By BWilliams / 16:00, 1 June 2005 / Reviews - Books

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Over the past 40 years, much has been speculated and hinted at the presidency of the United Federation of Planets, yet very little has it been seen. We first became aware of a Federation president in STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME, and in STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY we learned that the president's seat of power was located in Paris, France. In the DEEP SPACE NINE episodes "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" we further saw the inner workings of the Federation presidency and the struggles one faces at the top. But beyond that we saw very little in established TREK canon. Leave it to the many writers in Pocket Books' TREK stable to fill in the blanks, and to Keith R.A. DeCandido to tie it all together in his latest and best work to date, ARTICLES OF THE FEDERATION.

Right off the bat, ARTICLES is a most atypical STAR TREK novel in that it fits nowhere with any of the established series or its multiple spinoffs, yet the action and intrigue that permeates its 400 pages has far-reaching effects in every venue of the established TREK universe and beyond. With roots steeped into our own presidential history, and inspiration taken from the popular series THE WEST WING, DeCandido paints a very complex portrait of one president's continuing struggles and daily dealings in maintaining the peace throughout the galaxy.

Nan Bacco, whom we first met in A TIME FOR WAR, A TIME FOR PEACE, has won a landslide victory in a special presidential runoff after the departure of former President Min Zife, a figurehead with very little self-driven influence of his own and with one problem after another on his hands, becoming the first Federation president to summarily resign. Bacco and her cabinet, which includes her chief of staff Esperanza Piniero, her head speechwriter Fred MacDougan, Secretary of the Exterior Safranski, and Admiral William Ross, the Starfleet liaison to the presidency, must now take the mess left behind by Zife's presidency and bring restoration and trust to the people. But President Bacco soon finds out that it's a lot harder at the top than she realizes. The Federation Council has difficulty trusting her, and, on the heels of the shattering events of STAR TREK: NEMESIS and TAKING WING, a transport ship full of Remans is heading for Federation space. And that's just for starters, as ARTICLES spans the first year of President Bacco's four-year tenure as the head of the Federation, bumps and bruises included.

DeCandido infuses ARTICLES with a kind of action rarely seen in STAR TREK: political action. And this opens up the field for an entirely new battlefield we've seen before in the STAR WARS prequels, Fox News, CNN, and on THE WEST WING: the political arena. His careful, precise attention to detail and to what has come before in past novels never gets pushed to the backburner; rather, it is DeCandido's reference to what happens in the final frontier that not only influences but also determines the destiny of the heart of the Federation itself. (That's definitely a good thing for all of the TREK novels, their even more careful attention to continuity that harkens back to the STAR WARS: NEW JEDI ORDER series.) Those decisions both good and bad affect everyone back home, as in real life, and whether it is the Dominion War, the Gateways incident, the Selelvian/Tholian war, or the Iraq-like disaster at Tezwa, President Bacco has to absolve not only the Federation government but also Starfleet of any sins that former President Zife and anyone connected with him has borne. And along the way, she and her staff find out that it's not an easy road to hoe. (Recently, Keith DeCandido completed an appendix of references to the novel, in the similar vein as Christopher Bennett's EX MACHINA, so this would be a wonderful addition to future TREK novels in the Pocket Books line.)

ARTICLES OF THE FEDERATION is one of those rare breeds of STAR TREK novels in that it transcends the familiar to take a life of its own and yet is rooted in the tradition we have all come to know and love. Keith DeCandido gives us a rare glimpse into the future of the Federation while painting us a careful eye of our own nation's political struggles. Needless to say, we have not heard the last of President Nan Bacco, so it should be really interesting to see DeCandido follow up with the next three years of her presidency and how the STAR TREK universe is shaped in the months and years to come.

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