In today’s episode, it’s a bunch of episodes! Fans submit their own original stories, in which Cyrano Jones finally finishes cleaning up Space Station K-7, a diplomat made good yearns to show Kirk how far she’s come along, and Sisko does an ailing race a favor by dropping off their time capsule. Does Mr. Mot dye hair in his shop? Why does nobody care that the Doctor literally got a crew member killed? And can Chakotay beat his own breakup any% PB? All this and more in Strange New Worlds, the book that knows when to activate Paranoid Mode.

Strange New Worlds
Authors: Various (ed. Dean Wesley Smith, with John J. Ordover and Paula M. Block)
Pages: 457
Published: July 1998
Timeline: Varies by story
Prerequisites: Vary by story
Not to be confused with: The 2022 TV series Strange New Worlds
Borrowable on Archive.org? No

At last, we reach one of my most anticipated subjects, one of a handful of Trek publications I read prior to the creation of Deep Space Spines that helped convince me that the project would ultimately be a really fun and rewarding one: the first of the Strange New Worlds anthologies, which were published annually from 1998 to 2007 and comprised the winners and top entrants in a short story contest from among a field of thousands of competitors, plus a handful of larks that don’t really fit anywhere else. There’s really something for everyone in these books, and it’s a shame they don’t do the contest anymore. You know people would step up. Simon & Schuster has been making a decent effort of late to bring aboard more diverse writers, but something like this would really give a wide swath of talented voices some solid opportunities.

Which is exactly what Strange New Worlds was designed to do. The series was essentially created as a way to help fan writers get a legitimate foot in the door of the publishing industry, whether they wanted to do Trek or something else. Series editor Dean Wesley Smith in the introduction cagily cites “the constraints of the modern publishing industry” as the reason only established writers were allowed to do the books, but those who remember the Wild West days of the strong emphasis on non-Trek characters (including hyper-capable wish-fulfillment author stand-ins), thinly veiled slash fic, and the subsequent Roddenberry/Arnold crackdown probably have a slightly better idea of why things really were the way they were. That said, we’ll see many names featured in this volume in the annals of Trek lit still to come, and one of the contributors in here (Dayton Ward) went on to be massively prolific for the franchise, still Trekkin’ it up to this day (his most recent novel on the final frontier, Pliable Truths, came out last month). So it appears the contest worked the way it was intended.

Anyway, this review will look a little different than usual. Instead of covering the anthology holistically, I’m actually going to talk about each individual story a little bit—not a whole lot, just enough to adequately cover what it’s about and how I felt about it, but with the amount of stories involved, even that will eat up a lot of time and space. Each story will come with the author, timeline, and prerequisite info that was glossed over in the main entry above. Each story will also get its own TBAGE rating,1Because media literacy can not be taken for granted anymore, allow me to note that the main thing a given story being rated higher than one of the prize winners means is that I feel it did a better job of achieving what it set out to do than one awarded a prize, not necessarily that I think it’s better (although, granted, that may very well be the case as well). and then at the end, I’ll give the book as a whole a rating, which will be its own thing and not an average of the individual story ratings.

With that taken care of: let’s engage.

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“A Private Anecdote” (the Grand Prize winner)
Author: Landon Cary Dalton
Timeline: After Pike’s accident, but before “The Menagerie” (TOS 1×15+16)
Prerequisites: “The Cage” (0x01) was the only way at the time to have familiarity with a non–deep-fried Pike.

Chris Pike does a little bittersweet reminiscing about a handful of action-packed moments in his life, with the common thread being the intrusive thought “What if all of this isn’t real?” It’s easy to see why this walked away with top honors in 1998: at the time, there was virtually no insight into Pike’s post-trauma era, and a peek into his state of mind at that specific time probably represented an indelible opportunity that a lot of fans, including presumably those judging Strange New Worlds entries, would consider too juicy to pass up. Even though the writing is aces, however (awkward phrasing of the arc words aside), it’s a little low-stakes for my taste, and it starts winding down right as I really started digging the idea of hanging out in Pike’s brain. It would be fun to hear this narrated by Anson Mount.

