Michael Jan Friedman

Michael Jan Friedman was born on March 7, 1955, in New York City. He built a prolific career straddling prose fiction and sequential art, becoming one of the more versatile writers working in licensed and genre material over the past four decades.

Friedman is perhaps best known for his extensive work within the Star Trek franchise, where he has authored well over half of his nearly sixty books — ten of which have reached The New York Times Best Seller list. That same deep familiarity with the Star Trek universe carried into comics, where his scripts for Star Trek: The Next Generation represent some of his most sustained sequential storytelling. His comics output, spread across more than 150 issues primarily for DC Comics, also included titles such as The Darkstars, Outlaws, and Flash, demonstrating a range that extended well beyond licensed properties.

Active in comics from 1989 through at least 2021, Friedman worked across network and cable television and radio in addition to his publishing career, reflecting an appetite for storytelling in whatever medium was available. His contribution to Star Trek in particular — sustaining reader interest in those characters across both novels and comic scripts over many years — stands as the most defining thread of a body of work that is substantial by any measure.