Space... The Final Frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: To explore strange new worlds,
To seek out new life and new civilizations,
To boldly go where no man has gone before...

[ Bantam Novels | Pocket TOS Novels |
| Marvel 1980 Comics ]

Bantam Books was the first publisher given license to produce series of original Star Trek novels and episode novelizations. The company began publishing Star Trek material in the late 1960s and continued until the license was awarded to Pocket Books in 1979. This was not an exclusive license, as comics, technical publications and Animated Series adaptations were published concurrently by Gold Key Comics and Ballantine Books.

Bantam's Trek material began with a series of episode novelizations by author James Blish, then moved on to more original fare. 1970 saw the publication of Blish's Spock Must Die!, the second original Star Trek novel (the first being Mission to Horatius, by fellow SF writer Mack Reynolds, in 1968); twelve others followed from 1976 through to 1981.

Although I had collected these novels I never had the desire to read them until recently (early 2009). The following documents are my take on synopsizing the entire plot of each book, as such there are spoilers abound. Hailing Frequencies Closed and ahead Warp Factor Two!

Even before Bantam finished its run of Star Trek books in the mid-to-late 1970's, the Trek publishing contract was awarded to Pocket Books, a division of Simon-and-Scheuster (part of Paramount) and the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released. Since that time Pocket Books has held the publishing liscense for most Trek related products in print and has released hundreds of novels for fans of the show to assimilate.

Over the years I too have collected and assimilated many of these books, but have only read a few. The following documents are my take on synopsizing the entire plot of these books, beginning with the Original Series book series.