Rating: Good

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“The Last Tribble”
Author: Keith Davis
Timeline: Almost 18 years after “The Trouble with Tribbles” (TOS 2×13)
Prerequisites: “The Trouble with Tribbles”

At the end of “The Trouble with Tribbles”, Captain Kirk punishes smuggler Cyrano Jones for “transporting an animal proven harmful to human life” by enjoining him to retrieve every single tribble on Space Station K-7, a task Spock estimates will take seventeen-point-nine years to complete. “The Last Tribble” catches up with Jones in the final minutes of said task, which find him in a pensive mode as he suddenly realizes he’s on the precipice of losing the purpose his life has had for the better part of the last two decades.

This is one of my favorite story types, which is to say, exploring the unexpected consequences of a previous episode’s events (“unexpected” being the key there—it can’t just be one episode building naturally off another). The big one, naturally, is Wrath of Khan building off of “Space Seed”; others include “Emissary” springboarding off “Best of Both Worlds” and, in a more lighthearted vein, the two Ferengi who got yeeted into the wormhole in TNG’s “The Price” reappearing in Voyager‘s “False Profits”. “The Last Tribble” is more in the latter vein, although still very thoughtful and serious-minded. The story explores a lot of unintended effects of the chore, like Jones’s improved health and advances in tribble science, with an airtight logic that’s as filling as it is tasty, all while introducing an original character and implied love interest for Jones in xenobiologist Yersa. This one’s definitely worth a read.

Rating: Excellent

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“The Lights in the Sky” (the Third Prize winner)
Author: Phaedra M. Weldon
Timeline: Right before the beginning of Star Trek: Generations (which is a spoiler if you know what to look for, but oh well)
Prerequisites: “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (TOS 2×17) and the beginning of Star Trek: Generations. General Korrd recurs from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

You have to be really locked in with the prereqs to pick up what this one is laying down, but MAN is it good.

Shahna, once a drill thrall on Triskelion, is now the planet’s ambassador, and she’s traveled to Earth to broker a nonaggression treaty with the Romulans. It isn’t strictly necessary for her to go to Earth to ink the deal, but she has some personal side business to tend to as well. Namely, she wants to see Captain Kirk one more time—to thank him, show him how far she’s come from being a slave who didn’t even know what planets and stars were when she met him, and make him proud of her—because after tomorrow, she won’t be able to do that, because she’s undergoing a process called Conversion to become a Provider (i.e., one of the powerful disembodied brains that spent their days wagering quatloos on gladiator battles before Kirk came in and shook things up), which will give her the ability to protect Triskelion from things like Romulan subterfuge.

This story really does have it all: deeply felt emotion, action, deep knowledge of the canon, the poignance of turning what a lot of people probably think of as just another one of horn-dog Kirk’s alien flings into a diplomatic force to be reckoned with, the baseball-bat-to-the-gut OOF moment when you realize the “launch” Kirk has a prior commitment to is that of the Enterprise-B, and a strong ability to combine many different pieces of the franchise into one cohesive quick hit. I’m a little amazed it only got third prize. Also, a quick refresh on Memory Alpha for any lore I need to remember is usually good enough for me, but this one got me to actually go back and watch the episode, so that’s worth some points as well.

Brief side note: I was familiar with a lot less Star Trek the first time I read this story, and at that time I absolutely hated it, because I didn’t realize Kirk dying on the Enterprise-B was what happens at the beginning of Generations, and so without that knowledge, I thought it was a cheap shot to have Kirk die off-screen between one page and the next just to tug some heartstrings. Goes to show you what a difference a little knowledge and a little context make, and that opinions can in fact be wrong.

Rating: Excellent

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“Reflections”
Author: Dayton Ward
Timeline: Immediately following Kirk’s death in Generations
Prerequisites: In order of appearance or invocation — Star Trek: Generations; “The City on the Edge of Forever” (TOS 1×28); “The Enterprise Incident” (3×04); Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Ayelborne and the other Organians recur from “Errand of Mercy” (1×27). Robert Wesley recurs from “The Ultimate Computer” (2×24).
Not to be confused with: The short story of the same name by L.A. Graf in The Lives of Dax

As soon as Kirk dies from getting the bridge dropped on him, the Organian Ayelborne takes him on a tour of his past, showing him events that might have unfolded had he decided the emotional pain of losing Edith Keeler was the last straw in a long line of other personal losses and resigned his commission—a sort of Ghost of One Possible Christmas Future, if you will.

