The Star Trek Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
of all the in-universe information from the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
live-action television series and films. The Encyclopedia was written by Michael Okuda
Michael Okuda
- Work in Star Trek :In the mid-1980s, he designed the look of animated computer displays for the Enterprise-A bridge in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. This led to a staff position on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 as a scenic artist, adding detail to set designs and props...
and Denise Okuda
Denise Okuda
Denise Lynn Okuda is co-author of the Star Trek Encyclopedia, which Amazon.com says is the No. 1 reference book about Star Trek among the well over 100 non-fiction books published in this field...
, with Debbie Mirek, and illustrated by Doug Drexler
Doug Drexler
Doug Drexler, born in New York City, is a visual effects artist, designer, sculptor, illustrator, and an academy award-winning makeup artist who has collaborated with such talents as Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, James Caan, Meryl Streep, and Warren Beatty. He began his career in the entertainment...
. Three print editions have been published, in both hardcover
Hardcover
A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...
and paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
: 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
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe...
, the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. Set in the 24th century from the year 2371 through 2378, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel USS Voyager, which becomes stranded in the Delta Quadrant 70,000 light-years from Earth while...
, and the movie Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Insurrection is a 1998 American science fiction film directed by Jonathan Frakes, written by Michael Piller , and with music composed by Jerry Goldsmith. It is the ninth film in the Star Trek franchise, and the third to feature the cast from the television series Star Trek: The Next...
. The most recent version was also released on a CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
that is for both Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
(ISBN 0-684-87413-X). All editions were published by Pocket Books
Pocket Books
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
except the CD-ROM, which was published by Simon & Schuster Interactive; Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
is the owner of the copyrights.
The Encyclopedia features very detailed information about characters, planet
Planet
A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
s, technologies
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, ships
Starship
A starship or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between the stars, as opposed to a vehicle designed for orbital spaceflight or interplanetary travel....
, 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
Shuttlecraft (Star Trek)
In the Star Trek fictional universe, a shuttlecraft is a small auxiliary spaceship carried by the larger craft such as the Enterprise. Shuttlecraft were documented in the writer's guide for the series in 1966 and first appeared in the episode The Galileo Seven. Galileo was the name of the...
.
As a rule, the Encyclopedia covers only the material from the live-action television series programs and the motion pictures, which, at the insistence of Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer...
, 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
Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Technical Manual is a paperback reference guide detailing the inner and other workings of the fictional Federation starship Enterprise-D and other aspects of technology that appeared in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.Authored by Rick Sternbach...
, however, it makes no detailed speculations about Star Trek technology
Treknobabble
Treknobabble is a portmanteau of "Star Trek" and "technobabble". It is used humorously by fans of the various Star Trek television series, and disparagingly by its critics, to describe the infamous amount of pseudoscientific gibberish packed into many episodes.Writers on The Next Generation and...
.
In the time since its last publication, the Encyclopedia has become extremely out of date, with much of the conjectural, non-canonical information contained within it having been contradicted by the last two Star Trek films (Star Trek Nemesis and Star Trek) as well as the last two seasons of Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. Set in the 24th century from the year 2371 through 2378, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel USS Voyager, which becomes stranded in the Delta Quadrant 70,000 light-years from Earth while...
and the most recent series, Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise is a science fiction television series. It follows the adventures of humanity's first warp 5 starship, the Enterprise, ten years before the United Federation of Planets shown in previous Star Trek series was formed.Enterprise premiered on September 26, 2001...
. There are currently no plans to release an updated version of the Encyclopedia, as its usefulness has been greatly superseded in recent years by online, digital resources such as Memory Alpha
Memory Alpha
Memory Alpha is a wiki that is an encyclopedic reference for topics related to the Star Trek fictional universe. Conceived by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in September 2003 and officially launched on December 5 of that year, it uses the wiki model and is hosted by Wikia, Inc. on the MediaWiki...
.
The print version was later complemented by a similar electronic version, the Star Trek Omnipedia. The CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
medium allowed the Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
publishers to include video clips.
See also
- Memory AlphaMemory AlphaMemory Alpha is a wiki that is an encyclopedic reference for topics related to the Star Trek fictional universe. Conceived by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in September 2003 and officially launched on December 5 of that year, it uses the wiki model and is hosted by Wikia, Inc. on the MediaWiki...
, a wikiWikiA wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
with the aim of producing "the most definitive, accurate and accessible encyclopedic reference for topics related to the canon Star Trek fictional universe."