Review: Stellar Cartography

In last couple of years there has been a big resurgence in Star Trek "non-fiction", with everything from starship manuals, language, and history books, to more whimsical art, and comedic interludes. It's been over a decade though since, Star Charts, the last Star Trek maps book, so I was very excited earlier this year, when Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library was announced. Here's what I think of it upon its arrival:

The first thing you'll notice about Stellar Cartography when you get your hands on it, after noting it's a pretty hefty volume, is that it's much more than a book. What you get is a folding box (with a nifty magnetic panel to keep it all neat when it's closed up), with the actually book held in the center (with a little ribbon behind it to make it easy to pop out from its boxed in holding place). There are two envelopes on the panels either side, each of which hold five maps printed on sheets a smidge over 60x90cm. The book is written by Larry Nemecek, with the maps illustrated by Ian Fullwood, Geoffrey Mandel, and Ali Ries.

Stellar Cartography's contents

Just the experience of open this up and unfurling all the maps is pretty fun, but also a practical way of keeping the whole set together; in contrast to the pretty pointless bookstand-thing with last year's Federation: The First 150 Years. In common with the Federation book, this set is built upon the conceit of being a hard-copy reproduction of information retrieved in-universe from Memory Alpha. The present day is shortly after the Hobus supernova in 2387, although the maps are dated up to 2386, so they don't have to take into account any fallout from the destruction of Romulus.

The book is basically a guide to each of the maps in the set. Each map is reproduced as a two page spread, often slightly differently from the sheet maps, with more or less notation, and/or cropped into a particular section. Two pages then follow discussing what each map depicts, and giving wider historical context. What this book does not do is give the same type of overview of the entire galaxy, and explanation of spacey stuff, that Star Charts did. Star Charts had a lot of information detailing things like how sectors work, what the different types of planet and star are, and more diagrams and details of specific planets and systems. This new book seems to be more about the history of local space, using the maps as a window to frame the subjects it discusses.

Continue after the jump for an overview of each map in the collection:

First look inside Stellar Cartography

Amazon have updated their listings for the Star Trek: Stellar Cartography, the forthcoming book and maps set by Larry Nemecek, with maps by Geoffrey Mandel, Ali Ries, and Ian Fullwood. The new images give us a good idea of the clamshell format of the set, the first look at the cover of the actual book, and a glimpse of all the maps, including a full view of the Vulcan system map:

For more on the book and maps set, see my previous reports, here and here, with comments from Nemecek describing what we've got to look forward to.

Details of the new Stellar Cartography maps collection revealed

TrekFM's Literary Treks program recently ran an interview with Larry Nemecek, author of the forthcoming book and maps set Star Trek: Stellar Cartography. Nemecek talked at length about the new book, describing how it has built upon the system established by Geoffrey Mandel in the previous Star Trek: Star Charts book, while adding in information from canon events since the publication of that book, and putting new spins on the presentation of the Star Trek universe in some of the newly developed maps in this release. In an effort to clarify how this release is more than a book, Nemecek described the format for the release:

The thing itself - I was talking about it not being exactly a book - What you get is a clamshell; so it opens up like a book, and it's a tri-fold. The two outer things have a pocket; there's ten maps, twenty-four by thirty-six inches (two by three feet), on a really cool paper stock that doesn't crease easily. So even though they're going to be folded, if you get them out and you want to frame them right off the bat or something they're not going to do like the old maps, the old blueprints would always do, which was crack after you've used them a little bit. So there's a pouch on each side, and there's five in one, and five in the other. Then the book, although there's tones of text in it, it's going to feel a little bit like a giant hardback childrens' book. So there's like a spread for each map inside, the text. On one hand it's more visually heavy than it is textual, but on the other hand there's some really important textual concepts that I got to play with and massage; to me they've either been a gap, or there's things that's been bugging - and it's like I see fans running round in circles arguing - and although this obviously isn't aired canon, it's my way of saying "Peace! Peace! There is no need to be so confused and divided about this".

Like 47North's previous release, Federation: The First 150 Years, this collection is presented as commemorative hard-copy document produced by Memory Alpha:

The timing of this collection, is the year before the Hobus subspace supernova. So everything is set out to normal time, and then there's just a little bit of an update in the Romulan section.

Star Charts, the foundation of the new maps

Since the release of Star Charts there have been three more seasons of Enterprise and three movies released, giving Nemecek and the artists working on the book plenty of new information to add into the galaxy.

