Pocket Books always has been finding ways to dig deeper into the popular -- yet often rarely mentioned -- events and people portrayed in the Star Trek universe throughout the last 35 years.

That quest hasn't changed at all with the recent release of the latest from novelist Greg Cox, Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars. The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh.

"For quite a long time, we had been wanting to do the Eugenics Wars somehow, but that involved making a serious judgement call," said John Ordover, executive editor of Pocket Books in an interview with Airlock Alpha. "Did the Star Trek future diverge from ours in the 1990s, or was there some way to work the Eugenics Wars into existing world history? We decided on the latter. The Eugenics Wars happened in real world history. Now we had to find a way to make that work."

The idea to tackle the Eugenics Wars, Ordover said, came from Cox's previous Star Trek novel, Assignment: Eternity, where Gary Seven returns to Kirk's Enterprise with Roberta Lincoln in tow.

"At the end of the book, Kirk is wondering whether they should let Seven and Roberta just run around through time playing with the fate of one society or another; Spock replies that his research shows that they have no choice, because Seven and Roberta were instrumental in the overthrow of Khan Noonien Singh."

It's been nearly 20 years since we last saw Khan, played by actor Ricardo Montalban. However, despite the fact we only see the character twice in the nearly 700 hours of Star Trek available, Ordover says the gentically-enhanced human still remains popular to this day.

"He didn't think of himself as evil, or even as having selfish goals," Ordover said about why fans like Khan. "He though he was right and that he was doing what he was doing for the good of mankind. Remember, in (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), he was avenging the death of his wife."

Many diehard fans have pointed out that the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Future's End," where the crew and the ship go back in time to 1996, completely ignored the Eugenics Wars and made no effort to stay true to Star Trek canon. According to the backstory established in the original series' "Space Seed," Khan was exiled from Earth in 1996. However, Ordover said that "Future's End" didn't disrupt work on the Khan book, nor does he feel it's a true canon violation.

"I've never understood why that is a problem. First, the 1996 in 'Future's End' isn't necessarily our 1996, no matter how it's presented. If Star Trek isn't on TV, then it's not our timeline, is it? The 1996 that Voyager encountered in 'Future's End' was the one in which a timeship had crashed on Earth in the 60s and Ed Begley Jr. (his character) found it and developed computer stuff from its technology.

"Now, at the end of the episode, the crashing of the timeship was made not to have happened. It never went back through time to the 1960s, it never crashed, EB Jr. never found it, never did what we'd seen him do. So the timeline that Voyager visited was a divergent one that never happened. Perhaps in that timeline, the Eugenics Wars didn't happen or were earlier or later. Doesn't matter. That wasn't the Star Trek timeline or our real timeline."

Cox has been a strong success story for Pocket Books, becoming the first author to write in all four existing Star Trek series. He has written the New York Time Bestselling trilogy Q-Continuum and also has worked with John Betancourt in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Devil in the Sky, with Kij Johnson in Star Trek: The Next Generation's Dragon's Honor, Star Trek: Voyager's The Black Shore as well as the original series book, Assignment: Eternity.

Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars. The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh is available in bookstores now from Pocket Books.