18 replies to this topic

[Christopher]

I’m able to announce my new Star Trek project now, and it’s my most offbeat one yet.  The working title is Star Trek: DTI, with a more specific title to be settled on later.

And yes, that's DTI as in the Department of Temporal Investigations.  As in Lucsly and Dulmur from Deep Space Nine: "Trials and Tribble-ations."  They and their agency are getting a whole book, and I'm writing it.  Its sort of in the vein of Articles of the Federation, Keith R. A. DeCandido’s chronicle of a year in the life of the Federation president and her staff, but if that was The West Wing in the 24th century, DTI might be more like an FBI procedural show.

In any case, don’t expect the conventional, done-to-death kind of time travel story where the heroes go back into the past and try to prevent or reverse a change in history.  STDTI will have its own distinctive approach to time travel, its mechanics, and its consequences, and will explore numerous facets of the Department’s responsibilities through the cases worked by its various members.

It’s an exciting challenge to do this book.  With Lucsly and Dulmur being the only established DTI members, and with them being virtual blank slates, this is closer to a fully original creation than any commissioned novel I’ve ever done (though you can expect to see a few more familiar faces showing up here and there).   And it’s my chance to take the byzantine logic of Trek-universe time travel and offer a unifying theory with some degree of scientific credibility to it — while still having fun with it.  On the other hand, with so few established characters or situations to draw on and a lot of ideas to cover, I’ve got my work cut out for me.


Meanwhile, I have two original SF stories to announce:

"The Weight of Silence" will be appearing in the online Alternative Coordinates magazine in their next issue, debuting on May 1, 2010.  It's a tale in the vein of the "problem stories" of vintage SF, in which the characters are faced with a scientific crisis and have to reason out a solution, but with a more character-driven approach.  It's also my first ever story to be written in the first person.  The second, coincidentally, is the previously announced "No Dominion," which will be appearing about six weeks later in the online DayBreak Magazine.

And the characters from my recent novelette "The Hub of the Matter" will be returning to the pages of Analog in a sequel called "Home is Where the Hub Is."  The publication date hasn’t been settled on yet, but I’d expect it to be sometime in late 2010.

While we're at it, although the March 2010 Analog featuring "The Hub of the Matter" is no longer on bookshelves, it can still be purchased as an eBook from the following retailers:

eReader.com
Fictionwise.com
Sony Reader Store

I'm delighted by how busy my website's New/Upcoming Titles section is getting all of a sudden.  And by how much of it is original fiction.

[QueenTiye]

Excited for you, Christopher! And the ST:DTI story sounds awesome! I don't usually get excited about tie-in novels, but I'm interested in this one.

QT

[The Tyrant]

Quote

And it’s my chance to take the byzantine logic of Trek-universe time travel and offer a unifying theory with some degree of scientific credibility to it — while still having fun with it.

So....this will be set in the Abrams' Trekverse?

Good luck with it, man.

[Christopher]

The Tyrant, on Mar 31 2010, 11:30 AM, said:

So....this will be set in the Abrams' Trekverse?

It's all one multiverse, but the novel takes place in the Prime timeline, specifically the novels' version of that timeline post-Nemesis.  After all, Lucsly and Dulmur are characters from Deep Space Nine, living in the 24th century.  It's far too early to speculate what the 24th century may be like in the Abrams timeline, and the policy at this point is to avoid tie-in materials set in that timeline after the events of the 2009 film (although there are a couple of young-adult Starfleet Academy prequel books in the works, as well as various prequel comics and a film adaptation comic from IDW).  So you can safely assume that any Pocket novel set after 2258 is going to derive from the original Trek continuity.

[Smitty]

Safe to say not a ref to the Abramasverse, but will the subject of co-existing alternate be in play in some form or another?

Say a DTI agent expounding upon it etc.

-cs™

[Christopher]

That and other temporal topics will be addressed in some form.

Edited by Christopher, 03 April 2010 - 07:16 AM.

