Peter David

Whenever Star Trek: New Frontier line of novels launched in 1997, I was a Star Trek geek. I bought an Inquest magazine at a Babbages just because Spock and Kirk were on the cover. That led me to buy the Star Trek CCG, which led me to the Battletech CCG and--eventually--to Magic. It's no surprise that the only times I didn't pick up New Frontier the moment the latest installment hit shelves was because either I was too broke or my father had beaten me to it.

And the captain looked like a young Alec Baldwin. Could never figure that one out.

It was the finest sort of continuity porn. Special guest stars that never quite made it out of The Next Generation washed up into the cast as a disparate collection of personalities trying to deal with situations far over their heads. It was fanfiction. That's not an insult. It was high quality, fun, published, not-not-canon fanfiction written for fans to deliver more of their favorite characters to them in a highly concentrated dose.