I finally finished off all 11 volumes of SNW. Just a really great project. A belated tip of the hat to the folks that made it happen. Particularly Dean Wesley Smith. I would have hated having his job on this project, I think. The best thing about SNW, for me, is that you get to read fresh takes on old characters by authors from all walks of life. Voyages of Imagination is a nice companion piece to SNW. I got a kick out of how excited the authors were to see their work in print.
So here are some of my favorites. These aren't objectively the best stories, of course. I'm biased towards some characters and series, and I'm a bit of a sucker for some of the more maudlin stories. A couple of the stories I just find cute or clever. There were several other stories (The Soft Room for example) that I thought had a lot of potential but didn't quite work in the short story format.
These aren't in a best to worst order or anything.
A Private Anecdote
So damn depressing.
The First
I like "why we explore" stories. I also like seeing Picard wrestle with the PD. This story has both.
Whatever You Do, Don't Read This Story
Robert T. Jeschonek wrote some extremely creative Trek stories. This is probably his most imaginative.
The Best Defense
The friendship between Bashir and O'Brien was one of my favorite aspects of DS9 so I'm probably a little biased about this one
.
Missed
It's just cute. I would have loved to have seen this as an epilogue to The Trouble with Tribbles.
Black Hats
A good Harry Kim story?! It's true. Not only is it a good Kim story, it also provides some insight into Paris' mind and gives us a Captain Proton story that isn't played as camp.
Dementia in D Minor
Just a fantastic Sarek story. Probably my favorite story out of all 11 SNW volumes.
Disappearance on 21st Street
I told you I'm a sucker for these sad stories. This one is well done however. Edith Keeler must die, but so does everyone else. Just because the lives of millions aren't tied to your personal destiny doesn't mean that your life (and death) isn't meaningful.
Efflorescence
Again with the maudlin stuff. I'm not a Boothby fan, but I enjoy these Goodbye Mr. Chips type stories.
The Trouble with Tribals
A short, but clever, bit of fluff.
The Law of Averages
Dax, more than any other Trek character, imo, just plays better on the page than on tv.
Gumbo
A short story written in the form of a Sisko family recipe. Clever and fitting.
One of the idiosyncrasies of Trek short stories, is that most of them only work because the reader is already incredibly familiar with the characters and lore. That's not a complaint on my part, I just find it interesting. "Gumbo" is the epitome of what I'm talking about. The reader can't really appreciate how pitch perfect this story is without already knowing these characters intimately.
Staying the Course
Another tearjerker. A very good story about Worf and Alexander. I think it stayed true to the characters. I also like how the story showed that a person could be brave while simultaneously being a physical coward. Introducing Derek Redmond into the story probably pushed things a little too far into glurge territory, but, whatever.
A Christmas Qarol
By all rights, this should suck, but it's almost impossible to screw up any version of this classic Dickens tale it seems. SPOILERS: I like how my expectations were subverted when Q ended up in the Scrooge role instead of Picard. I especially liked finding out who was responsible for it; I love the idea of the almighty Q underestimating the unassuming Organians just as the humans and Klingons did.
The Sunwalkers
A pretty decent Beverly Crusher story. Not too many of those out there unfortunately.
The Façade of Fate
The story may have needed a little more polishing, but I found the concept at the heart of the story very intriguing. It takes the Breen's philosophy of forced homogeny to an unimaginable extreme.
