While skimming through the status updates on my Facebook page this morning, I noticed a curious call-out by the German publisher of Star Trek books to a trailer for Star Trek Vanguard, the series I developed with editor Marco Palmieri and on which I alternate writing duties with Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore. So I clicked through…

Lo and behold—my first-ever book trailer! Except…

• It’s in German, so I don’t understand more than a smattering of words spoken in the voice-over;
• It’s for the German-language audiobook of the first Vanguard novel, Harbinger;
• The design of Starbase 47 is completely wrong in the trailer; they appear to have taken a model of Deep Space 9 and stripped away the outer pylons, which is inexcusable since they had my book’s cover and could see what the station looked like (and also could have been given skinned 3D models if only they’d asked); and…
• They also got the logo wrong, using a mix of early movie font plus an unrelated font instead of the original-series typeface.

It also raises a couple of questions in my mind:

• Why hasn’t my American publisher ever made book trailers to support my work?
• Why aren’t there audiobooks of any of my English-language books?

Anyway, if anyone reading this happens to sprechen sie Deutsch and can translate the trailer’s voice-over for me, I would be most appreciative.

ETA: Just received a translation from a German friend on Facebook. The trailer’s V.O. translates (roughly) as:

KIRK: 2260. Captain’s Log. Taurus Reach.

The U.S.S. Enterprise is returning from its first mission. It is urgent that we let the ship undergo extensive repairs. At our current speed we would need seven months to reach the nearest Federation base. Yet today we received a call from one of our starbases, Starbase 7, also known as Vanguard. We will go there, but something puzzles me: This station should not be finished yet. This could not have been done without help from outside.

To make matters worse, the Klingon Empire is very skeptical of our research efforts in the Taurus Reach. I can’t shake off the feeling that something is not right here. I must get a complete report on this. Because if my suspicions are justified, something is terribly wrong out here.

A few problems here. First, the year is wrong — it should be 2265. Second, the voice-over misidentifies Vanguard as “Starbase 7” when it should be Starbase 47. Third, the mission depicted in the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was not the Enterprise‘s first mission, nor its first under Kirk’s command, but merely the first episode of the series. (And technically it wasn’t even that; it was the second pilot, after “The Cage.”)