The Encyclopedia features highly detailed information about characters, planets, technologies and ships of the Star Trek franchise as well as brief episode and film synopses.

According to Gene Roddenberry, television series and the films are the extent of the Star Trek canon.

The Encyclopedia was inspired by a previous book by the same writing team, The Star Trek Chronology, which had been directly commissioned by Gene Roddenberry as a way of ensuring continuity on Star Trek.

The CD-ROM medium allowed the Simon & Schuster publishers to include video clips.

It was released for both Windows and Macintosh (ISBN 0-684-87413-X), which was published by Simon & Schuster Interactive.