Guide:Forward

Foreword

For those obsessed with the world claimed to be ‘real’:

This book is a work of fiction. It is not a non-fiction book about a fictional universe – nothing within these pages is real. Or, rather, it’s as real as you wish it to be.

Everything described here is based on definite sources, however; sources like imagination, vision, enthusiasm. Some of these sources are directly tied to the Paramount TV show Star Trek, and are actually the intellectual property of Paramount or its artists. Others derive indirectly from this show. When creating the fictional world of this book, I in turn used some of these sources – and disagreed with others. Thus, even when I express thanks to a group or organization, I may in fact be contradicting their opinions on the Trek universe rather severely. Rest assured that I do this without any remorse. I’m just as mad about Star Trek as you are.

But there is method to my madness. In compiling this work, I have always given priority to information that is either supported by aired Trek episodes or movies, or then simply not contradicted (or contradictable!) by them. Sometimes people call this kind of information “canonical”, and I rather like the word. This information is then glued together using various “non-canonical” sources plus my own imagination. Who created this information is of no consequence to the end result. For this reason, I wish to express my thanks to my various sources in a big collective hug instead of detailing who did what in which work.

So here comes:

Jonah Rapp, Ryan McReynolds, Boris Scrbic, Bernd Schneider and all the other folks from Flare Forum; James Dixon, the grand master of Trek timelines; Joseph Creighton & Joshua Bell, the FAQ wizards; Michael & Denise Okuda, Rick Sternbach, and the other heroes at Paramount and Pocket Books; Franz Schnaubelt, Shane Johnson, Todd Guenther, Aridas Sofia, Geoff Mandel, Jaqueline Susann, Harold Robbins and the rest of the Giants; and of course everybody else who ever had the patience to listen to me ranting about Trek.

And from here on, this work is pure fiction. No escapes to the real world until a short chapter in Appendix A.

Let’s see what lies out there.