The book is 128 pages wide, about 6mm or 1/4" thick. It's as wide as a legal pad, but not as long, maybe 8x8. There are four pages per ship:

Page 1: History, mission objectives.
Page 2: Miscellaneous wireframe view, specs.
Page 3,4: Big, miscellaneous CG model view.

[ November 02, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]

Jokes aside, the book doesn't suck at all, it's unusually accurate, well designed and written, but there's hardly anything you don't already know, unless you consider non-canon tech fandom style info "new".

What wouldn't suck for *me* is if Foundation had filled the four pages/ship with

1) five-view drawings or CG views
2) specifications obtained from visual effects charts and Rick Sternbach's blueprints that Foundation must have, as well as analysis of actual CG sequences they made (now where did that torpedo come from? Look it up in LightWave!)
3) Behind-the-scenes info on how the models were built, who built them, etc.

That's something I'd expect Mojo to know and something he could do very easily, yet be unable to reveal due to proprietary restrictions, commercial value, and simply a lack of demand. We're a minority -- most fans would prefer the book as it stands.

[ November 03, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]

Sorry, laughing at a girl on the E! True Hollywood Story "Scream" ... "By noon, the show was all sold out ... gasp!"

Another issue is the specifications listed for each ship. The Enterprise-E is listed as being pretty powerful, having Type XII phasers (I guess it's official, then) and all, and the Nebula class specifications seem a bit on the weak side compared to her Galaxy class cousin.

I didn't really care to learn about the Midas Array or the Malon ship and would have rather seen sections on the Excelsior class and the other "First Contact" vessels like the Saber, Norway, etc. Speaking of the FC vessels, the Akira class is listed as having 15 launchers (it's official, again )

Last, they mention that the Galaxy class production run is on indefinite postponement. I hate the Sovereign (as in what it has done to the 'power' factor of the Galaxy)!

Besides a few other quibbles, it seems a nice, but short, book (though I didn't get it as I was hoping for more orthographic projections and such). It's listed at $16.00 US, which is only $11.00 from the paperback Star Trek: Encyclopedia and $8.00 from the DS9 Technical Manual, so it's a little on the expensive side.

[ November 03, 2001: Message edited by: Ace ]

It's been a while since I posted, mainly because I've been busy but also because I lost my password and I never heard back from anyone when I requested it to be sent to me... anyway, I finally dug it up, so I thought I'd drop in and talk about Starship Spotter.

First of all, here's some background on how the book was put together.

Rob Bonchune and I picked the ships, handled the rendering (the wireframes and color images) and worked up the basic layout of the book. Pocket Books hired their own folks to write the specs, but as we got close to the deadline it was determined that new, more Trek-capable writers were needed.

Both Jon Lane and Alex Rosenzweig have been friends of mine for many, many years, and I knew they would do an excellent job, so Pocket agreed to take them on.

They did not disappoint, and I am very, very pleased to hear that (so far) most of you here in the Forum agree that they have 'got it right.'

While much of the specs did indeed come from previous sources (after all we couldn't ignore what had previously been established), for the first time ALL the correct specs are in one place, and the contradictions and innacuracies have been laid to rest.

I know that many of the more hardcore tech-heads will already be familiar with much of the material, but most casual fans will be happy to have a simplified guidebook to these ships.

I've read in your posts that many of you would have liked to see more images of the ships. Keep in mind that this is meant to be a basic reference book (I thought of it as baseball cards for the ships) so I felt simplicity was the order of the day. Besides, more pages for each ship would have meant fewer ships! The page count was set in stone early on.

For those of you on the fence about parting with your hard-earned 13 bucks, keep in mind that good sales for this book will insure a follow-up!

And for the people talking about scanning and uploading the pictures so as to avoid purchase, I wish you luck dealing with the fold down the middle :-P

Right now I am finishing up the 2003 Ships of the Line calendar (which I am sure will please people who prefered the 2001 edition over the current one) and then I am hard at work - finally - on Star Trek: The Unseen Frontier. It's going to be epic. And your suggestions will be heard!