The Series Timeline establishes time periods for the Star Trek novels based on significant events from the tv episodes and movies. Throughout the guide, the references for these time periods are the series abbreviation and the letter for the period: TNG  A, VOY b, etc. The periods are based on the following criteria:
 

Period A always pertains to events prior to the TV episodes.

With the exception of the Original Series, the time periods after "A" advance on a yearly basis with the television seasons, and then from movie to movie.

The periods for the Original Series are based on the following. The time spans are only approximations.
 

TOS b  --  10  years   (2 five-year missions)
TOS c  --    3  years   (Enterprise refit)
TOS d  --    7  years   (the first four movies)
TOS e  --    6  years   (between movies IV & V)
TOS f   --  75  years   (movie # V up to start of TNG)
TOS g  --  11  years and counting from start of TNG
 
 
To access the list of book titles and their synopses for any period in the Series Timeline, click the appropriate letter in the "Time Periods" column. 
 

go to the Series Timeline, or continue down the page for the Title Timeline Overview

 

Using the criteria established in the Series Timeline, the Title Timeline arranges all the novels into their correct time periods, and then into basic chronological order within the period. (Except for TOS period B, which is in alphabetical order.)

Five small sections of the timeline are provided below to help explain the important features.
 

Eras:

The timeline has been separated into five eras (four of which are used in the example) to assist the reader in establishing the approximate dates of the stories. Those eras are:
 
1)  The Distant Past
2)  The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
3)  The Twenty-first and Twenty-second Centuries
4)  The Twenty-third Century  (Kirk's era)
5)  The Twenty-fourth Century  (Picard's era)

 

Side by Side:

All the series in the timeline are displayed side by side, with each starting further along the line. In the example below, the first year of Voyager (VOY B) begins halfway through the third year of Deep Space Nine (DS9 D). The events in VOY A occurred prior to Voyager's first tv episodes.

Scroll past the example to continue this discussion.

Gray Areas:

The time period entries for each series begin at the top of the timeline with Period A. Each period heading is set against a white background.

Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and New Frontier also have repeat period A headings just before their first year  period B headings (see Voyager above). All the period A titles for a series, whatever their historical dates, are shown here, with a gray background indicating a title "out of the time period".

To determine the historical date for one of these "gray" titles, move up the timeline. In the example, the Voyager short story "Almost... But Not Quite" takes place in 1996, and thus is placed in the Nineteenth / Twentieth Centuries era.
 

Again and Again:

If the events in a novel cover more than one time period, and / or its characters crossover with another series, the title has multiple entries in the timeline, each reflecting a specific series and time period.

Referring back to the title "Almost...But Not Quite", another portion of that same story occurs in the third year of Voyager, so it also has an entry in VOY period D. (not shown on the example)
 

Orange Slices:

The crossover titles mentioned above are displayed on the same row against orange backgrounds, with the main storyline highlighted in blue. The example contains five crossover titles. Four of them ("Klingon", "Star Trek Generations", "Crossover", and "Caretaker") are crossovers between two series. "Doctors Three" crosses over with three series.
 

Special Notes:

Some title entries contain small notations in parenthesis. These contain specific information about time span, or, in the case of the "akd" notations (see TOS F in the example), indicate how long an event occurred "after Kirk's death" on the Enterprise-B.
 

The Expanded Version:

The Title Timeline serves as the foundation for the central part of this guide, the CHRONOLOGY / SYNOPSIS pages. Each time period is expanded in the Chronology to include author and publisher information, as well as synopses for all its titles.

The Chronology also links the various synopses for titles with multiple time periods and series crossovers. It contains pictures (in chronological order) from the tv episodes and movies, and links to the book cover gallery, plus a lot more. (click here for an overview of the Chronology.)

To go the corresponding Chronology page for any period in the title timeline, click its heading. The Chronology for TOS period B is ten pages long, so that link leads to page B1.
 
 

go to  Title Timeline