This story didn’t land great for me because I’m someone who has little use for what-could-have-beens. Sure, these things could have happened, but they didn’t. So who cares? Ayelborne claims it’s necessary to show Kirk these events to prove to him that his sacrifices made a difference, but I’m not convinced. There’s something unpleasant about it that feels like running up the score (so to speak) and inexplicably stroking his ego. Also, speaking of Ayelborne, he slips more than a few times between past and present tenses, and while one could reasonably argue that that’s exactly the kind of thing someone who exists outside time would do, it’s distracting from a reader standpoint. Dayton Ward would go on to be a major contributor to the Star Trek universe, but his facility with bringing several canon elements together into a tight narrative definitely wasn’t on the same level as “The Lights in the Sky” just yet.

Rating: Average

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“What Went Through Data’s Mind 0.68 Seconds Before the Satellite Hit”
Author: Dylan Otto Krider
Timeline: Shortly after “Ménage à Troi” (TNG 3×24) (adjusted)
Prerequisites: None

Data often has millions of tabs open at a time in that positronic brain of his, but it’s difficult and often irrelevant to demonstrate that on TV, so a short story is the perfect medium to explore that phenomenon. Here, Data is forced to destroy a satellite that has appeared without warning in front of the Enterprise with less than one second to do so, leaving him no time to consult Captain Picard about taking action. For only being nine pages long, it’s amazing how much Krider fits in here, including two poems, two day-in-the-life snippets, both general and moment-specific explanations of how his brain works, and really well-reasoned explanations for why the satellite instantly appears in harm’s way and the consequences of failing to dispatch it. Plus, it’s in first person, and Data is one of a handful of characters whose voice I really love getting to hear in my head. According to Voyages of Imagination, making it into this book apparently opened a ton of doors for Krider, which is heartwarming. Anyway, definitely check this one out if you get the chance.

Rating: Excellent

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“The Naked Truth”
Author: Jerry M. Wolfe
Timeline: Between “Genesis” (TNG 7×19) and “Preemptive Strike” (7×24)
Prerequisites: General knowledge of late TNG is good, and it helps a little to be familiar with Barclay’s plot threads in “Genesis” and “The Nth Degree” (4×19)

Next Generation‘s final season could be shaky and even downright awful at times, but this story reads like an entry from a safe (if not entirely reassuring) distance above that season’s Mendoza line. This was enjoyable in a way the show could sometimes be late in its run, namely when the character interplay that had been tempered and polished for seven years could carry even a mediocre episode by itself as long as the episode wasn’t succumbing to incurable goofiness.2You can call “Masks” an “acting showcase for Brent Spiner” all you want, but I still think it’s a dopey episode. Otherwise, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it.

Rating: Good

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“The First”
Author: Peg Robinson
Timeline: Concurrent with early season 6 of Deep Space Nine, closest to “You Are Cordially Invited” (6×07)
Prerequisites: The Dominion War is in full swing during this time, and as such, naturally, is referenced. Bits of Star Trek: First Contact are also referenced here and there.

Picard bears the unfortunate burden of telling a stalwart Zefram Cochrane-esque warp pioneer that per the Prime Directive, she needs to turn around and go home so her fledgling world doesn’t get caught up in the Federation’s various entanglements. She knows that isn’t fair, and he knows it isn’t fair, so he’s forced into a reckoning. Will Picard do what’s right, or will he do what’s right? It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling Picard is or can be too strait-laced, especially compared to other captains, but this story is a solid reminder that he’s more than capable of making the morally correct choice when the rubber meets the road.

Rating: Good

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“See Spot Run”
Author: Kathy Oltion
Timeline: Between “Future Imperfect” (TNG 4×08) and “Final Mission” (4×09)
Prerequisites: None

I won’t lie: it seems a little dicey to me that the wife of an established Trek author was allowed to participate in this event. She knew Dean Wesley Smith prior to the contest! But I suppose the only real criterion was not having sold any work elsewhere. And anyway, every other industry is about who you know, so why should media tie-in publishing be any different? But that’s moot, because this story would be trivial piffle no matter who wrote it. Taking place in early season 4, it does read like a filler episode from around then—maybe even the season prior. The fate of the universe shouldn’t hinge on the outcome of every episode, novel, or short story, but I personally have a hard time imagining “Spot catches an alien pest in the Jefferies tubes” outclassing so many other entrants.

