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Dreadnought!

1986 Star Trek novel by Diane Carey

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ5306225
Source-derived summary

Dreadnought! is a Star Trek: The Original Series novel written by Diane Carey. It is written in the first person from the perspective of Lieutenant Piper.

Plot

The novel begins with Lt. Piper (no last name), a native of Proxima Beta, taking the Kobayashi Maru simulation at Starfleet Academy. After her "ship" takes several hits and sustains heavy damage, Lt. Piper uses an unusual method to issue commands to the ship's computer via handheld communicator. The technique results in the computer controlling the simulation crashing. The simulator's commander comments during the debriefing that she has come closer to checkmating the no-win scenario than any other command-line candidate, then tells her that she has been reassigned to the starship Enterprise by special request.

Lt.

Editorial summary

“Dreadnought!” enters the record as 1986 Star Trek novel by Diane Carey. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dreadnought, Star and Trek can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current 123-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The authority record carries competing date values—1986, 1986-05-01—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Dreadnought, Star and Trek.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Dreadnought!” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dreadnought, Star and Trek provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5306225. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Dreadnought!”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Dreadnought! primary sources, Dreadnought! archive and Dreadnought research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Dreadnought!”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Dreadnought!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.