[Smitty]

Will any of them be referred to as a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff?

-cs™

[Christopher]

The spring 2010 issue of Alternative Coordinates magazine, containing my short story "The Weight of Silence," has just gone online:

http://www.ac-mag.com/

There's a brief excerpt from the story here.  The full magazine is available for $2.00, either online or in a print edition.

I've put up story discussion and notes on my site's Original Fiction page:

http://home.fuse.net...ction.html#TWoS

Last time, I held back a bit before posting the story notes, but this time there aren't any major spoilers in them.

Smitty, on 04 April 2010 - 05:32 PM, said:

Will any of them be referred to as a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff?

I'm actually tempted to use that as the epigraph for DTI.

[Christopher]

"No Dominion" is now online at DayBreak Magazine.  Here's the direct link:

http://daybreakmagaz...pher-l-bennett/

Notes at my site:

http://home.fuse.net...fiction.html#ND

[Zoxesyr]

O.k. so how are you incorporating the temporal cold war, and the various time-travel ships (Aeon, Relativity, E-J, etc) into this?

Ooo!  Will the Traveler make a reappearance?  How about the Q with their instantaneous access to all time and space?  I suppose we can't forget the Krenim time-weapon?  The near-disaster of temporal engineering shown in "All Good Things"?

[Christopher]

Zoxesyr, on 22 June 2010 - 05:44 PM, said:

O.k. so how are you incorporating the temporal cold war, and the various time-travel ships (Aeon, Relativity, E-J, etc) into this?

That would be telling.

[T_H_Phoenix]

I'm really looking forward to this one.  I love a well thought out time travel story, and when an author has a passion for putting real science behind his stories, I have high hopes.

It may be too early to ask, but did they tell you if it will be available as an e-book when it is released?

Edited by T_H_Phoenix, 24 June 2010 - 08:45 AM.

[Christopher]

It's pretty standard for Trek novels to get e-book releases these days, I think.  All my prior ones have.

Anyway, don't expect a "time travel story" in the usual sense.

Edited by Christopher, 24 June 2010 - 09:22 AM.

[T_H_Phoenix]

Christopher, on 24 June 2010 - 10:21 AM, said:

It's pretty standard for Trek novels to get e-book releases these days, I think.  All my prior ones have.

Anyway, don't expect a "time travel story" in the usual sense.

Understood.  It's this part of your description that interests me most.  

Quote

And it’s my chance to take the byzantine logic of Trek-universe time travel and offer a unifying theory with some degree of scientific credibility to it — while still having fun with it.

[Christopher]

The December 2010 Analog, featuring my novelette "Home is Where the Hub Is," is now available (at least, it's up on the Analog site and I got my copies in the mail).  More here:

http://www.analogsf....012/index.shtml

Check your local newsstands and bookstores!

[Christopher]

"The Hub of the Matter" has been republished in the Russian SF magazine Esli (If).  Details at my blog, including a nifty illustration:

http://christopherlb...ere-the-hub-is/

[Christopher]

My copies of DTI: Watching the Clock arrived this morning!  Details on my blog:

http://christopherlb...ti-has-arrived/

[Christopher]

Last night, the folks at NDB Media, an Internet “talk radio” service, spent an hour interviewing me over the phone about DTI: Watching the Clock.  The interview is now available for streaming at their site:

http://www.blogtalkr...-star-trek-book

[Christopher]

I’ve now posted the annotations pages for Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock at my website.  And yes, I mean pages, plural.  There was so much science, Trek continuity, and the like to explain that the page-by-page annotations had to be split across two pages.  Plus there’s a separate page devoted to discussing the characters and their development (since most of the characters here are original or developed from barely-established screen roles), and there’s even a page featuring many of the alien calendars I developed for the chapter headings (because I can be really obsessive-compulsive about things like this).

All these goodies can be accessed from the DTI intro section on my main Trek Fiction page:

http://home.fuse.net...ion.html#DTIWTC