Who Remembers "The Best of Trek"?
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I have the complete set, and the two Best of the Best of Trek collections as well. (The BotBoT volumes are redundant, but since I didn't have all of the volumes at the time, they plugged some gaps.) I enjoyed reading them, especially in the mid-80s, when they were among my first experiences with Star Trek fandom. (My other early experiences with fandom were in the letters pages of the Star Trek comic; I didn't meet any other Trek fans until college, and I didn't attend a convention until I was in my mid-20s.)
Wow... this thread was revived today after eight years? Perhaps it should be renamed to Who Remembers the "Who Remembers "The Best of Trek"?" Thread?... 
Beyond my lengthy original post, it's fitting that this thread should be popping back up again now, as I recently bought a second copy of The Best of Trek #13 to use as a reference without further punishing my well-used original copy. 
That would have been Volume 6 or Volume 7. For me, the best run of the series was volumes 6 through 10, which happens to be is when I discovered the series. (Volume 9 was the first one I bought. I found it in a bookstore near the Methodist Church I attended when I was small.) The volumes after that, especially when they got into Next Gen, didn't have as interesting content, imho.
I may be engaging in a similar bias by having such nostalgia for Volumes 13-15, but those volumes also contain the most "information-gathering" articles which were (and are) the most up my alley--particularly in the aforementioned recently-repurchased #13. (That volume was also the first time I ever encountered Nyota Uhura's first name, or knew there was ever any "controversy" about it...)
It's funny to see the TMP-versus-TWOK rivalry forming in the volumes you mentioned, though--there were so many fans who saw the latter as a betrayal of TOS's ideals or just as an inferior film.
Similarly, I feel the loyalty to TOS amongst the writers in The Best of Trek meant that TNG didn't get as thorough (or as fair) an analysis as it might've gotten if the volumes had lasted longer and incorporated the perspective of fans for whom TNG was their entry point.
One of the thrills of my teenage fandom was having Leslie Thompson answer some of my "mysteries" in Volume 10 (I think).
Re-reading the books today, it's amazing how much weight I gave them simply because they were books. (Or, as Sam Cogley says, "Books, young man, books!") Many of the articles are simply enthusiastic opinion pieces that would be right at home on the forums and blogs of today. But I did love these books because, in those dim pre-internet days, they gave me hope that there were other folks out there "like me." I always loved the Roundtable letter collections, and I still remember laughing so hard at Kiel Stuart's parodies.
I submitted an article to Messrs. Irwin and Love -- the writers' guidelines promised a whole $50 if you made into a Best of volume! -- but I never got a response. (I enclosed a SASE and everything!)
For what its worth, Allyn, I still agree that those exact volumes you mention were the best of the whole series. Probably just because they were when I came to the series, too, but I remember the interview with James Horner in Vol. 7 being a real revelation -- I'd never read analysis and criticism of film music before -- and my best friend (also a Trek fan) and I got a lot of mileage out of the jokes in that same volume, as well.
I remember being livid that Vol. 11 published an episode guide for the 20th anniversary -- didn't these people already have Asherman's Compendium? Why take the space away from the articles?!
Fun times.
Re-reading the books today, it's amazing how much weight I gave them simply because they were books. (Or, as Sam Cogley says, "Books, young man, books!") Many of the articles are simply enthusiastic opinion pieces that would be right at home on the forums and blogs of today. But I did love these books because, in those dim pre-internet days, they gave me hope that there were other folks out there "like me." I always loved the Roundtable letter collections, and I still remember laughing so hard at Kiel Stuart's parodies.
I submitted an article to Messrs. Irwin and Love -- the writers' guidelines promised a whole $50 if you made into a Best of volume! -- but I never got a response. (I enclosed a SASE and everything!)
For what its worth, Allyn, I still agree that those exact volumes you mention were the best of the whole series. Probably just because they were when I came to the series, too, but I remember the interview with James Horner in Vol. 7 being a real revelation -- I'd never read analysis and criticism of film music before -- and my best friend (also a Trek fan) and I got a lot of mileage out of the jokes in that same volume, as well.
