Star Trek Trivia With Robb Pearlman at Mystic Seaport Museum
Star Trek Trivia with Robb Pearlman at Mystic Seaport Museum on Saturday, September 12, combining a conversation with one of the franchise’s most prolific pop-culture authors with a live trivia showdown built around more than 60 years of Star Trek. It’s part of From Sails to Stars: A STAR TREK 60th Anniversary Celebration held at the museum all day Saturday.
The program begins at 1:30 p.m. on the Performance Stage. It features Pearlman, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, editor, and self-described pop culturalist whose long relationship with Star Trek has produced books ranging from affectionate parody to fitness guides, children’s titles, and explorations of the franchise’s characters and ideas.
After the conversation, Pearlman turns quizmaster, testing the audience with questions drawn from his newly released Star Trek: The Ultimate Trivia Deck.
Robb Pearlman Has Made a Career Out of Pop Culture
Pearlman’s bibliography stretches far beyond the final frontier.
He has written more than 80 books for adults and children and has worked professionally across writing, editing, art direction, licensing and publishing. His projects have touched properties including The Office, Marvel, Scooby-Doo, The Golden Girls, Bob Ross, I Love Lucy and The Princess Bride.
His publishing career has been similarly broad. Pearlman spent years at Rizzoli, including time as associate publisher for Universe, and has worked with major entertainment and publishing brands throughout his career.
But Star Trek has become one of his specialties.
Pearlman is a regular speaker at pop-culture conventions and has been part of Star Trek: The Cruise, giving him a relationship with Trek fandom that extends well beyond simply writing licensed books.
From Kirk and Spock to Body by Starfleet
Pearlman’s first Star Trek book, 2014’s Fun with Kirk and Spock, approached the franchise from an unexpected direction.
It borrowed the visual and linguistic simplicity of old Dick and Jane-style early readers and applied it to Kirk, Spock and the frequently dangerous universe around them.
The joke worked because Pearlman understood both sides of it.
He told Publishers Weekly that he recognized an overlap between adults nostalgic for childhood books and fans who had grown up watching Star Trek, often with their families.
More Trek projects followed.
His bibliography includes Star Trek: Redshirt’s Little Book of Doom, Search for Spock: A Star Trek Book of Exploration, The Wit and Wisdom of Star Trek, Star Trek: Body by Starfleet, Star Trek: Starfleet Is…, Star Trek Discovery: The Book of Grudge, The Star Trek Book of Friendship and Star Trek: The Girl Who Made the Stars.
That last title adapted the story Michael Burnham hears from her father in Star Trek: Discovery into a book written specifically for younger readers.
Pearlman’s Trek work has consequently covered parody, humor, fitness, friendship, children’s storytelling and franchise lore.
September’s Mystic appearance adds trivia to the list.
The Ultimate Trivia Deck Is Brand New
The timing of the event isn’t accidental.
Star Trek: The Ultimate Trivia Deck was released on August 18, 2026, less than a month before Pearlman’s appearance in Mystic.
The officially licensed game contains 200 cards and 400 questions spanning more than 60 years of Star Trek.
And this isn’t simply a trivia set devoted to Kirk, Spock and the original Enterprise.
The questions reach across the franchise’s television series and movies, from Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation through newer installments including Strange New Worlds.
Questions are divided among four broad categories: Technology; Characters; Events and Anomalies; and Planets, Places and Cultures.
Each card contains two questions at different difficulty levels. Answer the easier question correctly and the player can attempt the harder one for additional points.
The formats also vary between straightforward questions and answers, multiple choice and true-or-false.
That structure gives Pearlman plenty of material for the audience competition at Mystic Seaport.
Think You Know Star Trek? Here’s the Test
After the conversation portion of the program, Pearlman will host a live trivia contest inspired by the new deck.
That changes the event from a conventional author appearance into something considerably more participatory.
The Museum is framing the challenge around finding the “ultimate Trekkie,” so brushing up on only one corner of the franchise may not be enough.
The published trivia deck reaches across characters, technology, planets, cultures and events from different eras of Trek. A fan who can explain the inner workings of the Enterprise-D may run into a question about Klingon history. Someone who knows every original-series episode may suddenly be dealing with a newer series.
That breadth is appropriate for a franchise celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2026.
The original Star Trek premiered on NBC on September 8, 1966. Pearlman’s Mystic appearance comes just four days after the anniversary of that first broadcast.
Sixty Years of Star Trek
What began as a television series struggling to survive in the ratings has become one of the most durable fictional universes in popular culture.
Gene Roddenberry’s original series lasted only three seasons, but its afterlife proved much bigger than its initial run.
Movies followed. Then The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. A new television era eventually brought Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds, among other projects.
The franchise’s longevity has also produced something unusual for a trivia event: several generations of fans can arrive with completely different areas of expertise.
One person may have watched Kirk and Spock when the episodes originally aired. Another may have discovered Jean-Luc Picard in syndication. Younger fans may have entered the universe through Discovery, Prodigy or Strange New Worlds.
Pearlman’s work has frequently played with exactly that multigenerational quality of Trek fandom.
At Mystic Seaport, those generations get to compete.
An Author Talk That Doesn’t End With the Talk
Pearlman will also have books and copies of the trivia deck available for signing following the program.
That gives the afternoon a three-part structure: conversation, competition and signing.
It also provides an opportunity to hear from someone who approaches licensed pop culture from both sides of publishing.
Pearlman isn’t only an author handed established characters and asked to write about them. His career has included acquiring, editing, developing and art directing projects based on major entertainment properties.
That makes the conversation potentially broader than Star Trek trivia alone. His career sits at the intersection of fandom and the publishing business that turns familiar fictional worlds into books, games and other objects fans can take home.
Then comes the part where somebody has to prove they actually know how many nacelles are on the Enterprise-D.
A Different Kind of Voyage at Mystic Seaport
There’s also something pleasantly fitting about bringing Star Trek to Mystic Seaport Museum.
One institution preserves stories of people who ventured across oceans in wooden sailing ships.
The other imagined humanity taking that same impulse much farther.
Mystic Seaport’s historic vessels represent an era when leaving port could mean disappearing beyond reliable communication for months or years. Star Trek took exploration, navigation, unknown territory and life aboard a ship and transported those ideas into space.
The technologies could hardly be more different.
The basic fascination with going somewhere no one around you has seen remains surprisingly familiar.
On September 12, the Museum’s Performance Stage trades square-riggers for starships for an afternoon.
Event Details
Event: Star Trek Conversation and Trivia with Robb Pearlman
Date: Saturday, September 12, 2026
Time: 1:30 p.m.
Location: Performance Stage at Mystic Seaport Museum
Address: 75 Greenmanville Avenue, Mystic, CT 06355
Guest: Robb Pearlman
Program: Author conversation followed by a Star Trek trivia contest
Trivia: Inspired by Star Trek: The Ultimate Trivia Deck
Book Signing: Books and trivia decks will be available for signing
New Release: Star Trek: The Ultimate Trivia Deck, released August 18, 2026
Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.