Star Trek Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library Author: Visit Amazon's Larry Nemecek Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1477805974 | Format: EPUB
Star Trek Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library Description
Amazon.com Review
A Look Inside Star Trek Stellar Cartography
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About the Author
Larry Nemecek is an author, editor, and Star Trek consultant. He wrote the
New York Times bestseller
Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion. Nemecek edited the
Star Trek Communicator magazine for eight years, contributed to
Star Trek Fact Files in the UK, and served as a consultant on
Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. He lives in Burbank with his wife Janet.
- Series: Star Trek
- Hardcover: 48 pages
- Publisher: 47North; Box Pck Ha edition (December 3, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1477805974
- ISBN-13: 978-1477805978
- Product Dimensions: 14 x 11.4 x 2.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Stellar Cartography is a hard book to review because it really, really is a love-letter to Star Trek fans. The production values alone would bump up the worth of this book in any consumer's mind. Unfortunately, the actual content is very much a mixed bag. I'll try and be as clear and succinct with this review as possible, but be warned that specific details regarding this product are a bit difficult to articulate as it is more a work of visual art than literary art.
....
[ What's Awesome ]
The "book" is packaged in a large box with reflective-foil type and a beuatiful illustration of the Enterprise 1701-D flying over what looks like an old "textured" globe from the 1960s; the background is composed of a green nebula that forms a shape reminiscent of the Romulan Star Empire's emblem, dotted with small planets. The box is made of high quality cardboard and held shut with a "flap" with a magnet.
When you open the book, two panels fly outward, revealing a "frame" for the hardcover book flanked on either side by folders, each containing five enormous poster-sized maps. The maps are big, and mostly beautiful to behold.
The book contains various reproductions of the maps depicted in the 10 large posters, with along with some explanatory text. The paper is thick and glossy, and the book has approximately 48 pages.
[ What's Not Awesome ]
Many of the maps look very similar to each other, and many of them are "alien" -- that is to say, they have no legible writing anywhere, displaying instead imaginary Klingon, Romulan, or Vulcan script.
The composition of the maps also leaves a lot to be desired--so much so that I found their arrangement to be irritating, at best.
The first thing you'll notice about Stellar Cartography when you get your hands on it, after noting it's a pretty hefty volume, is that it's much more than a book. What you get is a folding box (with a nifty magnetic panel to keep it all neat when it's closed up), with the actually book held in the center (with a little ribbon behind it to make it easy to pop out from its boxed in holding place). There are two envelopes on the panels either side, each of which hold five maps printed on sheets a smidge over 60x90cm. The book is written by Larry Nemecek, with the maps illustrated by Ian Fullwood, Geoffrey Mandel, and Ali Ries.
Just the experience of open this up and unfurling all the maps is pretty fun, but also a practical way of keeping the whole set together; in contrast to the pretty pointless bookstand-thing with last year's Federation: The First 150 Years. In common with the Federation book, this set is built upon the conceit of being a hard-copy reproduction of information retrieved in-universe from Memory Alpha. The present day is shortly after the Hobus supernova in 2387, although the maps are dated up to 2386, so they don't have to take into account any fallout from the destruction of Romulus.
The book is basically a guide to each of the maps in the set. Each map is reproduced as a two page spread, often slightly differently from the sheet maps, with more or less notation, and/or cropped into a particular section. Two pages then follow discussing what each map depicts, and giving wider historical context. What this book does not do is give the same type of overview of the entire galaxy, and explanation of spacey stuff, that Star Charts did.
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