The groundbreaking casting of Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura in 1966 took women and people of color into a newly-imagined future. But it was the 1960s, and she had to do it in a it in a miniskirt.

Since then, each Star Trek show has both reflected the values of its time and imagined future in which all genders were equal. In her first book, Star Trek: Voyager star Nana Visitor sets out to discover both how Star Trek led the way for women and how it was trapped in its own era.

For Visitor, this is more than a book about Star Trek. It’s about how society and the stories we tell have evolved in the last 60 years, and about how the role of women has changed in that time.