Writer David Mack Explains How Upcoming Captain Jean-Luc Picard Centric Star Trek TNG Novel Collateral Damage “Represents The culmination Of 16 years Of Literary Continuity”!

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Writer David Mack Explains How Upcoming Captain Jean-Luc Picard Centric Star Trek TNG Novel Collateral Damage “Represents The culmination Of 16 years Of Literary Continuity”!

Here’s Mack’s social media statement.

Here’s the text of that statement.

      I’ve been asked a few times now about what it means that my upcoming Star Trek: TNG novel COLLATERAL DAMAGE “represents the culmination of 16 years of literary continuity.” For those who didn’t know, the Trek novels have been working in a mostly coordinated/shared continuity since 2001.

      I started contributing to the shared Star Trek literary continuity in 2001 with my work for the S.C.E. eBook series, which at that time published monthly novellas. It was a mix of episodic and serialized narratives, and we put in links to other Trek book series.

      My first full-length paperback novels were a pair of TNG books, released back-to-back in September/October 2004. Those were A TIME TO KILL and A TIME TO HEAL, the 7th & 8th books in a nine-book series.

      I really shook things up in A TIME TO KILL and A TIME TO HEAL. The two books were a Star Trek critical allegory of the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. There was some really dark stuff, especially in the second book. And it had lasting consequences for our characters.

      I’ve now written a total of 28 Star Trek novels, and I have continued to weave ongoing story threads through many of them, even ones set in different centuries and series of Star Trek. Consequently, I was able to link TNG, DS9, SCE, Titan, and Section 31 tales.

      Now, after 18 years, many of those story lines are converging in one novel: COLLATERAL DAMAGE, which follows up on the fallout from my Section 31 novel CONTROL, as well as the events of Dayton Ward’s TNG novels HEARTS AND MINDS and AVAILABLE LIGHT.

      So what might you want to read before jumping into COLLATERAL DAMAGE this October? You don’t =need= to read anything, since I explain in-text what you need to know to follow the story. But you’ll get more out of it if you’ve read some or all of these books:

      TNG: A Time to Kill (the Tezwa crisis)
      TNG: A Time to Heal (the Tezwa coverup and its aftermath)
      TNG: Cold Equations, Book I: The Persistence of Memory (Data’s reincarnation)
      Titan: Fortune of War (the Riker/Sarai/Batanides subplot)
      Section 31: Control (the Section 31 controversy)
      TNG: Hearts and Minds by Dayton Ward (the Section 31 fallout)
      TNG: Available Light by Dayton Ward (more Section 31 fallout)

      I hope you’ll pre-order your copy of COLLATERAL DAMAGE, coming Oct. 8, 2019. (But if you think this is the end of the current continuity … let’s just say we Trek scribblers have a few rabbits left to pull from our hats…)

      http://davidmack.pro/writing/collateral-damage/

Finally, here’s the blurb write-up for Collateral Damage.

      Star Trek: The Next Generation
      Collateral Damage

      The past returns to haunt Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

      Consequences are mounting from the downfall of Section 31, the covert organization that has operated without accountability in the shadows for more than two centuries. Throughout the Federation, the rogue group’s agents and leaders have been taken into custody as the sheer scope of its misdeeds has come to light.

      As Starfleet Command decides the fate of numerous high-ranking officers caught up in the scandal of a Federation president’s forced removal, Picard must return to Earth to answer for his role in a conspiracy that some are calling treason.

      Meanwhile, the U.S.S. Enterprise is sent to apprehend pirates who have stolen vital technology from a fragile scientific colony. But acting captain Commander Worf discovers that the pirates’ motives are not what they seem, and that sometimes standing for justice means defying the law…

The book is available for pre-order now and lands in stores on October 8, 2019.

John is a long-time pop culture fan, comics historian, and blogger. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief at Comics Nexus. Prior to being EIC he has produced several column series including DEMYTHIFY, NEAR MINT MEMORIES and the ONE FAN'S TRIALS at the Nexus plus a stint at Bleeding Cool producing the COMICS REALISM column. As BabosScribe, John is active on his twitter account, his facebook page, his instagram feed and welcomes any and all feedback. Bring it on!