Dept. of Temporal Investigations Clocks in on Tuesday

It’s been more than a year since popular Star Trek author Christopher L. Bennett first announced on his blog that he was working on a Simon & Schuster novel called Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations, but the wait is just about over. Set for release on April 26 and officially titled Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations – Watching the Clock, the story was inspired by the Federation organization introduced in the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations.” Two characters from that episode – Agents Lucsly and Dulmur – later appeared in a couple of short stories and were referenced in a novel, but now Bennett has given them their due with his full-length DTI adventure.

Here’s a synopsis straight from Simon & Schuster:

“There’s likely no more of a thankless job in the Federation than temporal investigation. While starship explorers get to live the human adventure of traveling to other times and realities, it’s up to the dedicated agents of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations to deal with the consequences to the timestream that the rest of the Galaxy has to live with day by day. But when history as we know it could be wiped out at any moment by time warriors from the future, misused relics of ancient races, or accident-prone starships, only the most disciplined, obsessive, and unimaginative government employees have what it takes to face the existential uncertainty of it all on a daily basis . . . and still stay sane enough to complete their assignments.

“That’s where Agents Lucsly and Dulmur come in—stalwart and unflappable, these men are the Federation’s unsung anchors in a chaotic universe. Together with their colleagues in the DTI—and with the help and sometimes hindrance of Starfleet’s finest—they do what they can to keep the timestream, or at least the paperwork, as neat and orderly as they are. But when a series of escalating temporal incursions threatens to open a new front of the history-spanning Temporal Cold War in the twenty-fourth century, Agents Lucsly and Dulmur will need all their investigative skill and unbending determination to stop those who wish to rewrite the past for their own advantage, and to keep the present and the future from devolving into the kind of chaos they really, really hate.”

Simon & Schuster will release Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations – Watching the Clock as a mass-market paperback. It will also be available digitally as an e-book. For additional information, click here. And to learn more about Christopher L. Bennett – and his other upcoming Star Trek novels – click here.