- The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual
Infobox Book
name = The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual
title_orig =
translator =
image_caption =
author = Franz Joseph Schnaubelt
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country =United States
language = English
series =
subject =
genre = Fiction
publisher =Ballantine Books
pub_date = 1975
media_type = Print
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0345340744
preceded_by =
followed_by =The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual (ISBN 0345340744,
Ballantine Books 1975, reprinted 1986, 1996, 2006) is afiction reference book by Franz Joseph Schnaubelt about the workings ofStarfleet , amilitary , exploratory, and diplomatic organization featured in thetelevision series .Although it is fiction, the book is presented as a collection of factual documents sent from the
future to the 20th century which describe the 23rd-century Starfleet.Contents
The manual features noncanonical, detailed technical information about Starfleet's organization, vessels, and founding member states, and informed the
strategy game Star Fleet Battles . When first published, the book's status as canon appeared beyond questionFact|date=February 2007, despite its depiction of starship details which contradicted those seen on the television series; some of these included a second bridge exit; the briefing room's location and internal arrangement; and the expansion of starship transporter capability to encompass not only the established 6-pad rooms but also a 22-pad emergency and a high-capacity cargo transporter.It provides some detail on the workings of technology used in the original series, including its ships, phasers, tricorders, universal translators, and medical equipment, and even diagrams a working communicator built using 20th-century electronics. It also contains plans for 3-dimensional chess, and lays out some basic game rules.
The manual presents a number of different starship designs beyond the Constitution class of the show's iconic flagship
Enterprise . It diagrams the following classes.*Federation-class dreadnought
*Constitution-class heavy cruiser
**Bonhomme Richard subtype
**Achernar subtype
*Saladin-class destroyer
*Hermes-class scout
*Ptolemy-class tugSeries creator
Gene Roddenberry approved these ship plans, proclaiming them to be 'completely accurate', then recanting such statements a decade or so later, saying the book had 'always' violated his rules for the Trek universe -- despite supervising its use in the first three motion pictures.Fact|date=February 2007History
In 1973, Schnaubelt and his daughter joined a San Diego Trek appreciation society called STAR, members of which spent time making their own Trek props and costumes. Using his aerospace design talents, he began making technical drawings of phasers and tricorders. He quickly amassed a large collection and sent copies to a very impressed Roddenberry, whose wife
Majel Barrett 's companyLincoln Enterprises was producing Trek memorabilia at the time. Though he considered the franchise dead, Roddenberry encouraged Joseph to seek Barrett's help in creating a manual, a project blessed with privileged access to original props and carpenter blueprints.The book, published by Ballantine, took the number-one spot on the New York Times trade paperback list, breaking the existing record for profitability. Its success hinted at the brand's great potential, and within a year of its publication Paramount and Roddenberry contracted to begin work on a Star Trek movie.
Use as reference material
The book was culled for background imagery in the first three Trek films. Elements from the manual that appear on screen include
* its listings of starship names, adapted for opening-scene backgrounds at the communications outpost in ;
* its starship-class schematics, seen in background bridge displays in theKobayashi Maru test in ; and
* its Enterprise plans, used in in a monitor display when the seal on Spock's living quarters is broken.The Federation seal
The seal seen in the first movie echoed Schnaubelt's design but framed its starfield in laurels, and not the faces in profile of his original. (His UFP situated Earth as only one part of a vast alliance of sentient races, but the studio's use of laurels countered that -- their association as symbols of peace holding meaning for Earth alone -- and may have reflected Paramount's, and Roddenberry's, more terracentric take on the Federation; in a similar vein, they placed the Federation HQ and Starfleet Academy in San Francisco, while Schnaubelt put them in neutral space aboard the mammoth Starbase One space station.)
Legacy
As an unexpected legacy, the book spawned a subgenre -- blueprints and schematics of fictional vehicles and locales, which later science-fiction projects would move to exploit. These have included
*The Star Wars Sketchbook ;
*The Moonbase Alpha Technical Manual fromSpace 1999 ;
*Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise ;
*;
*;
*related Star Trek technical manuals;
*Battlestar Galactica blueprints ;and any number offan fiction publications.The Star Fleet Technical Manual was a major source for Amarillo Design Bureau's line of
Star Fleet Universe gaming products.
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