Last month we published the first information about Larry Nemecek‘s upcoming new non-fiction project, Star Trek: Stellar Cartography. The new deluxe book will provide us with a wonderful library of lovingly created Star Trek maps in what is set to be the most ambitious Star Trek maps project since Geoffrey Mandel’s 2002 edition of the Star Trek Star Charts. Larry was recently interviewed over at podcast site TrekFM (via Trek’s Collective) on his foray into the world of stellar cartography and revealed a few interesting tidbits about the much-anticipated release.

Larry went into greater detail about the book’s presentation format which is set to be just as luxurious as the previous title from publisher 47North, Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years –

The thing itself – I was talking about it not being exactly a book – what you get is a clamshell, so it opens up like a book, and it’s a tri-fold. The two outer things have a pocket… there’s ten maps, twenty-four by thirty-six inches – two by three feet – on a really cool paper stock that doesn’t crease easily. So even though they’re going to be folded, if you get them out and you want to frame them right off the bat or something they’re not going to do like the old maps, the old blueprints would always do, which was crack after you’ve used them a little bit. So there’s a pouch on each side, and there’s five in one, and five in the other.

Then the book, although there’s tonnes of text in it, it’s going to feel a little bit like a giant hardback childrens’ book. So there’s like a spread for each map inside, the text. On one hand it’s more visually heavy than it is textual, but on the other hand there’s some really important textual concepts that I got to play with and massage. To me they’ve either been a gap, or there’s things that have been bugging. It’s like I see fans running round in circles arguing – and although this obviously isn’t aired canon, it’s my way of saying “Peace, peace! There is no need to be so confused and divided about this”.

Anyone who owns a copy of the stunning collection of blueprints designed by Rick Sternbach for the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D will know what Larry is talking about with the paperstock, so we’re thrilled to hear that 47North is taking time with the design and building this set to last!

You can listen to Nemecek’s full interview over at TrekFM, but other details revealed include:

• The much debated logistics of the Dominion War will be addressed, with Nemecek attempting to resolve some of the long-standing confusion over how numerous key Federation worlds were constantly under threat of attack by Dominion front lines. Using Earth’s own geography as a reference, Nemecek describes how he theorized a distant front line of the Dominion and Cardassian war machine could reach deep into Federation space: “It’s almost like, if Cardassia was say, North America, and the homeworlds, with the Klingon beyond, and the Romulans beyond, were like Europe. And the Klingon Empire was like North Africa. It’s almost like everything was happening down in the Caribbean, that was Cardassia. But it’s almost like, if you followed the jet-stream across over to Europe, that’s the Northern Front that I came up with.”
• Fans wanting a more complete picture of the Federation can rest easy, as the charts will tie together detailed maps of both Alpha and Beta quadrants, as Nemecek describes, Stellar Cartography will cover “Known space of the Alpha Quadrant, and known space of the Beta [Quadrant], and they’re set up so that you can hang them together and they’ll mate up along the edge. You can have the known space of the Alpha and Beta – Which mainly focuses on the Federation.”

Larry went on to discuss the variety of different maps which will be featured in the collection. These are set to include the following:

• A “History of the Federation” Map
• An ancient Vulcan map of the Vulcan star system
• A Cardassian map set during the Bajoran occupation
• A Romulan War / Birth of the Federation map
• A Romulan government-issued map from the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation
• A Klingon map set before the Organian incident which is “heavy on propaganda”

Star Trek Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library will be released by publishers 47North on December 3, 2013 and is now available to pre-order over at Amazon using the link below:

Pre-Order Star Trek Stellar Cartography Book

Also by Larry Nemecek:

• Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion