>* Which probably isn't official, admittedly.

Unfortunately, it isn't, a victim of "The Great Canon Massacre of the 1980s." Paramount decided (in a fashion that Disney would later ape) to deal with the wealth of fandom in the lead-up to the launch of TNG by declaring that anything they didn't directly own was non-canon. Which is a real shame, as the book is one of my favorites as a Trek fan.