The biggest element to be incorporated from Enterprise was the Delphic Expanse. Considering how it was described as relatively close to Earth, yet also a vast area of space, they had to move away from the usual top down view of the galaxy to incorporate into into the layout of existing known space. To accommodate it they considered it as a large vertical space going through the disc of the galaxy, so from above it seems a small area, but from other angles its true scale is revealed.

While the publication doesn't seem to include any nuTrek geography, the first film did leave its mark on the prime timeline, with the destruction of Romulus thanks to the Hobus supernova. This will be detailed in the new maps, with Hobus and the subspace shock-wave it sent out incorporating descriptions already established in the Countdown comics and Star Trek Online.

The new maps will also include much more detail on the Dominion War than the previous release: They decided to disregard some of the maps seen on-screen to some extent, treating them as representative of movements in the war, rather than accurate maps, as they were too inconsistent and/or inaccurate to reconcile. In order to make sense of how the Federation homeworlds, distant from the bulk of events seen around Bajor and Cardassia, were under constant threat, Nemecek developed the idea of a distant front in the war, reaching into Federation space, which he described with an analogy to Earth geography:

It's almost like, if Cardassia was say, North America, and the homeworlds, with the Klingon beyond, and the Romulans beyond, were like Europe. And the Klingon Empire was like North Africa. It's almost like everything was happening down in the Caribbean, that was Cardassia. But it's almost like, if you followed the jet-stream across over to Europe, that's the Northern Front that I came up with.

Geoffrey Mandel contributed a "History of he Federation" map, which Nemecek described as three times better than the Star Charts maps, and compared it to the a National Geographic pull-out map. The other maps were split between Ian Fullwood and Ali Ries. Fullwood produced the "straight maps" including:

Known space of the Alpha Quadrant, and Known Space of the Beta [Quadrant], and they're set up so that you can hang them together and they'll mate up along the edge. You can have the known space of the Alpha and Beta - Which mainly focuses on the Federation.

Ries meanwhile has developed the alien maps in the book, including an ancient Vulcan map of the Vulcan system, a pre-Organia Klingon map, heavy on propaganda, a TNG-era Romulan government map, and a Cardassian map from before the withdraw from Bajor. Reis also made an art-print map:

...it's an accurate art print of all the major empires and their extent. So it looks like a representational colour blob thing, it's almost like Jackson Pollock primary colours, but it's all for real, and it's based on Geoff's map.

There are also maps of the Dominion War, and a Romulan War/Birth of the Federation map. To hear much more discussion of what's in Stellar Cartography, and a bit more about Nemecek's background in Trek reference books, have a listen to Literary Treks.

New Star Trek maps book

Good news everybody, there's another new "non-fiction" Star Trek book on the way; coming in December is Star Trek - Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library. The book is written by Larry Nemecek, who's various previous Star Trek works include contributions to the most recent Star Trek maps book, 2002's Star Trek: Star Charts. This new book is the latest "deluxe" offering to the Star Trek library; the forty-eight page hardcover book comes in a clam shell case, with a set of ten large maps (thirty-six by twenty-four inches each). It is being published by 47North, an Amazon imprint, which previously brought us Federation: The First 150 Years. Here's the cover and description from Amazon:

The Starfleet Reference Library: Stellar Cartography collects together ten original, never-before-seen large-format maps of the Star Trek universe. Pulled from the cartography archives of Starfleet Academy, these beautifully reproduced maps provide a rare opportunity to view the expanse of Federation space (and beyond) through the multiple lenses of the Galaxy's key players.

The maps include an ancient Vulcan map, a Klingon Empire map from the pre-Organian Peace Treaty era (in the native Klingon), an official Romulan government map of the Empire, a native Cardassian Union map from the Bajor occupation, along with Federation maps from the modern era. Housed in a handsome clamshell case and paired with a fully-illustrated reference book providing detailed information on planets, systems, and topography, this exclusive collection showcases the Star Trek universe like never before.

UPDATE: Nemecek has now posted about this on his blog, describing some of the maps to be included:

We took the bedrock work of Geof Mandel in the 2002 Star Trek Star Maps as our touchstone—indeed, we got Geof back for a massive "historical" UFP map in the set of 10—and then got artists Ali Ries and Ian Fullwood to help take it from there for the various vibes needed. Together, they sweated a lot of our details—and that cover you see here does not begin to reveal the depth of what we get into.

