The Star Trek Encyclopedia
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The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future is an encyclopedia of all the in-universe information from the Star Trek live-action television series and films. The Encyclopedia was written by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda, with Debbie Mirek, and illustrated by Doug Drexler. Three print editions have been published, in both hardcover and paperback: the first edition (ISBN 0-671-88684-3) was published in 1994; the second (ISBN 0-671-53607-9) in 1997. The most recent edition (ISBN 0-671-53609-5), published in 1999, includes material through the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager, and the movie Star Trek: Insurrection. All editions were published by Pocket Books; Paramount Pictures is the owner of the copyrights.
The Encyclopedia features very detailed information about characters, planets, technologies, ships, and behind-the-scenes information, as well as brief synopses of series program installments and motion pictures. It is replete with illustrations, many of which are in color in later editions, from examples of different writing systems to the evolution of uniforms and shuttlecraft.
As a rule, the Encyclopedia covers only the materiel from the live-action television series programs and the motion pictures, which, at the insistence of Gene Roddenberry, are the extent of the Star Trek canon officially recognized by Paramount. It includes some material from the animated series program (such as "Yesteryear"), and sometimes provides new information. Unlike the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, however, it makes no detailed speculations about Star Trek technology.
The print version was later complemented by a similar electronic version, the Star Trek Omnipedia. The CD-ROM medium allowed the Simon & Schuster publishers to include video clips.
The first edition, at least, was designed with desktop publishing software for the Apple Inc. Macintosh computer, as was the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual; that edition's inconsistencies in typography are common among products of word-processing software, especially those used in the early and middle 1990s. The inconsistency lies mainly in the matter of whether the punctuation at the ends of bold-faced and/or italicized passages is in a matching face or not.
[edit] References
- Okuda, Denise; Okuda, Michael; & Mirek, Debbie (1999). The Star Trek Encyclopedia. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-53609-5.
[edit] See also
- Memory Alpha, a wiki with the aim of producing "the most definitive, accurate and accessible encyclopedic reference for topics related to the canon Star Trek fictional universe."
