Product Description

Our seventh anthology features original Star Trek®, Star Trek:The Next Generation®, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine®, Star Trek: Voyager®, and Star Trek: Enterprise™ stories writtenby Star Trek fans, for Star Trek fans!

Featuring new stories by new writers and a few contest veterans, Strange New Worlds VII spans the entire Star Trek universe from the original days of Captain Kirk and throughout the tenures of Captains Picard, Sisko, and Janeway and back in time again to Archer. Each of these unforgettable stories explores the past and future of Star Trek from many different perspectives.

This year's contributors include Kevin Lauderdale, Kevin Killiany, Christian Grainger, Paul J. Kaplan, Muri McCage, Pat Detmer, Gerri Leen, Julie Hyzy, Kelly Cairo, John Coffren, Scott Pearson, Jeff D. Jacques, Jim Johnson, Anne E. Clements, Russ Crossley, Susan S. McCrackin, Catherine E. Pike, G. Wood, Annie Reed, Louisa M. Swann, Brett Hudgins, Amy Sisson, and Frederick Kim.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72959 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Dean Wesley Smith is the author of over 30 Star Trek novels either solo or written jointly with Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He has edited all six volumes of the Star Trek STRANGE NEW WORLDS short story anthologies and lives in Eugene, Oregon.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction

Every year for the past seven years I have looked forward to October and reading Star Trek® short stories by the very talented, very smart fans of the shows. I have often said that as a Star Trek fan, I have the best job in the world, and the hardest. And again this year, that proved to be true. I had to pick just twenty-three stories out of the boxes and boxes of wonderful stories that poured into the contest. The wonderful part was reading them all, the hard part was picking just twenty-three.

But now this book of stories is in your hands, and I need help from all you Star Trek fans out there. I need you to write one or two or three or more Star Trek short stories, following the rules in the back of this book, and send them in by October 1, 2004. Why am I putting out a call for even more stories than I normally get? Simple. Many of the fans who have been sending me stories and trying to get into this contest for the last six or seven years have sold too many stories. This contest, by its rules, has a limit of only three professionally published short stories by the deadline of the contest. That's why you might see the same name two or three years running, or scattered over the years, and then that author is disqualified from sending in any more. As you might have noticed, many of them are still writing Star Trek, only over in the novels. Authors like Ilsa Bick, Dayton Ward, Christina York, and others. They started here and then eliminated themselves with too many sales, leaving room for new writers to join the fun.

On a few Star Trek boards in different locations, people have pointed out to me this year that a very large number of the writers I have bought once or twice can no longer be in the book again. And this includes this year's Grand Prize winner, Julie Hyzy, who has been sending in stories regularly for five or six years now. She and many others have "graduated," as they say on the boards.

And as an editor, that scares me, which is why I need all of your help. Come on, haven't you been watching an episode, seen a detail, and thought, "Wow, that would make a wonderful story?" Well, I need you to write that story this next year and send it in. I give every story the exact same chance at being in the book, and if you write a great story, it will make it in.

What kind of stories am I looking for? My best suggestion on that question, which I get a lot, is to read this volume, and then go find copies of the previous volumes of this anthology. Not only will you have a wonderful reading experience, but by the time you are done reading all seven of the books, you will have a very good sense of the stories that have made it into Strange New Worlds over the years.

So pass the word. Tell other Star Trek fans that the cutting edge of the Star Trek world is right here, in the short stories in these volumes, stories written by fans like you. Tell your friends, tell the other members of your starship crews, maybe challenge other writers in your writers' group, then sit down and write a story or two and send them in. You'll discover that the writing is a lot of fun, and if one of your stories makes it into the book, you'll have added to the Star Trek universe and be a Star Trek author. And trust me, the only thing more fun than reading Star Trek is being a Star Trek author.

This is your chance. Enjoy the reading, then get to the writing.

Copyright © 2004 by Paramount Pictures

Customer Reviews

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds VII
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds VII edited by Dean Wesley Smith, with John J. Ordover, Elisa J. Kassin, and Paula M. Block is the seventh edition in the Strange New Worlds series. This collection of short stories is from the readers of Trek submitting their works for review. What makes this book interesting is that you get to read some of the early works of some very promissing writers along with some seasoned submitters of previous editions.

Getting to read about what the readers think should be going on in the Trek universe is intriguing. There are seven submissions in the Star Trek Original Series, six submissions in the Star Trek: The Next Generation... included are the Grand Prize and the Third Place writing of the contest. There are two submissions in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine section, while the Star Trek: Voyager section has four submissions. The Star Trek: Enterprise has one submission and the is a new category called Speculations with three submissions and includes the Second Place prize.

There are some very inventive and interesting stories in this years crop of stories and I truly enjoyed them I hope you get a chance to pick up a copy for your library and you can later compare some of these stories to later ones written by some very promissing authors later in time as these writer compete for a writing contract with pocket books for future stories.

The three prize winners and the ones that I liked the best are:
"Life's Work" (Grand Prize) by Julie A. Hyzy
"Guardians" (Second Prize) by Brett Hudgins
"Adventures in Jazz and Time" (Third Prize) by Kelly Cairo

There are other stories in this book that could have been winners of a prize as they were that good, but alas, there could only be three winners.

If you like some off the common road short stories than this is your book as you can read a short story from this anthology before bed to get a quick fix of Trek. Enjoy these stories as I did and you can follow the progress of these writers in the future.

Ho-hum...good but not great...
...it might have been a bad omen that the release date was 01 June but SNW7 was not available until late June. The story ideas had promise (the repercussions of cadet Kirk's "solution" to the Kobayshi Maru, tribble thinking, Kirk & McCoy dealing w/post-traumatic shock after Rura Pente, Juliana leaving Noonien Soong, the first meeting btwn Keiko & Chief O'Brien) but the endings left me wanting. It wasn't til the final section (Speculations) that my favorite stories appeared: the Horta guarding the Guardian of Forever, Dax gets an assist from an old friend, and how the Borg came to be. A good read but not as good as SNW5 or 6...