Rating: 
Summary: The pictures are Star Trek Art.
Review: Being a trekkie for 35 years I have alway loved the Starships. This book has the details. What is the fastest Starship that can go Warp 12? Captain Kirk's NCC-1700A What ship holds the most people? The Klingon Attack Cruiser with 1,900 aboard. These are just a few of the facts you will find. You will know which ship is the most powerful and which ship is the biggest. You can spend hours comparing the specs and pictures. The pictures are like paintings of each ship in vivid colors worth framing.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally a Star Trek book about ships!
Review: I was very happy to see this book at my local book store the other day and I was happy with alot of the pictures and the ship info. Sadly I wish there would have been even more ships. They only seemed to brush the surface.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointment
Review: I was very much looking forward to this book, but it was a major disappointment. I was expecting a piece of work of the same quality as the Ships of the Line calendar. Instead the renderings were muddy, poorly anti-aliased and lacking in any kind of dynamics. The renderings were further marred by being double-page spreads. To actually see the rendering properly you would have to break the spine of the book. Included with each entry is a pointlessly geeky wireframe model of the ship. The text is the one bright spot in this otherwise poor product. These guys are capable of much better work. I can only hope that in 2002, the long awaited Unseen Federation will be up to their previous quality levels.
Rating: 
Summary: Seriously disappointing
Review: I've been a fan of sci-fi technology for a while. Books like the cutaway Star Wars guides, the various Star Trek technical manuals, and the like just tickle my fancy. I was really looking forward this book as being finally what the ship lovers had been asking for - a real guide to what all the different star trek ships look for.What I got instead was a book that tries to serve too many masters and fails at them all. It can't decide if it's a cgi junkies book, a trek fan book, or an art book. First off, by being called a "spotter's guide", it immediately raises some expectations because there *are* spotter's guides, and they have things in common. Like, after reading one, you should be able to recognize what you're spotting, regardless of the angle. Uh-uh. The back text points out this is a publication of starfleet academy, preparing cadets for their time in space. Poor cadets. Unless the bad guy happens to come in at just the right angle, they're toast. The textual descriptions are nice. You'll probably pick up some tidbits. But included with the text is a *cgi wireframe* of the ship in question. Say what? What in heaven's name is that useful for, other than to show off how complicated your lightwave models are? I'd rather have had a simple line drawing that clearly shows the ship if you're going to be too lame to do real graphics. Then the next two pages are a rendering of the ship. From *a* (i.e. 1) random angle, and not always a useful angle. In the middle of the darkest blackest region of space you might find. Printed across both pages so a good chunk of the ship is lost in the binding. Did I mention dark? They also left out a surprising number of ships that I thought they'd include, being as how they appeared more than once, and featured instead "ships" like spacedock and the midas array. Although it was nice seeing just what in heck the shuttle that's stuck to the bottom of the voyager saucer supposedly looked like. All in all, extremely dissapointing, given the expectations. It's pretty, and entertaining, but given the shoddy job they did, and the size you get for the money, probably not worth it except for extreme "must have" fans. Stand in the book store and read it, then put it back.
Rating:
Summary: Seriously disappointing
Review: I've been a fan of sci-fi technology for a while. Books like the cutaway Star Wars guides, the various Star Trek technical manuals, and the like just tickle my fancy. I was really looking forward this book as being finally what the ship lovers had been asking for - a real guide to what all the different star trek ships look for. What I got instead was a book that tries to serve too many masters and fails at them all. It can't decide if it's a cgi junkies book, a trek fan book, or an art book. First off, by being called a "spotter's guide", it immediately raises some expectations because there *are* spotter's guides, and they have things in common. Like, after reading one, you should be able to recognize what you're spotting, regardless of the angle. Uh-uh. The back text points out this is a publication of starfleet academy, preparing cadets for their time in space. Poor cadets. Unless the bad guy happens to come in at just the right angle, they're toast. The textual descriptions are nice. You'll probably pick up some tidbits. But included with the text is a *cgi wireframe* of the ship in question. Say what? What in heaven's name is that useful for, other than to show off how complicated your lightwave models are? I'd rather have had a simple line drawing that clearly shows the ship if you're going to be too lame to do real graphics. Then the next two pages are a rendering of the ship. From *a* (i.e. 1) random angle, and not always a useful angle. In the middle of the darkest blackest region of space you might find. Printed across both pages so a good chunk of the ship is lost in the binding. Did I mention dark? They also left out a surprising number of ships that I thought they'd include, being as how they appeared more than once, and featured instead "ships" like spacedock and the midas array. Although it was nice seeing just what in heck the shuttle that's stuck to the bottom of the voyager saucer supposedly looked like. All in all, extremely dissapointing, given the expectations. It's pretty, and entertaining, but given the shoddy job they did, and the size you get for the money, probably not worth it except for extreme "must have" fans. Stand in the book store and read it, then put it back.