Rating: Bad

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“Together Again, for the First Time”
Author: Bobbie Benton Hull
Timeline: 31 years before “Encounter at Farpoint” (TNG 1×01, 1×02), during Picard’s Stargazer captaincy
Prerequisites: “Time’s Arrow” (TNG 5×26, 6×01) is slyly referenced a few times, and is of course the reason Guinan knows as much about Picard as she does

Picard meets a bartender named Guinan, who seems to know a lot about him, at a space station during his tenure as captain of the Stargazer and gets rescued by her from an assailant with a personal vendetta against him. The full scope of Guinan’s abilities has of course never been very well defined, but an aura of mystery can only support so many convenient contrivances, and it’s being asked to do way too much heavy lifting here. Guinan has plenty of wisdom to offer, but one could argue Hull took her full-on magical negro here. Nice to see some of Picard and Guinan’s personal history between “Time’s Arrow” and the D, but otherwise I didn’t really dig this one.

Rating: Bad

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“Civil Disobedience”
Author: Alara Rogers
Timeline: Immediately following the conclusion of “The Best of Both Worlds” (TNG 3×26, 4×01)
Prerequisites: Events of “Q Who?” (2×16), “Deja Q” (3×13), and “The Best of Both Worlds” are referenced

While still on probation for his selfless act in “Deja Q”, Q is tried again for interfering in Earth history at the Battle of Wolf 359, and decides to stand behind his decision no matter the personal cost. I love Q stories (looking very much forward to reviewing Greg Cox’s Q trilogy immediately after this), but this is a pretty vanilla, if competent sample of the territory that can be explored with the character. Nothing wrong with it, per se, but not really a mind-blower either (except for one shocking and honestly kind of deranged act on Q’s part, which is reprinted down in the Stray Bits).

Rating: Average

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“Of Cabbages and Kings” (the Second Prize winner)
Author: Franklin Thatcher
Timeline: Placed between “Data’s Day” (TNG 4×11) and “The Wounded” (4×12)
Prerequisites: None, save for a note-perfect reference to “11001001” (1×15) at the end

When the Enterprise-D is pulled into another universe minus anything organic aboard it (and Data), the ship itself enters a setting called Paranoid Mode, where it must rely on the knowledge it finds in its own systems to find a way back—and reaches heights of creativity it never dreamed possible.

Even if the idea a story with no characters (in the traditional sense) does sound fascinating as a thought exercise, one might imagine it would be really easy for such a thing to lapse into sterility and lifelessness. The grand achievement of Franklin Thatcher’s story is not only that that never happens, but in fact pushes boundaries in the complete opposite direction. This story is operating on a plane of mind-boggling intelligence and creativity light-years beyond even that of the other contest winners. Based on the concept of aircraft carriers at the time of writing having limited self-direction capabilities in the event of a crew’s inability to respond, the extrapolation to 24th-century technology is incredibly well-explored and thrilling at nearly every moment, whether it’s fighting off swarms of cybernetic beings or contemplating its own sentience. I remember this being my favorite story in the anthology the first time I read it, and it would seem that has not changed in the intervening years.

Rating: Excellent

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“Life’s Lessons”
Author: Christina F. York
Timeline: During Kira’s pregnancy (early season 5)
Prerequisites: “Heart of Stone” (DS9 3×14) is the beginning of Nog’s Academy arc. Keiko reflects on events that started unfolding in “Body Parts” (4×25).

Nog tries to chastely capitalize on a torch he’s been carrying for Keiko O’Brien while Ubering her to a conference on Bajor, but Keiko is too busy worrying about losing her family to Kira to notice. Keiko is a character often done a disservice by both fans and writers, who tend to characterize her as a scold and a shrew, so it’s nice to see a take that’s sympathetic toward her and worried about her feelings. But York arguably does an even better job capturing Nog in a period of transition from his old Ferengi thinking to a Starfleet frame of mind, trying to serve two masters by seizing an opportunity and trying to do the right thing at the same time and not quite satisfying either. Lot of big feelings in this one; I liked it.

