Trek-Lit Reading Order Flow Chart

The expansive continuity that is the Star Trek "relaunch" novels range often leaves people wondering: "What do I need to read before Articles of the Federation?" or "...Destiny?" or "...The Fall?"; well here are the answers.

If you're a bit lost navigating the sometimes complex web of interconnectivity between the various Star Trek novels in the post-finale continuity, this is the resource you need. TrekBBS user Thrawn found a most elegant solution, with his brilliant Star Trek Lit-Verse Reading Order Flowchart. Now (as of 2020) on the version six, Thrawn and I guide you through the world of Star Trek fiction.

Whether you're a fan of TNG, DS9, Voyager, or Enterprise the chart below will show how they spin off into New Frontier, Titan, IKS Gorkon, Vanguard, or Seekers, and crossover into Destiny, Typhon Pact, The Fall, Mirror Universe, and more; letting you chart your own path through the Trek-litverse. Once you've got to grips with the flow chart you might also find some of my lists a useful reference too. Click the image to view larger:


Many thanks to Thrawn for allowing me to share this fantastic resource with you, and for his continued support in making new revisions. For more information on how everything links up, check out the Charting the Novel-verse thread on the TrekBBS, or have a look at The Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Guide.

Not sure where to begin your reading adventure? The chart highlights several ideal starting points. Here is a full explanation of those suggestions:
  • Crossovers:
    • To fully immerse yourself in the litverse, the big crossover event that really starting to bring things together was the Destiny trilogy - A  great place to jump in, leading to stories from several series set after it. One step back from Destiny is Articles of the Federation, which is the perfect introduction to the world of Federation politics which becomes prominent in Destiny and beyond.
    • If you're looking to jump in further along, then The Fall is a good place to start; the five-part crossover brings together most of the 24th century series, and shakes up the status quo for the series as they continue independently after.
    • A cohesive series of Mirror Universe stories builds to a grand finale that has knock-on effects in the prime timeline narrative. These stories begin in the anthology Glass Empire.
  • DS9:
    • DS9 was the first series to enjoy a post-TV relaunch; the main new DS9 adventures start from Avatar, which is also available in Twist of Faith, an omnibus of the first four books of the series.
  • TNG
    • The ongoing TNG narrative really starts from the A Time to… series, but you could jump on from the first book set after Nemesis, Death in Winter. Later on in the run, other good jumping on points are the Cold Equations trilogy, or Armageddon's Arrow, the first of a run of stories from the same mission for the Enterprise. 
    • Another branch of TNG, Titan, featuring Captain Riker's ship, gets going from Taking Wing, or you can explore Picard's backstory in the run of Stargazer novels which begins with Reunion.
  • Voyager:
    • Voyager's first post-Endgame stories start from Homecoming, but the series got something of a second start later with the return to the Delta Quadrant in Full Circle.
  • Enterprise:
    • Enterprise's post finale adventures begin from The Good That Men Do. This series also has secondary relaunch with the post-Romulan War era in A Choice of Futures beginning the Rise of the Federation series.
  • TOS:
    • TOS doesn't have quite the same sort of ongoing narrative as the other series, but there are a few books that form a loose continuity, and The Captain's Oath is a good place to start with those. 
    • If you're looking for something more serialised in the 23rd century, then check out Vanguard, which starts from Harbinger, and spawned a spin-off series Seekers, beginning with Second Nature.
    • A side-step from regular TOS adventures gives us a linked series of books featuring the Star Trek universe of the 20th and 21st centuries. A good place to start exploring these is the Eugenics Wars duology.
  • Other spin-offs
    • New Frontier was the first major spin-off Star Trek book series, featuring the adventures of Captain Calhoun and the USS Excalibur. The series begins with House of Cards, but the first four books were all short, and are also available as a single omnibus.
    • IKS Gorkon, retitled in its final book as Klingon Empire, is a Klingon series, which got it's first moment's in the TNG novel Diplomatic Implausibility
    • Not listed in full on the chart is Corps of Engineers, also known as SCE, this extensive series of novellas features the engineering specialists of the USS da Vinci and crosses over into other series every so often. Their stories begin with The Belly of the Beast, or an omnibus of the first four books in the series, Have Tech, Will Travel.
    • Department of Temporal Investigations features the time traveling hijinks, and frustrated bureaucracy, of the Federation's time police. Their adventures start (depending on how you perceive time) with Watching the Clock.
    • Prometheus is a unique series, the first tie-in to be originally written in German, but also available in English. A trilogy of books featuring the distinctive ship begins with Fire with Fire.



