For more information about Star Trek books, try the official site, the Psi Phi database, the Complete Starfleet Library, the LCARS Book Database or the Star Trek Novel Rankings.
Update 1/13/2006 — Holy Zarquon! This thing hasn't been updated in, like, forever! What's the deal???
That's a fair question.
See, here's the thing... I've actually been quite busy doing Timeline research over the last year. As I had previously mentioned, a few years ago I was given a fantastic offer to join the group affectionately known as the "Pocket Books Timeliners." These are the guys who provided the novel timeline first printed in Mary P. Taylor's trade paperback Adventures In Time And Space, and then again in Gateways: What Lay Beyond. I came on board just as the second edition was being submitted for publication, so up until now I hadn't really played a role in any of the published versions, though as a group we continued to painstakingly research the inter-novel continuity and maintain a primary document for reference.
Lo and behold, early in 2005 Pocket's senior Trek editor Marco Palmieri informed us that our services would again be welcomed. Pocket had greenlighted a reference book that would come to be titled Voyages of Imagination: The Definitive Star Trek Fiction Companion, and the author Jeff Ayres had specifically asked that an updated edition of our timeline be included as an appendix. We decided to take the opportunity to radically reform the basic structure of the document, improving the readability, adding footnotes and, most importantly, breaking out all of the "secondary" entries (backstories, flashbacks, time-travel segments, etc.) into their proper chronological locations. The end result was a very useful reference which, in my opinion, incorporates many of the better qualities from my own web-based timeline. Voyages of Imagination is currently slated for publication in October of 2006.
So now the ten bazillion-dollar question is... where does this leave my own timeline? Let me be clear that no one at Paramount or Pocket Books has asked me to take it down (at least not yet). But I do have to consider the wisdom of promoting a book that contains all of this information while I'm still sharing it freely on the Internet. Granted, this timeline still has some fundamental differences of interpretation with the one in the book. But many of those differences are slowly disappearing, in no small part due to my own influence. Furthermore, given that the fiction published over the last fifteen years or so has been using the Okuda's Star Trek Chronology as a primary reference for so many books now, I'm beginning to grudgingly accept that the older fiction must now be retconned to match the chronology of the new, and not vice-versa. Which means, to put it bluntly, that my own separate web-based timeline is rapidly losing its relevance.
For now, it remains up and running, though at the time of this writing it hasn't been updated in over ten months. When I decide upon its ultimate fate, I'll let everyone know on this very page. In the meantime, place your pre-orders for Voyages of Imagination now! It will be a stunning reference book covering every Star Trek novel ever published. It might possibly end up begin the coolest book ever. That's right, order it now. There's a good lad.
- Geoff Trowbridge
Yes, I know that this file is very loooong. I do plan to split it into more manageable chunks, just as soon as I decide how to do it and find the time. This project is in a continuing state of growth and evolution. Expect frequent and sometimes radical changes! - Geoff Trowbridge, updated 3/2/2005
The primary purpose of this project is to create a chronological reference exclusively of the events narrated in published Star Trek fiction. This means that only the novels, adaptations and short stories from Pocket, Bantam and Ballentine are to be considered as sources. (Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe where Star Trek exists only in published book form.) As such, inconsistencies can and will be found with accepted canonical sources, such as the Star Trek Chronology and the Star Trek Encyclopedia, and with unofficial but well-established sources in Trek fandom, such as the various Starfleet Manuals or Goldstein's Spaceflight Chronology. The canon of Trek history has become a moving target, and therefore I do not by any means claim this to be the definitive reference for the Trek fan.
I have chosen not to include the Young Adult books (with the exception of Honor Bound, part of the DOH Omnibus) for a couple of reasons. First of all, I despise the oxymoron "young adult." An adult is eighteen or older; these books are for kids. Furthermore, I was reading "normal" Trek novels at age twelve, and I see no reason for otherwise outstanding authors to "dumb-down" the stories to a point where it is difficult to envision the events as historically valid. Note that the recently reprinted Mission To Horatius falls into this category as well.
While the comic books have provided some interesting background and occasionally some exceptional writing (the original "Gold Key" comics notwithstanding), it would be far too difficult to consolidate such a prolific series of stories from so many different publishers. I have also opted not to include the audio-only and eBook fiction, though if they are ever released in print form, I will add them at that time.
It is, of course, well understood that the Star Trek universe is constantly expanding as additional novels are released each month. As a result, some errors of continuity will never be adequately resolved, and the potential for future contradictions is always present. The "official" stamp upon the Okudas' Star Trek Chronology further complicates matters, as future authors will be obliged to conform to it despite the numerous contradictions with currently published novels. In addition, the overwhelming number of stories purported to have occurred during the original "five-year mission" is dangerously close to the point where we must assume that the crew never had opportunity to eat, sleep, defecate, etc. Many readers will simply assume that some of the stories are apocryphal, or transpired in "alternate" universes or timelines.
For the purpose of this chronology, however, all sources will be considered as part of a single timeline, regardless of the inevitable problems this may create. The only exceptions will be events that are explicitly framed in divergent timelines (i.e., due to time travel), or events that, due to problems that are inherently irreconcilable with accepted major events, cannot be said to have occ