Rating: Good

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“Where I Fell Before My Enemy”
Author: Vince Bonasso
Timeline: After Worf joins the cast, but before the Dominion War
Prerequisites: “Arena” (TOS 1×19)

The Metrons aren’t feeling so hot these days, so they do something flashy and ethically sketchy to gauge Sisko’s reaction and see if they can trust him to do them a favor. Deep Space Nine has always felt to me like a spiritual sibling to TOS, so I always appreciate episodes and stories that help strengthen that connection. It should come as no surprise, then, that I enjoyed this one. The nature of the Metrons’ test creates a lot of tension, but Sisko acquits himself well, and it’s also fun to see the Gorn still hanging out with the Metrons (and I appreciated the explanation given as well). Not to mention, it’s a hell of a lot better Cestus III revisit than Requiem.

Rating: Good

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“Good Night, Voyager”
Author: Patrick Cumby
Timeline: Listed between “The 37’s” (VOY 2×01) and “Initiations” (2×02), though wouldn’t the Doctor have to at least have the mobile emitter to be functioning during a complete shutdown of Voyager?
Prerequisites: None

Voyager experiences a complete and total shutdown of nearly all systems, and the root cause is a surprising one: all the bioneural gel packs on the ship decided to fall asleep at the same time.

This is an infuriating story, and here’s why: the reason the ship goes completely dark is that the Doctor is experimenting with a subroutine that makes him sleepy, and when his static image gets backed up to the main computer core, that fatigue subroutine is what impacts the bioneural gel packs. A whoopsie to be sure, but maybe a forgivable one if it doesn’t get anyone killed. Well, guess what. Lt. Thompson dies while trying to release the fusion reactor, which is less than two hours away from releasing enough gamma radiation to kill everyone on the ship, from its mounts. There’s no way this ever happens if the Doctor decides he doesn’t need to know what yawning feels like. Come the end of the story, this has gone completely unaddressed and the Doctor incurs no consequences for it whatsoever.

Now, it’s ironic that Cumby speaks in Voyages of Imagination about being “less than thrilled about much of the writing” on Voyager, because the above situation is the exact kind of thing that made Voyager by turns so goofy and maddening. But you have to hand it to him: he’s really good at writing Voyager in that very specific way that it comes across on TV. The quippiness of the more sardonic characters is precisely on point, and the Doctor continuing his fatigue experiment while lives hang in the balance is exactly the kind of thing that, when watching the show, makes you roll your eyes and hope the next episode is a little less unserious. This helped me feel more or less okay about the story right up until it turned out to be completely the Doctor’s fault.

I genuinely don’t know how to feel here. It’s always nice when early quirks of the show that fell by the wayside, like the bioneural gel packs, are remembered and treated with care, and the writing and dialogue pass the vibe check, but it’s really upsetting how neither the Doctor nor anyone else stops to consider how he got a valued crew member killed with his pursuit of humanity. Given that, as well as the timeline question above of how the Doctor is even running during this story, which I’m really struggling with on a fundamental premise level, I’m veering hard into not-great territory. Then again, writing a TV-quality-accurate Voyager story is like making up a rancid pun: if it’s completely awful, that means you did great. It’s Terrible, which means it’s Excellent. Let’s split the difference and call the whole thing off.

Rating: Average

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“Ambassador at Large”
Author: J.A. Rosales
Timeline: Two years after “Caretaker” (VOY 1×01, 1×02)
Prerequisites: “The Corbomite Maneuver” (TOS 1×02)

Voyager saves a lone traveler from a sticky situation and are surprised to discover he’s human, a mercurial man who refers to himself only as “Bailey”, who is rather evasive about where he’s been and how he got to the Delta Quadrant—for fairly good reasons, as it turns out.

I can acknowledge that there is a kind of artless “just two things” mashup quality to stories like this and “Where I Fell Before My Enemy” and admit I’m a sucker for it anyway. Putting old one-off characters in the context of a more recent series is like catnip to me. As long as it’s mechanically sound and there’s no egregious wish-fulfillment happening, I’m going to have a good time. It was especially funny listening to Bailey and Balok complain about the Borg’s lack of receptiveness to hospitality.

