it's never too complicated or boring. It even explains where the federation logo comes from (it's a graph of warp travel energy and speed). It was published before First Contact came out so there's a few conflicts with the life of Z Cochran, to now established Trek lore. I'd rather believe this book to be honest.
The book is very well written, the discriptions are very good and you often feel as if you are there watching the action. It also conveys the authors obvious love of science fiction, space and the characters. A Classic book I'd even recommend to non Star Trek fans. The common faults of Star Trek are largely absent from this book.
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Epic
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In a way it's a pity that this is a Star Trek book, because it means a lot of people that might have read it in fact won't. Which is a shame, because this is a great piece of work which manages to cover many different science fiction bases whilst keeping the characterisation fluent. The shear scale of the thing scares me, as it hops back and forth through the pre-established ST framework, and in the process manages to extend it considerably. Throw in some fairly useful philosophy and physics and you have a classic science fiction.
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The best
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This book is one of the best trek books around. it tells you every thing you ever wanted to know about the very start of the federation. I recommend this book to any Star Trek Fan
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