You get the set of ten 2x3 maps plus a hardback guidebook I authored—all in the guise of a curated collection from the analog and digital archives of Memory Alpha. In those pages, we update for the Prime universe since 2002 (real-time) as of 2386 (canon time), we tie together a lot of threads like that whole confusing "Alpha Quadrant powers" thing, and we even deal with the onetime "Delphic Expanse" of Enterprise and, in a special update, JJ's Romulan subspace supernova.

What I may be most singly proud of, though, is for the first time finding a way to choreograph the known elements of the Dominion War onto that grid in a way that makes sense—including all that "threatened Federation homeworlds" business—and not only illustrate some major canon battles but make sense of those onscreen DS9 wall maps, too.

Sounds like fun to me. Star Charts is one of my favourite Trek books, but having the maps loose should make them a bit a easier to browse, and get a better sense of how everything is laid out. Giving us maps from different historical periods and cultural perspectives is also a really nice idea, allowing us to explore the Star Trek galaxy through time and space.

Visions from Federation: The First 150 Years

Federation: The First 150 Years is just a few weeks away. Here are preview images posted by StarTrek.com, TrekCore, and Trek News, with comments from the author, David A. Goodman, from a recent StarTrek.com interview:

The point of the book for me was to never take a liberty that would bug me as a fan. So it never came up that I was taking too much liberty with the canon, because I was so focused on what was already established, and then both filling in the blanks and linking those pieces of history that were mentioned or dramatized in the shows. The bigger challenge for me was making obvious contradictions between the shows and movies not seem like they were contradictions. So for instance, in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Picard says that the Prime Directive was the result of a disastrous first meeting with the Klingons. But then in the pilot of Star Trek: Enterprise we see humanity's first encounter with the Klingons. It doesn't seem to support Picard's comment, but I looked at it and figured out a way that it could, and I think it makes a lot of sense, and tells an interesting story. Some things could not be completely resolved, like the fact that Kirk has never seen a cloaking device before "Balance of Terror," but those idiots on Star Trek: Enterprise used them all the time. I was one of those idiots, which is why I can say that. Though, again, I did my best to resolve this in a way that I think makes sense.

Here is one of the examples of filling in a gap, an ancient Vulcan document which seems to describe the sundering of the Romulans from Vulcan, and their intent to return:

As one might expect from a product from a different publisher, it sounds as if Goodman won't be drawing upon existing non-canon sources to fill in some of the historical gaps, having crafted his own explanations for the Eugenics and Romulan Wars:

My CBS contact and I disagreed about Khan and the 1990's. I felt like referencing events that didn't happen in our 1990's would be a problem, but he insisted that I bring it in. I relented, and resolved the issue with a footnote that I think covers all the bases very subtly about why none of us who lived through the 1990's were never under the rule of the genetically engineered supermen.

At that first lunch with my CBS contact, when he mentioned his idea for the book, the first thing I thought of was, "I get to write the Romulan War!" Almost nothing in canon was written about this. I had only to figure out a war where the two sides never met face to face, that no one knew where Romulus was, and decide if the Cheron mentioned in The Battle of Cheron in TNG’s "The Defector" is the same Cheron from "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Otherwise, I had free reign. I've read a lot of military history, especially World War II, and it inspired how I laid out the war, and how it helped lead to the formation of the Federation. Also, I figured a link between Cheron from "Battlefield" and the Romulans that is canon, so I decided it was the same Cheron.

Here is the attack on Starbase 1, from the start of the Romulan War:

This document comes from the logs of the starship Intrepid, during the war:

Enterprise was probably the most detailed look at its own period of history, so that chapter of the book didn't require much of my imagination, but that doesn't mean it was easy. The fact is Enterprise stopped short of saying how the Federation was formed, so I had to explain where Archer was speaking in that last episode. Also, the Temporal Cold War and the war with the Xindi were things that the writers had fun using, but we never fully figured out, so I had to do that in the book, and I was cursing the writing staff of Enterprise the whole time I was writing that section.

Of course the book also goes well into history after Enterprise, here is a young Lieutenant Commander Matthew Decker, on the USS Patton:

And here is a Romulan document describing the formation of the Klingon-Romulan Alliance:

"Part of a cache of documents smuggled out of the Romulan Empire, the transcript documents a speech recorded during a special secret session of the Romulan Senate. The speech lays out Varus’s conclusion of the first agreement with the Klingons, and his plans to remake the Alpha Quadrant. The relationship between the Klingons and the Romulans was far from tranquil, but it did lead to the Romulans sharing cloaking technology with the Klingons, in exchange for the Klingons sharing the designs of their D7 ship. It is uncertain if Varus’s use of the term “Earth Federation” was a deliberate attempt to identify the Federation as an Earth-centered Empire, or whether he truly believed it."

