It was announced at Star Trek Las Vegas that two of the cancelled Star Trek Kelvin Timeline novels will finally be published in 2020.
One of the highlights of the recently completed Star Trek Las Vegas convention was the Star Trek publishing panel. Attendees got a glimpse at what is coming next year in the form of Star Trek novels and comics and a few surprises along the way.
For many fans the big announcement was that Star Trek: Picard would be getting both a prequel comics book miniseries and novel, both of which will lead directly into the first season of Picard. For others it was getting more information on David Mack’s Next Generation novel Collateral Damage, a book that will culminate over 15 years of Next Generation Era Trek novels, beginning with the A Time To… series.
But the biggest shocker of the panel had to be the announcement that two of the previously thought long dead Kelvin Timeline Star Trek novels will finally see the light of day.
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A bit of background: in 2010, shortly after J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek was a huge smash at the box office and successfully rebooted the franchise, a new series of novels were commissioned. There were four to start and they would continue the story began in Star Trek.
Unfortunately, for reasons that have never been explained, they were cancelled. This despite work having begun on them or in some cases the novels being finished and ready to be published.
Flash forward nine years and Gallery Books senior editor Ed Schlessinger announces at STLV that two of the novels, Alan Dean Foster’s The Order of Peace (originally titled Refugees) and David Mack’s More Beautiful Than Death will arrive in bookstores in 2020.
Again, no reason for the sudden change of heart was mentioned, but it would seem to indicate that Gallery Books is ready for the Kelvin Timeline to continue its adventures on the printed page.
Mack followed up the big announcement with a post on his Facebook page:
"Ten years ago, I wrote a Star Trek “Kelvinverse” novel set after the 2009 feature film, showcasing the new characters and situations of that movie. For behind-the-scenes reasons unrelated to my work, my book and three others in that setting were abruptly cancelled.It was announced today at Star Trek Las Vegas that my novel, MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN DEATH, will be published next year, in August 2020, as a trade paperback.I’m very excited by this news, because I have always been pleased by how that book turned out. I felt that it was a faithful continuation of those characters’ stories, one that could not be possible in the original series incarnation of Trek. Next year, fans of the films and the books will get to decide for themselves whether I succeeded, and if the book was worth the wait."
Will the other two novels that were commissioned also be published at some point down the road if these two sell well? One can hope. Both books are set to arrive in bookstores and on digital devices in 2020.