59 comments:

  1. Thanks for the hard work !!! i do really appreciate it.
    Do you have plans on updating from time to time ???

    regards

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  2. Thanks for the hard work !!! i do really appreciate it.
    Do you have plans on updating from time to time ???

    regards

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  3. It's on version 2 at the moment, I'll probably do an update once The Fall is done and we know what effect that has on everything :)

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  4. Thank you so much for updating this. It is possible to find the info yourself on Memory Alpha etc but this is a much easier way to do it and a good way too not scare off new readers with them having to do too much own research.

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  5. Where is Spock Must Die in this? Also, you have a typo in the title of "Greater Than the Sum."

    But... wow, just wow. What a map.

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  6. Important question: where does "Planet X", the TNG/X-Men crossover, fit in?

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  7. Important question: where does "Planet X", the TNG/X-Men crossover, fit in?

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  8. Thanks for the note dwasifer, fixed that error now :)

    Rev, Planet X doesn't really much connect to the wider continuity as far as I know (I've not read it), but I believe it's a direct sequel to the TNG/X-Men comic Second Contact, which itself takes place immediately after First Contact.

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  9. This is an amazing reference.
    Thanks very much for putting it together.
    I've been using it to organise my Trek Books and for reading the 20 or so trek books that I've recently bought in the right order.

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  10. hi fantastic flow chart!
    ...what program did you use to create the chart?

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  11. I love you for making this. The Pocket Books Novel-verse is starting to become like it's own Star-Wars-Expanded-Universe-esque canon storyline.

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  12. This is really awesome! I love Star Trek and after watching everything 1000 times over I need new content so I figured I would dive into the book series for the first time. But where to start? This really helps answer that question and gives me a good reference! Thanks!

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  13. First, I absolutely love this thing. I've been trying to get caught up on Trek lit for a while now and this has been VERY HELPFUL.

    A couple constructive comments:
    #1 There's a dashed green line going to Serpents Among the Ruins/The Art of the Impossible/Alien Spotlight: Cardassians/Cardassia and Andor that doesn't have a beginning. It's all end arrows, so it's unclear which direction this is supposed to go.

    #2 Q Are Cordially Invited. I haven't read it yet so I don't know exactly where it goes but I'm thinking it needs to be included.

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  14. Hi Benjamin, apologies for the very slow reply, I hadn't spotted your comment!

    As you might see, we've just posted an updated version of the chart, which might help with your questions, but to expand on them:

    #1 We removed the multi-directional Cardassian story arrow because ti was a bit confusing indeed, but the idea was to show how all the Cardassian/Garak stories are generally a bit interconnected. But we can sort of communicate that with the series dots not, so we didn't need the confusing arrows to everywhere!

    #2 Q Are Cordially Invited... tells the story of the Picard/Crusher wedding, which took place some time before Greater Than the Sum. But there is a framing story on an unspecified wedding anniversary. As we couldn't spot a reference to which anniversary we've opted to put it down in almost publication order, with the other TNG ebook, just before The Fall.

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  15. Sadly the site that opens once I click on the flow chart stays blank.

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  16. Working fine for me. Anyone else having problems?

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  17. Thanks for this graphic, it really helps me and will from now on be my guide :)
    Do you have plans on updating it with the new novels that have been and will be released?

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  18. Of course, this is already version four, which includes most of the books coming out this year (that have connections to the wider continuity) and a few even further ahead already. As more books come we'll update accordingly, and also refine the chart once we know more connections in forthcoming books :)

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  19. @8of5
    That's amazing to hear! Thanks again for your work it really helps!

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  20. Thank you for creating this. Watched all the shows, just now getting into the books!

    This helps a bunch!

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  21. I have watched the show, its better if you had created this flowchart with standard flowchart symbols

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  22. This is top-notch.

    Printed it off and have it laminated already!

    Been able to track all my reading and discover what else to read in some logical order.

    As a result, just bought 13 new books.

    Hunting down the older ones are a bit tricky - been using Abe Books but this can be a wee expensive when you live in Australia.

    Booktopia's great for the more popular and/or newer books.

    Just wanted to say thank-you

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  23. That should be Book Depository.

    Booktopia a place a hardly buy books from - but I do from time to time.

    Needless to say, I've never bought any Star Trek from Booktopia.

    Have a great day :)

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  24. I come back to this flow chart every couple of months. Just to find out which book(s) to read next.
    Thanks for the good work!