More images from Federation: The First 150 Years

Amazon has updated its listing for Federation: The First 150 Years; mainly swapping out the early preview images with some new photos which make the book look rather luxurious. The new photos do include a new preview from inside the book too; the first look at the Romulan War chapter opening page:

New photos continue after the jump:

The art of Federation: The First 150 Years

The release of Federation: The First 150 Years draws ever closer (although the expected publication date does seem to have slipped from November into December), and StarTrek.com seem to be terribly excited about it, with teases coming every week or so! There latest is this first page of the Articles of Federation:

They have also run interviews with the book's illustrators - Jeff Carlisle compared the book to recent ambitious Star Wars books, The Jedi Path and Book of Sith, which explore facets of the Star Wars universe from a detailed in-universe point of view. Joe Corroney expanded on this:

...they pitched the book to me as an official, "real world"-type journal chronicling the history of the Federation that would make the reader feel like they are living in the Star Trek universe and reading a history book that actually existed for the characters. They wanted the book to feel as real as possible and I think they were hoping our artwork would lend an authenticity to it for that theme. Most of the art I was asked to contribute were illustrations rendered in a "field-guide" style for the book, as if a Starfleet historian was chronicling these historic events and documenting these important items as they were happening or being discovered. In fact, during the first round of approvals for these field-guide style pieces I was asked to make them look even "sketchier" and less refined. It was fun to kind of break down my style and attempt some different, quicker techniques with these pieces.

Each of the artists involved gave StarTrek.com an overview of what they have contributed to the book (I have included screencaps from the previous trailer for the book, they are organised at my best guess at attribution per artist). Cat Staggs, a vetran Star Wars illustrator, comic book artist, and recent Smallville cover artist, dealth with a lot of the portrait work:

I'm especially proud of my Captain Kirk and Spock. I also got to draw a few scenes and characters that have never been seen or depicted before, including an avian, so that was really fun. It's always awesome to be able to contribute artistically to something that is going to forever be part of the canon.

Mark McHaley, another illustrator with a Star Wars pedigree, illustrated the chapter-openings, along with a few other images throughout the book. He was particularly pleased with:

The standoff between the Klingons and the Federation over Organia was a nice little piece of unseen history. The launch of the Phoenix was a particularly satisfying illustration for me.

 

 

Joe Corroney, who has the most extensive history with Star Trek projects of the four illustrators thanks to his years of covers and more recently interior artwork for IDW comics, got into the book after working on his forthcoming Stuck on Star Trek sticker book:

I was asked to be a part of the project back in 2011, I believe. I was actually working on artwork for another Star Trek book proposal for becker and mayer! at the time called Stuck on Star Trek. So right after that initial artwork was completed for that proposal I was asked by my art director if I would like to contribute some illustrations to Federation. I was excited about this opportunity because most of my Trek work up to this point was for comic books and this project represented new territory for me. It allowed me to flex some different artistic muscles and experiment with different styles than I normally get to do in my usual artwork for Star Trek, which I enjoyed.

My work consisted primarily of illustrations depicting some important, iconic moments and historical objects throughout the years of the birth and development of the Federation. I also created artwork for things like Klingon weapons and armor, artifacts, Starfleet Academy, some starship diagrams and a Starfleet propaganda poster, too, which was especially fun to work on.

There were a few of the historic scenes I was really excited to draw, like the Vulcan ship landing in San Francisco at the site of the future Starfleet Headquarters and the meeting of the Starfleet engineers during the construction of the Enterprise. I included a nice nod to Gene Roddenberry in that illustration, actually, which I hope fans will appreciate.

Finally, Jeff Carlisle was invited to contribute to the book relatively late on, and delivered four of the loose documents and illustrations:

I created the Enterprise blueprints, The Trill Medical Diagram, an interior illustration of a Vulcan relic and some sketches/handwritten notes of Zefram Cochrane written on an envelope.