Rating: Good

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“Fiction”
Author: jaQ Andrews
Timeline: Between “Future’s End” (VOY 3×08, 3×09), and “Scorpion, Part II” (4×01)
Prerequisites: None

Voyager’s crew has been living on a crappy pre-industrial world for four years following a crash that happened when they got stuck in its gravity well—or so they think. Chakotay has settled in, gotten married, and committed full bore to the never-getting-back-to-the-Alpha-Quadrant life, but Janeway has discovered a phenomenon that she believes proves the whole thing is a lie.

“Fiction” was the Voyager story I remembered most clearly from my pre-Spines read of the anthology, and it’s easy to see why: it establishes an absolutely bonkers premise with stunning speed, efficacy, and most crucially, plausibility. It blew my mind when I first read it to imagine the Voyager crew giving up on the journey home and living on a planet for whole years before the story even started. Of course, there’s more to the picture than meets the eye, and it’s kind of incredible how fast Chakotay slips back into Starfleet mode once he’s convinced that Janeway is telling the truth. Sucks that he had to get Seska’d all over again, but it does give him a fantastic opportunity to be cold as ice at the end.

Rating: Excellent

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“I, Voyager”
Author: Jackee Crowell (credited as “Jackee C.”)
Timeline: Between “Distant Origin” (VOY 3×23) and “Displaced” (3×24)
Prerequisites: None

A mysterious disembodied alien that can take corporeal form and touch other beings’ minds goes against the prejudices of its own kind to save Janeway. The perspective on this one is neat—disorienting in a good way, in the sort of way you imagine not being tied to a physical form is like. The title and ending seem to imply that the being, identified only as “Awnedre”, ultimately tags along with Voyager and continues living on, in, and perhaps even as the ship. It definitely gets ostracized by its kindreds, but beyond that, I feel like the way things are so fuzzily described makes me unable to be totally certain of its fate. Other than that, I don’t really have a lot to say about this one. It just generally felt nice.

Rating: Good

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“Monthuglu”
Author: Craig D.B. Patton
Timeline: After “Macrocosm” (VOY 3×12) at least, since “A Briefing with Neelix” is referred to as “Good Morning, Voyager”
Prerequisites: None

Voyager takes a detour to avoid a corporeal enemy, but winds up in a newly discovered class of nebula that turns out to harbor an even more inscrutable threat. A story told entirely in crew logs (along with a few other well-deployed sources, like Neelix’s briefing show) is an interesting conceit, though it’s watered down a bit by the fact that it says directly who is speaking in each paragraph. It might have been more clever to take that out where possible and instead drop subtle hints to indicate who’s talking in any given entry. Anyway, I was actually kind of bored for most of this one, but it’s saved by the horror aspect finally ramping up (and how!) in the last few pages. It’s also more than a little unnerving to realize the only reason Voyager gets out of the nebula alive is that their technology is too complex for the Monthuglu to learn quickly enough to overtake them. Nearly undone by their technology, but ultimately also saved by it. I’d call this one average right now, but there’s a solid chance of it rising in my estimation after the haze of distant memory settles over it.

Rating: Average

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“The Man Who Sold the Sky”
Author: John Ordover
Timeline: October 1991
Prerequisites: Enough knowledge of TOS and TNG characters to be able to pick them out by descriptions and verbal tics alone

Part of the privilege of editing a short story anthology is that you can bypass the contest aspect entirely, stick your own work in at the end, and no one can say boo about it. No names (except “Jim”) are named, but it’s pretty evident that it’s a (blessedly) brief indulgence about several TOS characters (and Data) coming to take Gene Roddenberry from the hospital in which he lies dying to his rightful place among the stars. Although this is barely longer than three pages, Ordover manages to cram a lot of treacle into that space. This to me is a lot like those excessively saccharine tributes you sometimes see in the wake of a cartoonist’s death where all the characters from their comic strip(s) mourn them. Some might find that sort of thing heartwarming; I generally consider it tacky.

Rating: Bad

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“The Girl Who Controlled Gene Kelly’s Feet”
Author: Paula M. Block
Timeline: Some months (not quite a year) after “Shore Leave” (TOS 1×17)
Prerequisites: “Shore Leave”

An unnamed counselor for the Enterprise becomes enamored with a yeoman who overwhelmingly prefers her fantasy life to reality, then discovers while on shore leave to the “Shore Leave” planet that that yeoman’s been leading a strange double life for the past year. When she discovers the nature of that life, she gets an offer to take advantage of the same opportunity herself.

