Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

Rob Caswell is going where no other Star Trek fan has gone before.

A series of 1970s-era faux book covers the illustrator had concocted for an imaginary Star Trek: Seekers world is becoming a reality, right down to the name. A new Seekers book series launches in July from Pocket Books with Caswell's creations, the first time a fan's artwork has been adapted for the cover of any Star Trek book (we have an exclusive look at the first two jackets here, and an excerpt below).

"We wanted to bring Rob aboard as our creative partner on the new series, since it had been his imaginative leap that had brought the vision into focus for us," says David Mack, author of the first Seekers novel Second Nature (out July 22).

"One of the best moments of my career as a Star Trek writer was the afternoon when I got to be the one to call Rob and tell him that his work had inspired us to make his imaginary series a reality in prose."

Seekers is set in the time immediately following the last Star Trek TV episode that aired in 1969, and is a sequel to the recent 2005-12 Vanguard series that took place within the time frame of the show.

The first two mass-market paperbacks in the series, Second Nature, and Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore's Point of Divergence (out Aug. 26), combine for a two-part story featuring the crews of two starships sent to research the vast and mysterious cosmic region known as the Taurus Reach, plus the return of a classic villain from the old TV show.

"What both crews have in common is a knack for stumbling headfirst into trouble," Mack says, "and leaving places and situations better off than they found them."

Second Nature centers on the Sagittarius, a tiny outrider with a crew of 14 eccentric mission specialists led by Capt. Clark Terrell. (Fans will remember him as the commanding officer of the Starship Reliant in the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.) Divergence shifts focus to the U.S.S. Endeavour, a sister ship to the U.S.S. Enterprise with more than 430 personnel captained by Atish Khatami, a Muslim woman who is able to balance her faith with her role in Starfleet.

"The goals of Seekers are to continue to honor Star Trek's spirit of adventure and optimism," Mack says, "and to keep readers looking ahead to a future founded on the belief that we can all choose to live together in peace and venture united into the final frontier, with science and reason as our guides."

Check out an exclusive excerpt from Second Nature below:

Theriault raised her phaser.

"Heavy stun! Aim for center mass!" Behind her, Dastin aimed his weapon half a second faster than Tan Bao and Hesh.

As Nimur let the misshapen husk of Ysan's body fall in a heap, the wounded Wardens struggled to get up. A few of them started to aim their lances once more at Nimur.

All the Wardens' heads twisted one-hundred-eighty degrees in a fraction of a second. The breaking of their necks sounded like old-fashioned firecrackers.

Then there was nothing between Theriault and the demonic force once known as Nimur.

"Fire!"

Four blue phaser beams screamed through the darkness and slammed into Nimur. Their combined force launched her backward several meters and knocked her onto her back. For a moment, the crackling electricity on Nimur's hands ceased, and the fire in her eyes dimmed. Then her eyes flared white and a brutal, invisible blunt force struck Theriault.

She and the rest of the landing party landed in a tangle of limbs, all of them stunned and groaning in pain. She blinked to clear the spots from her purpled vision and staggered to her feet. With her phaser clutched in her outstretched, unsteady arm, she looked for any sign of Nimur.

The fugitive was gone.

Behind her, Dastin rubbed the back of his head. "Is it over?"

Theriault holstered her phaser. "I've got a bad feeling this is just getting started."

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Excerpted from the book STAR TREK: SEEKERS: SECOND NATURE by David Mack. Copyright © 2014. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All rights reserved.