Interesting the new diagram of the Enterprise will be from the Pike era:

The first thing we had to decide was which version of the Enterprise we would be showing, and it was decided that it would be the original Enterprise from "The Cage" -- and that's when I went into research mode and learned everything I could from a variety of sources about the construction not only of the Enterprise but of the Constitution class itself. I gathered a lot of research, including Matt Jefferies' original sketches, various renderings and plan views of the ship, including the amazing cutaway designed by Doug Drexler that was used in the two Mirror Universe episodes of Enterprise. At one time I even wrote notes back and forth between the ship designers to be in the margins of the blueprint, but they ended up not using them. I just wanted people to understand that the Enterprise was itself a design revision from the Constitution... I guess I got a little excited!

Carisle also put a lot of effort into developing his trill biology image:

...at first the image was going to be a simple Starfleet medical scan with a little red blip showing the Symbiont inside of a Host, but then you have to figure out HOW they fit together. They enter through the abdomen, but there has to be a real link between their systems. The symbiont needs to get sustenance and expel waste as well as have the mental link. So I always thought that it would have to be somewhere between the liver and stomach, possibly connected to the intestines, possibly with tendrils connecting it to the spine of the Host. When the idea was pitched to CBS, the response was overwhelmingly positive. We also decided to turn the whole readout into a Trill diagram, basing our layout and the writing on one of the few Trill computer screens that was shown in the show

You can read the full interviews with Cat Staggs and Mark McHaley, here, and Joe Corroney and Jeff Carlisle, here.

Inside the Trill

StarTrek.com have posted a sample from the forthcoming, Federation: The First 150 Years; Jeff Carlisle's anatomical art of a Trill with symbiont:

Pre-order: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.co.jp.

Federation: The First 150 Years trailer

StarTrek.com have posted a trailer for the forthcoming Star Trek history book Federation: The First 150 Years. It gives us the first look at some of the art from the book, plus a sample of George Takei's narration as Admiral Hikaru Sulu:

Federation: The First 150 Years

I guess the Star Trek Vault's jumble of pull outs bits and pieces must have done pretty well, as the next Star Trek reference book on the horizon is doing the same, and adding an electronic pedestal as well! Federation: The First 150 Years, by David A Goodman, will chart, as the title suggests, the first 150 years of the Federation. If it's doing so strictly from the formation of the Federation in 2061, that will take us from just after the end of Enterprise, and the Romulan War, through the run of TOS, and up to the Tomed Incident - Which curiously means the period goes from the start of one period of Romulan isolation to the next. The press release for the book suggests it will explore at least as far back as First Contact as well, with the century that follows, including the Enterprise-era, leading up to the formation of the Federation. I can't wait to see what sort of exploration they give to the Kelvin era, in fact the entire first century of Federation history is largely unexplored.

The 176 page book will include documents from Federation history, including treaty excerpts, intelligence reports, and letters, accompanied by colour and black and white illustrations by Joe Corroney, Mark McHaley, Cat Staggs, and Jeff Carlisle, including views of "epic battles, alien species and heretofore unseen ship designs, among them the Romulan attack on Starbase 1, and the Xindi Avian". There will also be five pull-out documents: Zefram Cochrane’s first sketch of the warp drive engine, a hand-penned letter from a young Jim Kirk, biological information on the Trill, blueprints for the U.S.S. Enterprise, and an in-universe letter form the author.

At this stage I am completely sold, this sounds amazing. But there's more! The book also comes with an electronic pedestal, with light and sound features including narration by George Takei. I can't say I'm so excited by this price-increasing, book-shelf-irritating feature, but I suppose it at least demonstrates some faith in the brand to be able to pull off something so (literally) flashy.

Here's Amazon's blurb for the book:

Assembled as a Special Exhibit on Memory Alpha, Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years celebrates the 150th anniversary of the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

This unprecedented illustrated volume chronicles the pivotal era leading up to Humankind's First Contact with Vulcan, the Romulan War, the creation of the Federation, and the first 150 years of the intergalactic democracy. Meticulously researched, this account covers a multitude of alien species, decisive battles, and the technology that made the Age of Exploration possible. It includes field sketches, illustrations, and reproductions of historic pieces of art from across the Galaxy, along with over fifty excerpts from key Federation documents and correspondence, Starfleet records, and intergalactic intelligence.

Housed in a pedestal display complete with lights and an audio introduction by Admiral Hikaru Sulu, this deluxe edition also features five removable documents from the Federation Archives, including Zefram Cochrane's early sketch of the warp-drive engine, a handwritten letter from young Jim Kirk, and the first-known diagram of a Trill symbiont.

Pre-order: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.co.jp.