Star Trek writers of decades past - where have they gone?

Well, Pohl may not be around any more, but apparently both Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, who edited the two New Voyages are still around. Just how involed where they with the line back in the 70's & 80's,

 

Not at all, as far as I'm aware; in an editorial role it was literally just those two books, and they only got those because they were big in the Trek fandom at the time (they were both fanfic compilations).

(Obviously they wrote other books too, but as editors I'm pretty sure the two New Voyages volumes were it.)

 

Answering my own post. Carmen Carter-Dreams of the Raven, Devil's Heart, The Children of Hamlin and Doomsday World. I don't know where she lives now but at one time she was in this area. I didn't know it at the time which is just as well.

 

This thread is a big trip down memory lane for me. I still have some of those books from the 1980s and 1990s on my bookshelves ...

 

More fool them.

 

Thought you all might be interested in this post from Michael Jan Friedman I just came across on Goodreads (emphasis mine).

 

Cool, I've liked most of the MJF stuff I've read, although I haven't gotten to SGZ yet.
KRAD is the still the former Trek writer I miss the most.

 

Yep. We can never have too many @KRAD Star Trek books.

 

And since there are now more than one he could write even more books.

https://www.facebook.com/kradec/posts/10154731546882705

 

Oh man... Death in Winter is so bad. He needs to come back and redeem himself.

 

Great to hear. I grew up on Michael Jan Friedman's star trek stories. Wheather it be the books he wrote or especially the DC comics he wrote. I love some of those stories of his. Especially The Worst of Both Worlds and War and Madness from his DC comics run.

 

Sadly another Star Trek novelist has died:

Dr. Yoji Kondo has died of a stroke at the age of 84 on October 9th. Kondo was best known to readers of Trek fiction as Eric Kotani, writer of the Voyager novel Death of a Neutron Star.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/obituaries/bs-md-ob-yoji-kondo-20171023-story.html

 

Not another one. RIP.

 

That was one of the first Star Trek books I read as a kid

 

I miss some of the old writers myself. Not to say the current group isn't good. I love David Mack's novels, along with Christopher Bennett's, Una McCormack....well, honestly I like them all. But Friedman was one of the one's I miss. I'd love to see more Stargazer novels someday, after all we only scratched the surface with Stargazer (though I have a feeling that ship has sailed). I also used to like Keith DeCandido's books and Peter David's. And of course at one time you used to have authors that maybe just wrote one or two Star Trek books, ever. You certainly don't see that anymore.

Obviously in some cases, authors just move on to other things. Maybe some just felt they have nothing else to contribute. Probably in some it has to do with the change in editors or even in leadership at S&S.

 

I'd love to see more even if just for Cole and Jiterica. I didn't see that romance coming at all, and it hit me pretty hard when it did; it really made me regret in hindsight that Cole's never even had a namedrop in the Voyager relaunch so far.

 

Speaking of Trek writers of decades past, I can't resist pointing out that Kij Johnson (my esteemed collaborator on DRAGON'S HONOR) won the World Fantasy Award for Best Long Fiction this weekend, for her novella "The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe."

Congratulations, Kij!

 

I used to read the Trek books long time ago, during a time when there was no Trek (before the first movie), mainly those Bantam and DelRey books, so most of names mentioned are more recent and not that familiar to me. The late great James Blish of course died a long time ago. I am sure Alan Dean Foster is still actively writing. The great Joe Haldeman and his brother wrote Trek novels. I also remember a writing team that wrote some weird stuff (Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath).

 

I loved the cover on both of those, one more than the other, and one is one of my cherished books. In order to preserve a sense of mystery, I won’t reveal which way round those are.

 

That was a good story. I put it 3rd out of 6 on my Hugo ballot for novella. Which, uh, doesn't sound so great, but the novella field was quite strong this year.