Star Trek: The Next Generation (Original) Books Books in Order

Jean Lorrah's original Star Trek: The Next Generation novels come from the early years of the show's tie-in line. They use the Enterprise-D crew readers know from television, but they also take time with characters who had not yet received much backstory on screen. That gives the books a slightly different feel from later Trek fiction, more like lost episodes from the first seasons.

The two main Jean Lorrah entries are Survivors and Metamorphosis. Both are self-contained adventures, but they share an interest in identity, memory, and the parts of a person that cannot be reduced to a Starfleet job title.

Survivors puts Lieutenant Tasha Yar at the center. The Enterprise responds to trouble on the isolated colony world of Treva, where a violent political crisis brings Tasha face to face with people and memories connected to her difficult past. Data is an important presence, and the story makes room for the trust between the two officers without losing the larger conflict on the planet.

Metamorphosis moves Data to the foreground. A mission near the planet Elysia draws him into a quest with consequences that touch his deepest wish, to understand what being human really means. The setup lets Lorrah explore Data's curiosity, logic, and awkwardness around emotion, bodily experience, and choice. It is a bigger, more inward-looking story, though the Enterprise crew and the danger around Elysia keep the plot moving.

These books were written while The Next Generation was still finding its long-term shape. Some details naturally reflect that early period, but that is part of the appeal. The novels treat Tasha and Data as characters with room to grow, and they build adventures around questions the series itself was already asking about personhood, trauma, and belonging.

Start with Survivors if you want a Tasha Yar story with political danger and personal stakes. Follow it with Metamorphosis for a Data-centered adventure that reaches further into philosophical territory. Reading them in that order also makes their shared character connections easier to appreciate.