Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures (Star Trek: Enterprise series Book 15)

The United Federation of Planets has weathered its first major crisis, but its growing pains are just beginning. Meanwhile, the sinister Orion Syndicate recruits new allies of its own, seeking to beat the Federation at its own game. Determined to keep Rigel out of the union, they help a hostile Rigelian faction capture sensitive state secrets along with Starfleet hostages, including a young officer with a vital destiny. Book 1 was about the Federation defining its identity, choosing what kind of state it was going to be.

Thus, it followed that Book 2 should be about its early efforts at growth and consolidation: At the time I was working on the Book 2 outline, my attention was still primarily on the recently released Only Superhuman — doing publicity, tracking its performance, and so on — in addition to which, I came down with a terrible cold and severe throat irritation that kept me up at night for over a week. Still, I finally managed to get my head in the game and cope with some of the problems I was having.

• Our Daily Bread (Tales of the Gray Prince Book 2).
• A Choice of Futures.
• More books from this author: Christopher L. Bennett!

For one thing, I decided to delete a whole subplot that was unconnected to the rest of the story and could be saved for a later book one of the advantages of doing a series. That helped me finish the book in time for my deadline, and I had some nice moments of serendipity along the way, particularly a new subplot that sort of spontaneously emerged and allowed a certain character to play a more proactive role in the resoution of the crisis.

But in those last weeks I worked so hard and was so stressed out that I ended up straining my shoulder pretty badly. I was very glad that the Shore Leave convention arrived just after I was done. I got to hang out with my writer friends and stay with my cousins in the area, and had a really nice visit to my audiobook publisher too, so that really cheered me up. In particular, I had fun with the worldbuilding of the Rigel system, taking all the disparate references to Rigel this and Rigel that in the screen canon, along with the ones in the current novel continuity, and building a cohesive whole out of them.

Why did I choose Rigel as the first major addition to the young Federation? Because I wanted Archer to go after a major prize, a coalition of worlds whose addition to the union would increase its size and power significantly in one fell swoop, so that the stakes would be as high as possible. Rigel has so many distinct worlds and cultures that it gave me a rich multispecies community in a single system — although it did come with certain conceptual problems and contradictions that I had to navigate my way around.

So the idea of Rigel being in at the beginning, or nearly so, had some precedent. The cover to Tower of Babel is much more along the lines I was hoping for than the cover for A Choice of Futures turned out to be. But when their discovery is seemingly proven to be a fraud, the scandal threatens to undo a decade of progress and return power to the old, warlike regime.

Endeavour investigate with help from their Vulcan allies, but none of them suspect the identity of the real mastermind behind the conspiracy to reconquer Vulcan—or the price they will have to pay to discover the truth.

Navigation menu

But they discover that other civilizations are eager to exploit this dangerous power for their own benefit, even if the Federation must pay the price! Now that the Federation was past its teething pains and finding itself on a firmer footing, I decided that it was time to explore how it would deal with a threat to others, exerting itself as a peacekeeping power. I also wanted to vary the mix of antagonists and bring in a new threat to give the Malurians and Orions a rest, and to allow certain other threads to simmer in the background for a while.

Also, canon strongly suggests that the Federation managed to avoid major wars for the first century of its existence. More importantly, it would be a chance to answer those lingering questions from the episode, and maybe to touch on why the later Federation seems so mistrustful of robotics and automation. That was worth telling, and offered a valuable additional perspective on the political and social upheavals affecting Vulcan at this time.

This time around, I was contracted for a longer book, around , words instead of 80, This gave me room to tell the story in more depth — and to work in that subplot I had to excise from Book 2 for space. Fortunately, I was also under contract for two books this time, and it had always been my plan to explore the automated technology the Ware, as I call it in two phases.

So I was able to restructure my plans and save much of the story for Book 4. I think it actually works better this way, making for a more focused narrative. It struck me so powerfully that I had to write to my editor and suggest it, though with no expectation that my idea would be accepted. But apparently someone liked it, because there it is. Admiral Jonathan Archer has barely settled in as Starfleet Chief of Staff when new crises demand his attention. The Starfleet task force commanded by Captain Malcolm Reed continues its fight against the deadly Ware technology, but one of the task force ships is captured, its Andorian crew imprisoned by an interstellar Partnership that depends on the Ware for its prosperity.

Worse, the Partnership has allied with a renegade Klingon faction, providing it with Ware drone fleets to mount an insurrection against the Klingon Empire. But he must also keep his eye on the Klingon border, for factions within the Empire blame Starfleet for provoking the Ware threat and seek to take revenge. As I mentioned in my Uncertain Logic discussion, much of the Ware storyline I had in mind for that book needed to be postponed for this one. Generally, I like to keep each installment of a series reasonably self-contained and complete.

