"If you think you know how it all began, think again..."
Young Jim Kirk wants nothing to do with Starfleet, and never wants to leave Earth. In the summer of 2249, he's a headstrong seventeen-year-old barely scraping by in San Francisco, haunted by horrific memories from his past.
In the same city, a nineteen-year-old alien named Spock is determined to rise above the emotional turmoil of his mixed-species heritage. He's determined to show his parents he has what it takes to be Vulcan -- even if it means exposing a mysterious conspiracy at the heart of the Vulcan Embassy, stretching to the farthest reaches of the Federation's borders. There, a chilling new threat has arisen to test the Federation's deepest held belief that war is a thing of the past and that a secure future can be forged through peaceful means alone. But it is in San Francisco, home to Starfleet Academy, where that threat will be met by two troubled teenage boys driven to solve the mystery that links them both.
In time, the universe will come to know these young rebels as Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock...two of the Federation's greatest heroes. Yet before they were heroes, they were simply conflicted teenagers, filled with raw ambition and talent, not yet seasoned by wisdom and experience, searching for their own unique directions in life -- a destiny they'll discover on one fateful night in San Francisco, when two lives collide, and two legends are born.
"Star Trek: Academy -- Collision Course sets" the stage for an exciting new era of Star Trek adventure, and for the first time reveals Kirk and Spock as they were, and how they began their journey to become the Kirk and Spock we know today.

Of all the experiences shared by Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise™ during their first five-year mission, two were among the most perilous: a journey to the nonphysical realm of Transition where the massive computer known as Memory Prime was situated, and the nightmarish mission to Talin IV, a world poised on the brink of destruction that Kirk was forbidden to save.

In the twenty-third century, a hundred years before a sentient artificial life-form would be allowed to earn a Starfleet commission, the Federation considers the use of self-aware artificial intelligences to be little more than slavery, except for the immense computer system of Memory Prime -- the key hub in the Federation's vast network of interstellar library planets. There, the A.I.s known as Pathfinders inhabit Transition -- a virtual world so different from our universe that the A.I.s themselves debate whether or not the physical universe is real. But when an ancient enemy reaches out from the shadows of Vulcan's darkest history and threatens to destroy the Federation, Spock must risk his career, and his life, to enter the Pathfinders' realm.

Technologically and politically, Talin IV is little different from late-twentieth century Earth. But as a series of mysterious events pushes that world closer to self-annihilation, the Prime Directive prevents Captain Kirk and his crew from doing anything to prevent it. When the worst appears to happen and Kirk takes desperate action to give the Talin a chance to step back from the nuclear abyss, Talin IV is consumed by radioactive fire. Now, with a world destroyed and the Enterprise dead in space, the careers of Kirk and his crew are over. Disgraced and despised, Kirk has only one chance to redeem himself and his crew: Somehow, he must make his way back to Talin IV and discover what really happened, even if it means proving that a world died because he broke Starfleet's most sacred law.

Bonus: An Exclusive Interview with the Authors