I remember being livid that Vol. 11 published an episode guide for the 20th anniversary -- didn't these people already have Asherman's Compendium? Why take the space away from the articles?!
Fun times.
I own volumes 1-14. Those parodies were hilarious! Took me forever to find Vol. 1, and I got it off Amazon for a song!
I got my copy of Vol 1 at a local, fan-run Trek convention (remember those?) in Raleigh, NC in 1985 (I think) - the delightfully named Genesis Khan -- for a dollar. A dollar!
That's where we first "met".
One if the highlights of my January 1992 visit to NYC was dropping into the DC Comics' offices and interviewing Robert Greenberger. The team had just received permission to reintroduce the Robin Curtis version of Saavik into the post-ST VI issues. On the pin board beside his desk was an advance cover of his Pocket novel, "The Disinherited", written with Peter David & Michael Jan Friedman.
As for "The Best of Trek", it was my Australian friend Valerie Parv's first professional sale. "Star Trek Jokes".
Ha, yes, Volume 7. Just saw your post and will pass on your compliment to Valerie!
Robert's a great guy. He and I both write for BACK ISSUE magazine from TwoMorrows Publishing (just nominated for an Eisner Award!) and he's been nothing but generous with me when it comes to sharing memories and information about his time at DC Comics. He's got a Sherlock Holmes novel he's co-written coming up in the near future.
Oh, took me a moment there -- you mean the comics that came out after ST VI but took place before it. Naturally, DC couldn't have shown Sulu getting his own command and Saavik replacing him at the helm until after TUC had come out and established his 3-year-old captaincy. Yeah, I'd forgotten that DC continued filling in the gap between TFF and TUC for years after TUC came out. (Well, until the last 8 issues, when they switched to exclusively pre-TMP settings.)
Here's a listing for it, for folks like me who were intrigued by that reference. I have been meaning to pick up more than one title in this series, just haven't made the time to do so yet; they all look like a lot of fun.... http://titanbooks.com/the-further-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes-murder-at-sorrows-crown-7959/
Oh, yes! By all means! (And her article had funnier stuff in it than the follow-up Irwin and Love pulled together as a "sequel," too!)
I love these books, and have all but #16. My favourite article of them all is "The Fall of the Federation" in Best of Trek #2, a fascinating Foundation-style imagining of how it all ends for the UFP. It really captured by imagination.
I also loved reading the fanrage against Wrath of Khan. It's amazing how similar complaints about that film mirror those in 2013 about Star Trek Into Darkness. One of the later issues has a nitpicky article ripping Diane Duane's Spock's World to shreds, which had my blood pressure rising thanks to complaints like the stardates being wrong because they don't conform to the author's personal interpretation of how stardates should work. Trek fandom hasn't changed a bit!
I could probably write a book about how much I love these books.
I also loved reading the fanrage against Wrath of Khan. It's amazing how similar complaints about that film mirror those in 2013 about Star Trek Into Darkness. One of the later issues has a nitpicky article ripping Diane Duane's Spock's World to shreds, which had my blood pressure rising thanks to complaints like the stardates being wrong because they don't conform to the author's personal interpretation of how stardates should work. Trek fandom hasn't changed a bit!
I could probably write a book about how much I love these books.
Thanks for posting the link, Bibliomike! I couldn't recall the title when I was posting before.
Yes, the Titan Books "Further Adventures" series has been really great. They've reprinted a lot of the more notable Holmes pastiches from the past, like Philip Jose Farmer's The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Loren D. Estleman's Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula: The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes, Daniel Shastower's The Ectoplasmic Man, and Edward Hanna's The Whitechapel Horrors, along with some brand new ones, so I'm looking forward to Robert's book.
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That's become a major pet peeve of mine in the various fandoms I'm involved with, the fan who gets SO into their own personal vision of a thing that they start presenting their opinions and personal fan theories as incontrovertible facts. I'm prey to it as well (heck, we all are to some degree), but I try to be as aware of it as possible and remember that my opinions are largely nothing more than that -- my opinions.
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