Star Trek: Enterprise - Rise of the Federation | Memory Alpha | FANDOM powered by Wikia

Still, I did manage to divide the Ware narrative into two quite distinct phases, and each novel had its own distinct subplots alongside the Ware story. Also, saving the Ware-using civilization called the Partnership for this volume allowed me to flesh them out in considerably more detail, and to improve on my original Book-4 plans for them. That book was written as a translation of an influential Klingon text spelling out the basic precepts of their civilization, complete with various historical accounts from a Klingon perspective, including two major events that happened within the ROTF time frame.

So this reshaped my plans for Book 4.

The Romulan War duology by Michael A. Martin had established that the Klingons intended to withdraw from the galactic stage to deal with their own internal problems for a while, but the Ware situation let me draw them out again, at least for the space of this one book. I was able to get additional use out of my Denobulan worldbuilding, in fact, by using 24th-century Denobula as a setting in my upcoming e-novella Department of Temporal Investigations: I started the writing process with a plan to work systematically and write 25, words a month for four months.

I barely met my deadline the first month, but then my website crashed, and the work of reconstructing it here on Written Worlds preoccupied me for a time, so I fell badly behind. At six weeks to deadline, I had the novel only half-written. But then something changed. That had been to keep me focused on long drives, but I decided to see if it could improve my focus on my work. The time has come to act. Following the destructive consequences of the Ware crisis, Admiral Jonathan Archer and Section 31 agent Trip Tucker both attempt to change their institutions to prevent further such tragedies.

Archer pushes for a Starfleet directive of non-interference, but he faces opposition from allies within the fleet and unwelcome support from adversaries who wish to drive the Federation into complete isolationism. Meanwhile, Tucker plays a dangerous game against the corrupt leaders of Section 31, hoping to bring down their conspiracy once and for all. Paraphrasing from my blog: This was kind of a rough one, since there were delays getting the contract and approvals through, so I was late getting started and I had only three months to write the book.

Which proved difficult, since I was suffering from a vitamin D deficiency that was causing me some mild depression and making it hard to focus. The dismaying outcome of the presidential election added to that depression, but it also energized my writing, since the themes of this story are highly relevant to current events. This is my most overtly political novel to date, but there were things that I felt desperately needed to be said, under the circumstances. One thing that eased the deadline pressures was that the novel came out relatively short, about 83, words.

But there are major events and changes to the status quo on both scales. Control , telling a somewhat parallel story about the battle against Section 31 in the 24th century. But Dave and I compared notes and worked to keep our stories mutually consistent. Another help with the tight writing schedule was that I once again managed to recycle a concept from one of my old, unsold original stories as a subplot.

Corps of Engineers novella. DeCandido accepted the proposal, but the series was cancelled before I got a contract. You left some subtle and not-so-subtle cliffhangers to answer for! Thanks for a worthy vision of this period in Trek history. I very much enyoied the story.

I mainly started reading these books because of the unsatisfactory end to the TV series. So the hint in the current novel about him leaving section 9 and possibly openly returning to friends and family and love has me very exited. Will there be a continuation in a new book? You should come up with art work and show off the new ceres class and have the new ships feature more in future books. Also creating a new enterprise and promoting mayweather to captain of enterprise.

Archer pushes for a Starfleet directive of non-interference, but he faces opposition from allies within the fleet and unwelcome support from adversaries who wish to drive the Federation into complete isolationism.

Meanwhile, Tucker plays a dangerous game against the corrupt leaders of Section 31, hoping to bring down their conspiracy once and for all. About the Author Christopher L. Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider Man: His original work includes the hard science fiction superhero novel Only Superhuman , as well as several novelettes in Analog and other science fiction magazines.

Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures

Defcon , Aug 23, Apr 15, Location: Got my digital pre-order in! The ENT attention to detail with the characters has been really good in this series. Riverside , Aug 23, Dec 29, Location: In the future's past. I got my copy the other day and have just barely scratched the surface. I love this line by Christopher, but that cover is the absolute shits. I'm glad I don't judge books by their covers..

Paris , Aug 23, Jan 20, Location: Yeah sad to say that may be one of the worst Trek covers ever. I'm really looking forward to the novel itself though. Jun 2, Location: Could this be a Saurian spacecraft? I like the cover. Drexler his expanding his repertoire. Markonian , Aug 24, I preordered this novel and have been looking forward to reading this one for along time. Reanok , Aug 24, I preordered my kindle edition!

Roll on the 29th! You better keep Trip alive or else! Nyotarules , Aug 24, Feb 21, Location: On the USS Sovereign. Awaiting my hardcopy edition to ship Ronald Held , Aug 24, Jul 22, Location: JD , Aug 24, Corran Horn and Markonian like this. May 10, Location: Laser Beam is in he visitor's bullpen. Corran Horn likes this. He died before but got cloned? Ronald Held , Aug 25,