By GustavoLeao / 19:41, 23 December 2008 / Voyager

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The German TrekZone.de website posted an exclusive interview with author Kirsten Beyer in their newsletter, in which she talks about her upcoming post-Destiny Voyager novels, and here are few excerpts.

5) According to a comment from your colleague Keith R.A. DeCandido, [the upcoming Voyager novel] Full Circle will start initially where Enemy of My Enemy left off and go all the way through to Destiny and beyond. Is that true? If the answer is yes, isn't that really very demanding?

Yes, it is true, and yes, Full Circle is by far the most ambitious tie-in project I've tackled to date. Bear in mind that after the Spirit Walk duology ended in mid 2378, Voyager characters made appearances in several other novels - TNG, Titan, Articles of the Federation, and we had a Janeway cameo in Nemesis. Then came Destiny which is set in the first two months of 2381. So I was looking at a gap of almost three years that needed filling and that still had to line up with what had already been published and what David Mack was working on in Destiny. There were a number of unresolved story threads left by Christie Golden, but most important of all, we needed to figure out how to most effectively weave Voyager into the wider Trek universe. They needed to have their own special purpose, a creative direction that makes their stories unique, and that would set the stage for the future in a really compelling way.

Now that I look at it, I'm amazed I even decided to give it a shot.

But the good news was that once Destiny was in the works, the editors at Pocket put all of us who were working in the same time-frame or writing significant pre-Destiny material: myself, David Mack, Christopher Bennett, William Leisner, Michael Martin, Andy Mangels, and Keith DeCandido, in regular contact so as we were working, we were able to help one another with all of the world and character building and continuity issues necessary to make all of these books as cohesive as possible. That part of the process has truly been a joy. All of the authors I worked with as I was writing Full Circle were incredibly generous with their time and valuable knowledge and our peer review process is a big part of what made this undertaking both possible and manageable.

6) If the Full Circle story ranges from Enemy of My Enemy to the aftermath of Destiny the U.S.S. Voyager will be catapulted into a very dark era of Star Trek. Recently the Federation has suffered terrible damage by a Borg invasion we've never seen before. Why could that be the right setting for a Voyager continuation? What outstanding role should ship and crew play in the future?

Yes, the period of 2378 - 2381, particularly from June of 2380 through February 2381 are pretty dark for our heroes. But that doesn't bother me. Conflict and obstacles are a prerequisite for these kinds of stories. Sometimes those conflicts are internal, and sometimes the universe comes along and just starts beating the living crap out of you. These are good problems to have as a writer, though less fun to experience (I would imagine) as a character.

But it's the right setting, not just for Voyager but for all of Trek in that I think it resonates with some of our larger challenges as a planet right now. As long as I've been alive, it feels like we've been careening from one disaster to another, constantly on the brink of our own annihilation. Yes, I know that the decades right before I was born, the 50's and 60's had their challenges, but I look at some of the accomplishments of those decades, the prosperity and sense of optimism, the civil rights movement, and landing a man on the moon, and I wonder if our more recent accomplishments, like the technological advances we've seen in my lifetime, have done as much for our morale as a people and actually improved our quality of life as decisively as they were meant to.

Star Trek has always had allegorical undertones. It's not that we just shift our current problems a few hundred years in the future and watch them play out, but at its best, Trek has a way of shedding light on our struggles, though in a vastly different context. The darkness of the Borg invasion, the despair, the devastation, and ultimately the power of hope in the face of fear is something I think is worth meditating upon, particularly right now.

What's wonderful about Trek is that it has always presented us with one vision of what is possible. It's not a perfect future. Humans are still human and a lot of the alien races they encounter share our collective baggage, but there is hope. There is a willingness to stretch ourselves beyond parochial and outdated views and to embrace the universe's mysteries. There is a desire, always, to try and do the right thing, and to push ourselves beyond our comfort zones. I believe we all share those desires right now but that we are faced with such daunting challenges that it may be hard to imagine how we're going to get from here to where we really want to be. I'm not saying that Trek is any kind of blueprint for our future, but by placing our heroes in really difficult and dark situations from time to time, and by watching their struggles, we can more easily relate to them, and hopefully, find inspiration in their solutions.

7) In Before Dishonor something happened we could call a sacrilege: a protagonist had to die, at least in the physical way. That is something we've never seen before in a Star Trek novel. How does the loss of Kathryn Janeway effect the continuation of the Voyager story? Isn't it a burden if such a protagonist is suddenly missing?

The loss of Kathryn Janeway was definitely shocking. As you said, we've never seen the permanent death of a major figure like her and I know that a lot of Voyager fans took it pretty personally either because she was their favorite character, or the first female captain of her own series, or because they just don't ever want to contemplate the death of a beloved character.

However, one of the good things about the ongoing fiction, for the readers and writers, is that because the shows and films are no longer in production with these characters, we are no longer bound to adhere to the status quo when we conceive of a story. It used to be that when we were done playing we had to make sure all of the toys were back on the shelf where we found them. That limits the kinds of stories you can tell. Those restrictions no longer exist.

Don't get me wrong. No one is considering the wholesale destruction of the universe that has been so painstakingly developed for over forty years now. No one is going for mere shock value and the decision to kill any character, be they large or small, is never undertaken lightly. These people exist in our imagination and it is painful to let them go.

But the time has finally come when it is no longer safe to assume that when you start a Trek novel, everything is still going to be in the same place when you've finished it. We can go deeper with characters and their evolution than ever before. We can challenge them in new ways. And we can explore stories that would be impossible given the budgetary realities of filmed Trek.

The decision to kill Kathryn Janeway was not made simply to force readers out of their complacency. It was made because it presented us with uncharted ground that we were interested in exploring. Yes, it's hard. But there's no point in doing this if it's easy. And yes, the death of Kathryn Janeway is treated in great depth in Full Circle and has major repercussions for all of the Voyager characters.

Personally I don't see it as a burden to continue the series without her, so much as a challenge. It remains to be seen if readers will be able to embrace the changes that are coming. For me, Janeway was always the center of Voyager, and definitely one of my favorite characters to write. Now, we have to find a way to shift that center and still remain true to what has always been best about Voyager.

11) We are curious: What will be your next Star Trek novel? Can you image to change to other Star Trek Relaunches?

October of 2009 will see the release of my next novel in the Voyager series. The title hasn't yet been made public, but it will continue the story begun in Full Circle. At this point, once that novel is complete, I'll be returning to work finishing an original novel. As I said earlier, I would definitely enjoy the opportunity to work on other Trek series, but I have no definite plans yet for future Trek, Voyager or otherwise. I look forward to seeing what the future has in store in that regard.

The full interview (in English) can be found at the TrekBBS.