“I remember signing up with the promise of seeking out strange new worlds, boldly going where no one had gone before. It made me feel as if I was going to become something special. What have I become?”

“I think I have.”

Year One was a pet project of mine that spiraled out of control. I started to write a short story based on a franchise with a deep history, mainly so that I’d not have to worry too much about background. I then re-wrote history, made some major changes and found myself introducing things that I’d made up in my head and before I knew it, I had a shelving unit full of notes, sketches and a hard drive filled with hundreds of pages worth of story and detail.

But after spending a year writing six hundred pages of story and a further six hundred of notes and history, I figured I may as well do something with it – so I started posting it here piece by piece, re-editing and re-writing as I go. Which was a good plan as it gave me an excuse to tie it in with the new Trek film. Kind of…

Anyway, the story is another cliche of the end of the Federation in Star Trek and a crumbling of their society. While others were fixated on writing more about war and downfall, I tried to give it a happier theme in the long run, finding a way to make nonsensical battle turn into a new hope for the future.