Trek Thursdays: An Appreciation Of ‘Star Trek’ Novel Covers

Sixty years ago, Star Trek first hit our screens. The series was groundbreaking, but it wasn’t an immediate hit, getting canceled after three seasons on NBC. 

There are literal books written about it, so I’m not going to rehash it here. The series did eventually find a second life though, and became the pop culture juggernaut we know and love today. However, the franchise did have a short period of time that saw a lack of new on-screen Trek. 

Star Trek The Original Series was cancelled in 1969. Star Trek The Animated Series later aired from 1973 through 1974. Star Trek The Motion Picture debuted in 1979. As you can figure out, there were some gaps there, and even after the premiere of The Motion Picture in the years between entries up to the debut of Star Trek The Next Generation in 1987.

There were many ways that fans filled the gap when Trek was off the air or between seasons. One of my personal favorites is the licensed novels. Now, one of the wonderful things about Trek novels is that they had high print runs, which means these are abundant. One of my favorite collecting hunts is going to thrift stores and used book stores and picking up a Trek novel or five (when they’re a quarter each, how can you say no?).

As I began to do this, I started to notice a trend that made me gravitate towards The Original Series-based novels. While The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager had many novels, their covers were always a predictable pattern — at least one and as many as three main cast members, the hero ship (or starbase), and sometimes an alien or generic side character and TOS novels published after about 1987 or so followed that same trend. Mostly.

But that was all out the window for older TOS novels. While there were plenty that were simply a variation of Kirk, Spock and sometimes McCoy or Scotty with the Enterprise, there were many more that were much crazier, and they followed one of three themes.

1. A tableau that was basically just a 1950’s sci-fi pulp cover with Spock, Kirk or the Enterprise included to “Trek” it up.
2. Spock and/or Kirk being attacked by or attacking an outlandish alien. (Spock was by far the most common.)
3. A fairly standard portrait or action scene of one or more members of the crew with an absolutely insane fantasy character or monster. (Again, these almost always included Spock.)

So as we get closer to the actual anniversary of Star Trek, enjoy some of our favorite classic Trek novel covers. And next time you walk into a used bookstore, glance at the shelves, just to see if you find any yourself.