Description
This article is from the Star Trek Tech
FAQ, by Joshua Bell inexorabletash@hotmail.com with numerous
contributions by others.
43 Pretty Pictures p3 (rec.arts.startrek.tech reading list)
STARFLEET DYNAMICS
Out of print. Asking price: US$50.
A look at TOS through Movie-era ship design, technical information,
and tactics. Said to be very good by "regulars". Covers basically
about ever single point from [the classic films] and earlier,
predominantly focusing the movies - uniforms, communication protocols,
escape pods, starship classes and designs, Genesis project, bo'sun's
whistles, you name it. I would not hesitate to describe it as the
Bible of [film-era] Trek. [Benjamin Chee]
___________________________________
STARFLEET PROTOTYPES: THE JOURNAL OF INNOVATIVE DESIGN AND IDEAS
"Another book, very similar to _SotSF_1_, while imaginative, suggests
various designs that have a kind of "let's play with AutoCAD" look to
them. Its cute, but some of the ideas espoused are sketchy, and
require some suspension of disbelief to think Starfleet would actually
commission any of these designs." "Comment: they got too artsy-fartsy
in attempting to suggest the book really was published in 2292..." [A.
J. Madison]
___________________________________
STARFLEET SHIP RECOGNITION
Fan produced. "Setup similar to "Enterprise Officer's manual" by
Geoffrey Mandel" [Chris Wayne]
(Starfleet Publications Office)
___________________________________
STARSHIP DESIGN
Todd Guenther. "It's set up like a tech journal. Ships of the Star
Fleet are produced by the same company as are many other things. It
give many technical layouts of various ships." [Chris Wayne]
(Devon-Aurora Publications, 1987.)
___________________________________
STAR TREK: STARSHIP SPOTTER
Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz, Robert Bonchune.
Pocket Books, November 2001. ISBN 0-743-43725-X
In print. Cover price: US$16.00.
Thirty craft (using the term loosely) are presented by those hard
workers at Foundation Imaging, the special effects house that takes
care of the Star Trek franchise. Each ship is given a background
blurb, a wire-frame rendition, a statistics block giving dimensions
and capabilities, and a two-page full fidelity rendering of
Foundation's CGI model of the ship. Mojo (who hangs out on Treknical
forums) has taken the stance of disregarding "official" statistics
when they don't make sense, and going with more plausible fan-deduced
dimensions in cases. The length of the Defiant is a key example.
The attempt is excellent, but a few things spoil it for me. The
wire-frame seems out of place, the full color renderings of the ships
are split across two pages, and finally the book is just frustrating
close to ideal - not quite enough ships, not quite enough charts, not
quite enough renders. Toss in 3- or 5-way views of each ship instead
of the wire frames and dedicate shorter articles to every known type
and I'd be in bliss.
This is the closest thing to an official "starship book" that's come
out yet, and were it not for more complete and detailed on-line,
fan-produced sites this would be a key part of any library.
Unfortunately, I think this book will end up being a footnote in the
history of Treknical publications.
___________________________________
Continue to:
Share and Enjoy
Bookmark this story so others can enjoy it:
Tags
reading, books, Star Trek, holodeck, computers, ship statistics, transporters, replicators, phasing, warp, subspace, warp velocities