“The Girl Who Controlled Gene Kelly’s Feet” hearkens back to the days when authors were really starting to get into the spirit of ignoring the senior officers and writing stories that focused exclusively on new original characters with very few ties to established canon, which turned out exciting and bracing as often as it did amateurish and self-indulgent. As it happens, there’s a good reason for that: Block originally wrote it back in 1978. In a way, it kind of shares an aura with something like How Much for Just the Planet?, albeit obviously much less wacky. If you remember how I felt about John M. Ford’s second and final Trek novel, you’ll know that I personally wouldn’t consider that a compliment, but if you liked it, you’ll smell what this story is stepping in. I put this story down to scroll on my phone with two pages left to read, which sums up pretty well how I ultimately felt about it.

I was really hoping these editorial indulgences wouldn’t be as lame and boring as I initially feared, but no dice. At least Ordover had the decency to keep his short.

Rating: Bad

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Stray Bits

• Polygeminus grex, the taxonomic classification of tribbles given in “The Last Tribble”, is a pull of truly abyssal depth, from the Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual (1976, 1978). Translated roughly, I’m guessing it’s a fairly straightforward reference to the idea of several of the same type of creature inhabiting a single place. (20)
• The real cherry on the sundae of “The Last Tribble” is a golden instance of the classic bickering between Spock and McCoy. Almost makes the story worth reading all by itself. (27)
• One part of “What Went Through Data’s Mind…” describes a Three Musketeers holodeck adventure starring him, Geordi, and Barclay, which yields this subtle choice nugget: “We came upon a band of thieves and Lt. Barclay had fought them off brilliantly, as the computer was programmed to allow him to do.” (91)
• At first I thought “The Naked Truth” was trying to subtly set up a parallel universe sort of deal when it said Barclay “used one hand to comb back a few unruly strands of black hair.” Black hair? Barclay? It took me a while of settling into the story to realize it was just an overlooked goof. (96)
• Coming up with alien names that don’t clash on the mind’s ear is harder than it looks, and the best writers make the process of creating natural-sounding names for alien species and characters look like light work. The point I mean to make by that is, “Vukcevok” might be the worst name I’ve seen for a Vulcan in my whole life. (152)
• One of the coldest, most brutal, metal-as-hell deaths ever put to paper in Star Trek history, from “Civil Disobedience”: “[Q] severed the [Borg drone’s] connection to its fellows, rendering it alone, confused, and capable of feeling pain. He then heated the temperature of all the metal in its body to 1500° Fahrenheit. The creature screamed, and screamed, writhing in impossible agony, and finally lay still.” (185)
• The title “Of Cabbages and Kings” comes from a line from the Lewis Carroll poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”.
• Looks like the future has us going back to being kind and rewinding: “Then she rewound Singin’ in the Rain and carefully put it back on the shelf.” (405)
• There is a chapter of Starfleet: Year One, a serialized novel by Michael Jan Friedman whose individual chapters were printed at the ends of various novels from August 1999 to July 2000, at the end of the mass-market reprint of this anthology, but I’m not going to talk about that here today. I’ll probably note this again when the first chapter pops up, but my plan right now is to ignore these as they come up and just cover the whole story at once when its publication as a single volume comes up in the publishing order, which is March 2002.

Final Assessment

Excellent. Whether the goal of the Strange New Worlds contest was to give aspiring authors a foot in the door of the publishing industry or create a farm team to increase the stable of Trek authors, the first anthology confirms that they succeeded admirably. Many of the authors who won are names we’ll see at least one more time, whether as future SNW winners or as bona fide Trek writers in their own right. Though the quality here varies almost as much as any other comparable sample size of Trek lit, the swings aren’t as turbulent as the untamed olden days of Trek novels, and there are very few outright duds. I can’t wait to see the overflowing creativity of the next ten contests.

My personal top five:

1. “Of Cabbages and Kings”
2. “The Lights in the Sky”
3. “What Went Through Data’s Mind 0.68 Seconds Before the Satellite Hit”
4. “The Last Tribble”
5. “Fiction”

NEXT TIME: Helm, plot a course for the heart of Q-Space