10 Essential Star Trek Books For Pre-Internet Trekkies
2. Spock's World
Amok Time, Journey to Babel and to some extent The Motion Picture had explored the background of everyone's favourite Vulcan as far back as the mid-1960s but it wouldn't be until 1988 that Diane Duane would deep dive into the Vulcan civilisation.
The novels, we now know are set in their "own" universe but the prolific Duane manages to weave both a plot that threatens Vulcan's place in the Federation with a detailed history of Spock's home planet on both a physical and spiritual level. To date no other work has come close to breaking down the mysteries of the Vulcan people and follows on from Duane's initial steps into their past in The Romulan Way.
Taking place after the events of The Motion Picture, there are now some conflicts with canon moments such as First Contact but it still provides what was a unique perspective on the Enterprise's first officer and his homeworld.
What made this notable in the real world was that Spock's World was the first time a Star Trek novel had been published in hardback, an honour that has re-emerged in recent times with Picard's Last Best Hope leading the charge.