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  25. The DS9 upcoming book "The Empty Sack" is now titled "Rules of Accusation" and will be out in July, 2016

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  26. Thanks for the update Terry!

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  27. Working on an update right now in fact, I expect it will be up next week some time (complete with the final title for Terry's book!).

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  28. Thank you Baby Jesus I found this

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  29. This list is awesome. Unfortuantely, now that the color palette is up to 19, my mild color-blindness is making matching some of these difficult if not a lost cause. Guessing the circles are too teeny to use iconography, so probably not much to be done for it.

    Still, a minor issue with an awesome chart.

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  30. I did revise the colours this time around to try and make them distinct as possible, as someone made a similar remark at the last revision. But yes you're right, due to the rather large number of colours to mark all the different dots, and the dots being too small to do much else it would take a completely different design approach to make it easier to read. It's something we're aware of, but haven't found a solution yet.

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  31. A great effort / work! Kudos to you brave souls! :)

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  32. Where does the Genesis Wave fit in?

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  33. Thanks for your work, I'm following this since version 2 and it's an amazing help for me. This is why I love Star Trek - the fans! (also: great that you included Prometheus!)

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  34. Been meaning to catch up with you - thanks for this updated and shared resource. Top-notch! Kimberley.

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  35. This has been a great resource for catching up on all of the books/series.

    I did find one error, though. Somehow, you've omitted A Time to Kill from the TNG:A Time To... saga in version 5.

    Thanks again for the hard work and maintenance!

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  36. This flowchart is really awesome. And thanks for adding "Star Trek Prometheus"

    But I found an error, too. "Star Trek: Prometheus: Into the Heart of Chaos" is volume III not II. "The Source of All Fury" is II. And: The connection to "Takedown" is the wrong way round. STP take place just before "Takedown" and while it was written later it references events, that take place at the beginning of "Takedown".

    Bernd

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  37. This chart is great, but do you have a merged list of everything in a single chronological order?

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  38. This chart is great and all, but... where's Corps of Engineers? Because I don't see it on there.

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  39. Im thinking of reading Section 31 Control. Do I need to read Disavowed first?

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  40. Absolutely. I think ~most (all) would agree. They are both great reads.

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  41. If I remember right, way back last year I had the following experience.

    I had Disavowed as being the next read on DS9 having been through all the others.

    But I had to stop reading it after a while - I felt I was missing something.

    So, I went a few steps back and read The Fall series (esp. A Ceremony of Losses - I think), and then went through Vanguard, Lovell and Seekers (in that order) - I'm now on Seekers #2.

    It's been really interesting getting familiar with all the backdrop as well as having some great reads.

    Anyway, whatever you do have a great read. I'm sure you'll be able to get any background info to fill in any detail behind both Disavowed & Control from the Internet (Memory Alpha or Beta) - and thanks for reminding me to order my copy of Control!

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  42. Yeah, this list is a bit out of date right now.
    I'm currently reading "Available Light." (The latest TNG book as of April 2019)

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  43. Please could this list be updated, I used to rely on this as which book to read and in what sequence but its now outdated.

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  44. Also really looking forward to an update :) would be really appreciated.

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  45. Also looking for an update, I use this to find out when new stuff is out, I didn't even know about Collateral Damage

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  46. I only just found out about Collateral Damage as well. This graphic is quickly falling behind! I hope it gets updated, it has been a valuable resource.

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  47. Kudos to the flow chart. That is awesome and exactly what I was looking for.

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  48. Everyone that's been asking for an update, please check the page now :)

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    Replies
    1. Thank you very much for taking the time to update and expand it. Been using it since version 1. I almost read all novels that are one the chart and feeling both sadness that the litverse as we know it will come to an end. But I'm looking forward to what's to come and if there will be one last novel to bring the novelverse in line with Picard.

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  49. Great chart!! Thanks for the update. Loving your work. #LLAP

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  50. This is fantastic! Thanks for all of the work you did putting this together!

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  51. Just a quick nitpick, the "Created By" section in the 2020 version has a typo (I'm assuming).

    It says "For the latest version, and additional notes, visit: TrekTrekCollective.com"

    Looks like there's an extra "Trek" in the url.

    That said, I love the chart. Thank you!

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  52. Is a new version planned for rhe chart? One that goes up to the upcoming Coda trilogy?

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  53. There are a couple references to the Enterprise-E’s recent experience with the Genesis Wave in A Time to Sow.

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