Star Trek: The New Voyages edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
Star Trek: The New Voyages edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
When I was about ten years old, I discovered an amazing thing—Star Trek: The New Voyages—a book of brand new Star Trek stories. This wasn’t the retelling of television episodes, these were brand new never-before-seen adventures. Inside was a short story called Mind Sifter by Shirley S. Maiewski which could reasonably be described as changing my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Something about the idea that there could be more new Star Trek stories just caught hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I wanted to be one of the people who got to write new Star Trek tales! So I found a notebook and started creating my own Star Trek—complete with pathetically bad drawings—and I’m still writing today thanks in a large part to the impact this story had on me. So as I’m sure you can imagine it’s with a great amount of trepidation that I’ve picked up this volume four decades later to see if I can still see what first moved me within its pages.
Ni Var by Claire Gabriel
The best thing about the first story in the collection is that it is well grounded in the series drawing on The Enemy Within when Kirk was split into good and evil selves. In Ni Var a scientist searches for medical applications based on the accident in the original episode. He wants to help the progeny of interspecies romances cope and he needs Mr. Spock’s help—willingly or not.
Intersection Point by Juanita Coulson
This story read just like a TV episode. Caught in an intersection of our universe and another one, the Enterprise is damaged and in danger of destruction. It’s quite well done.
The Enchanted Pool by Marcia Ericson
This is perhaps the cleverest story in the series. In many ways it feels like one of the many episodes where in someone falls in love with Spock and runs into his logical monotone, but there’s a twist that makes this one a delight.
Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited by Ruth Berman
A laugh out loud adventure where actors William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley find themselves on the real USS Enterprise.
The Face on the Barroom Floor by Eleanor Arnason and Ruth Berman
A little shore leave mishap where Kirk has to extricate himself from an embarrassing problem.
The Hunting by Doris Beetem
McCoy takes advantage of a chance to get to know everyone’s favorite half-Vulcan better and ends up in danger of losing his life.
The Winged Dreamers by Jennifer Guttridge
In a story very similar to the classic episode, Shore Leave, the crew of the enterprise starts to experience their daydreams and nightmares.
Mind Sifter by Shirley S. Maiewski
This is the story I most wanted to reread and it mostly held up to my memories. It opens on a mystery, Jim Kirk is in an insane asylum in earth’s past and he doesn’t remember who he is or how he got there. In fact, he acts like an abused and terrorized child which is so unlike Kirk that it makes the story even more intriguing. This one could very easily have been a televised episode. It was really wonderful to reread it again.
Sonnet from the Vulcan: Omicron Ceti Three by Shirley Meech
I’m not a great fan of poetry, but this sonnet from Spock to Leila Kalomi from the episode This Side of Paradise worked for me. It’s a short but haunting piece and I remembered the final stanza decades after first reading it. That’s not a bad accomplishment for any author.
Overall, this is a fun collection of Star Trek dreams and in showing the public’s hunger for all things Star Trek it undoubtedly did its part to spur not only the publishing of hundreds of other Star Trek tales but seven additional television series, thirteen movies and counting—not to mention inspiring who knows how many people such as myself to write their own stories.
