Tantalizing Details Emerge on Bennett's Early Federation Novel

Trek author Christopher L. Bennett has been a busy bee over at the TrekBBS of late, answering questions concerning his forthcoming Rise of the Federation novel “A Choice of Futures”. Some of the highlights of his ongoing discussions follow the cut.



Inspiration... at least to some degree.



Timeline:

Bennett confirms he is working in the prime timeline, and in the 22^nd century, at a point “when Archer and his crew were active”. When asked about the influence of the Abrams interpretation of Trek, Bennett stated that the uniforms of the Kelvin-era were among the uniforms used to develop a Federation Starfleet uniform, together with Enterprise’s jumpsuits and the various uniforms from spinoff series. Starfleet's ships will be a bit different as well, though Bennett notes with the hardware and uniforms that descriptors will probably have to suffice (though he never ruled out book covers featuring new designs).



Interspecies relations will be explored.



Meta Themes:

Bennett shares that his books will include politics and exploration, as well as diplomacy and interspecies relations. He has also stated that the book will explore how the Federation Starfleet came to so closely resemble Earth’s Starfleet.  Bennett described the pattern for the book’s major themes thusly: “My goal is to reveal the origins of the Prime-universe Federation as we know it from the TOS era and beyond. Naturally my brief as a tie-in author is to stay consistent with the canon, but there's a wealth of stuff we don't know about that first century of the UFP, so there's plenty of room for surprises and discoveries.”



No. Mostly no. Unless...



Aliens:

The Klingons won’t be heavily explored, based on the fact that the origins of open conflict between the Federation and the Empire are rooted in the 2220’s. Bennett did leave room for use of the Klingons “if I think of a good story about them.” The Vulcans will be continuing their reforms and progressing towards the society we see in The Original Series.

For a deeper look into Bennett’s thinking, you can visit this thread at the TrekBBS where he has been sharing about the new book.