Following the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture the captain and crew of the USS Enterprise found themselves haunted by their extraordinary encounter with the vast artificial intelligence of V'Ger, and by the sacrifice and ascension of their friend and shipmate, Willard Decker. As James T. Kirk, Spock and Leonard McCoy attempt to cope with the personal fallout of their ordeal, a chapter from their mutual past is reopened, raising troubling new questions about the relationship of God, man and A.I. On the recently settled world of Daran IV, the former refugees of the Fabrini worldship Yonada are divided by conflicting ideologies, some clinging to their theocratic past while others envision a future governed by reason alone. Years ago the officers of the Enterprise helped overthrow the Oracle, the machine-god that controlled Yonada. Now confronting the consequences of those actions, together with echoes of their strange encounter with V'Ger, Kirk, Spock and McCoy face choices which will decide the fate of a civilization -- and which may change them forever.

Author Biography

Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, with bachelor's degrees in physics and history from the University of Cincinnati. He has written such critically acclaimed Star Trek novels as Ex Machina, The Buried Age, the Titan novels Orion's Hounds and Over a Torrent Sea, the two Department of Temporal Investigations novels Watching the Clock and Forgotten History, and the Enterprise novels Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures, Tower of Babel, Uncertain Logic, and Live By the Code, as well as shorter works including stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations, The Sky's the Limit, Prophecy and Change, and Distant Shores. Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider Man: Drowned in Thunder. His original work includes the hard science fiction superhero novel Only Superhuman, as well as several novelettes in Analog and other science fiction magazines.