James Swallow (born 6 May 1970; age 54) is a British author, journalist, and scriptwriter.
Swallow is the only British writer to have worked on a Star Trek television series, having written the original story premises for "One" and "Memorial", two episodes of the series Star Trek: Voyager; he also wrote the script for the videogame Star Trek: Invasion.
His writing includes "Closure", a story for the Voyager 10th anniversary anthology Distant Shores and "Ordinary Days", a story for the Star Trek: The Next Generation 20th anniversary anthology The Sky's the Limit. Swallow's story, "Seeds of Dissent", features in Infinity's Prism, book one of the Star Trek: Myriad Universes series.
Swallow also wrote Day of the Vipers, the first novel of the Star Trek: Terok Nor miniseries, which was released in March 2008, and for which he was awarded a Scribe Award from the International Association of Tie-In Writers for Best Novel – Original (Speculative Fiction). He followed up on this award with a "Best Media Tie-In Novel" Dragon Award nomination in 2018 for his first Star Trek: Discovery novel, Fear Itself, in addition to his second Scribe Award nomination, neither of which won however.
His 2009 contributions include the short story "The Black Flag" in the Mirror Universe anthology Shards and Shadows, and the sixth Star Trek: Titan novel, Synthesis.
Swallow's short story "The Slow Knife", focusing on the Cardassians, appears in the 2010 anthology, Seven Deadly Sins. 2011 saw Swallow contribute his first Original Series novel, Cast No Shadow.
In 2013, he wrote the eBook novella The Stuff of Dreams and his novel The Poisoned Chalice, the fourth in The Fall miniseries, became a New York Times bestseller.
As a journalist, his work has appeared in several different official Star Trek publications in several languages (including Star Trek Monthly, Star Trek Fact Files, The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, Star Trek: The Collector's Edition, Comlink, and Star Trek: The Magazine).
His first (credited) work in Star Trek Monthly was in Star Trek Monthly issue 22 of that publication.
In Star Trek Monthly issue 46, Swallow listed the following as the best episodes from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's first six seasons:
- "Emissary"
- "Necessary Evil"
- "The Adversary"
- "The Visitor"
- "Trials and Tribble-ations"
- "Tears of the Prophets"
Career[]
Along with his work on the Final Frontier, he is the author of several original books and tie-in novels, as well as scripts for videogames and audio dramas.
Outside of Star Trek, he has written several Doctor Who stories: the Big Finish audio dramas Singularity, Old Soldiers, Kingdom of Silver and the Cyberman 2 miniseries, the novel Peacemaker and stories in the anthologies Short Trips: Dalek Empire, Short Trips: Destination Prague, Short Trips: Snapshots, Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership and Short Trips: ReCollections. He has also worked on fiction in the worlds of Stargate, Blake's 7, 2000 AD, and Warhammer 40,000.
External links[]
- James Swallow – official site
- James Swallow at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
- James Swallow at Wikipedia
- James Swallow at the Internet Movie Database
- James Swallow at the TARDIS Index File
- James Swallow at the Stargate Wiki