Rating:
Summary: From the person who actually wrote this book
Review: Just for the record, Adam 'Mojo' Lebowitz and Robert Bonchune created the beautiful 3D renderings of the starships that grace this elegant book. All of the text was written by me, Jonathan Lane, and Alex Rosenzweig. Everyone worked very diligently to create what is an extremely satisfying book if you are a fan of the starships of "Star Trek." The research was painstaking, and what's in this book can be considered as close to the final word as anything ever published about "Star Trek." The backgrounds and specifications for each ship endeavor to draw together over a century of "Star Trek" history, and if you're a real trivia buff, you might catch one or two "winks" to some of the really minute details of the last 35 years of "Star Trek." Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Starship Spotter Fails
Review: Starship Spotter fails for a number of reasons. Lets start with the title. The title indicates that this would be a book that could be used by cadets and other Starfleet personnel to identify starships. This would suggest that we would have multiple views of each chosen Starship. Well that isn’t the case here at all. What we get is a wire frame shot that is next to useless and a two page beauty shot. That brings us to the beauty shots. The vast majority of these beauty shots are entirely too dark showing little detail not to mention the fact that they cross two pages rather than be presented in fold out form. Voyager, Enterprise-D, Defiant are all from angles that we have seen time and again. All they offer are too dark renderings. Parts of the Akira class rendering seem to be out of focus. Another irritating thing was the inclusion of the Work Bee, Spacedock, The MIDAS communications array, and the various shuttle craft. These are not exactly starships. The one bright spot of the book is the excellent text provided by Jonathan Lane and Alex Rosenzweig. I just don’t think the editors or art department know what fans want in this area. Why didn’t we get multiple views of each ship and some schematics to go with them? The book measures about 8 X 10 inches and is a bit over a ¼ inch thick. It is 128 pages in length. At a cost [I got it for] it just isn’t worth the price for what one gets. One can only hope that Mojo brightens up the rendering for next years coffee table book.
Rating:
Summary: Starship Spotter Fails
Review: Starship Spotter fails for a number of reasons. Lets start with the title. The title indicates that this would be a book that could be used by cadets and other Starfleet personnel to identify starships. This would suggest that we would have multiple views of each chosen Starship. Well that isn’t the case here at all. What we get is a wire frame shot that is next to useless and a two page beauty shot. That brings us to the beauty shots. The vast majority of these beauty shots are entirely too dark showing little detail not to mention the fact that they cross two pages rather than be presented in fold out form. Voyager, Enterprise-D, Defiant are all from angles that we have seen time and again. All they offer are too dark renderings. Parts of the Akira class rendering seem to be out of focus. Another irritating thing was the inclusion of the Work Bee, Spacedock, The MIDAS communications array, and the various shuttle craft. These are not exactly starships. The one bright spot of the book is the excellent text provided by Jonathan Lane and Alex Rosenzweig. I just don’t think the editors or art department know what fans want in this area. Why didn’t we get multiple views of each ship and some schematics to go with them? The book measures about 8 X 10 inches and is a bit over a ¼ inch thick. It is 128 pages in length. At a cost [I got it for] it just isn’t worth the price for what one gets. One can only hope that Mojo brightens up the rendering for next years coffee table book.
Rating: 
Summary: The Info is Good - The Pictures...well...
Review: Starship Spotter was a book I awaited for with anticipation since I personally know two its authors (the book actually has four authors). The range of ships covered is rather good including ships from all eras of Star Trek. Ships covered include those of the Federation (of course), the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Empire, Cardassia, the Dominion, and various ships we've seen in the Delta Quadrant. That being said, the information in the book is, by and large, good, if perhaps somewhat sparse, at times. The problem, interestingly enough, is the pictures, which is amazing considering that the book's primary author, Mojo, is an acknowledged master of rendering. To be fair, the renderings are masterfull, but every one of the double-page full color pictures are far too dark, to the point that the obscure the detail the pictures are meant to provide in the first place. Its quite possible that this issue was caused by the printer, but its something that must be corrected in future printings. I'd also lose the wire diagrams and replace them full small renderings of a front view, side view, and top view. The book shows a lot of potential, but in the end its major draw - the pictures - show some fatal flaws. The book ends up illustrating the classic conflict between a fan's labor of love and the sordid realities of commercialism.
Rating:
Summary: A promising idea that disappoints
Review: The "Star Trek Starship Spotter," by Adam Lebowitz and Robert Bonchune, is a good example of a great idea that is spoiled by a poorly thought out execution. The book seems to be modeled on classic "real world" reference works like "Jane's Fighting Ships." The "Spotter" contains profiles of starships seen in the fictional world of the various "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures. Both Federation and alien ships, of all sizes and configurations, are included. Each type of ship gets two 2-page spreads. The first is a technical overview with information on manning, propulsion, weapons, etc. The second 2-page spread is a full color illustration of a representative ship from that class. And therein lies the problem. Each illustration is actually spread over two pages. Thus, you can't fully and clearly see each ship unless you break the spine of the book in an attempt to flatten out the spread. This poorly conceived presentation greatly detracts from what could have been a great book.
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