Miracle Workers: Remembering S.C.E. (article)

[Defcon]

My newest article is online at Unreality SF now.

In it I talk to long-time S.C.E. / CoE contributors Keith R.A. DeCandido, Kevin Dilmore, David Mack and Dayton Ward about S.C.E., from its beginnings to its hiatus, and the chances for its future.

And since John Ordover has taken over the site we will release it as a trilogy.

Just kidding, but the final article came up a tad long, so we have decided to release it in three chunks over the course of this week. Today the first part was released:

Among the first to learn about the series outside of Pocket Books itself was Kevin Dilmore, then writing for Star Trek-related magazines and websites, who was to become one of the most regular contributors to the series along with writing partner Dayton Ward. “In the summer of 2000, John Ordover, who then was executive editor of the Star Trek line at Pocket Books, had talked to me several times about his projects in my capacity as a contributing writer for Star Trek Communicator magazine as well as for StarTrek.com,” he recalls. “He asked whether I wanted to break an exclusive story about an agreement between Simon & Schuster and Microsoft that would result in a monthly series of original fiction in eBook format.”

You can find the full first part of the article here.

 

[JD]

Cool, thanks for sharing. As a big SCE fan, I found that very interesting.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I read this earlier today. This is great stuff and I am really looking forward to the other two parts. It's really interesting where the germs of ideas come from.

I would have liked to see more of what went into the nuts and bolts of creating the crew, the origins of Abramowitz and Faulwell, and why Duffy, Stevens and Gomez were chosen from the large number of bit-part actors seen in Trek over the last few years.

But overall I really enjoyed it.

 

[Destructor]

That was excellent. I actually only read up to 'Wildfire' but I really enjoyed the series up until then. Not sure why I never continued it, I should get back into it!

 

[flandry84]

Good article.Thank you.
I must confess to being surprised at just how much I enjoyed the S.C.E stories.I was never much on the more 'techy' aspects of Trek but these stories were always more than just 'tech-fix of the week'.
I have to say that "Wildfire"remains one of the most exciting and atmospheric Treklit books that I have ever read.

 

[Csalem]

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Thrawn]

I read up through the next two collections after Wildfire, and out of all of them, Wildfire was the only story I really liked. Beyer's story about the Nasat homeworld was decent, but not really anything special, and I'm already having a hard time remembering any of the rest (I only gave up on the series a few months ago). I guess it just wasn't my thing; seemed really generic and bland, until Mack kicked the shit out of it, and then just went back to being generic and bland again.

 

[KRAD]

^ Heather Jarman wrote the Nasat homeworld story, not Kirsten Beyer.

And sorry it wasn't your cuppa....

 

[kkozoriz1]

I've got all the dead tree editions. They're generally fun little stories. Wildfire wasn't fun though. But it was David Mack so you knew that they would be stacking the bodies like cordwood.

The one part that I didn't like was Gold's family and to a lesser extent Gold himself. His family read like some sort of stereotypical Jewish family, more suited to a sitcom right along with the wacky mixed marriage. Brifget loves Bernie: The Next Generation.

 

[Thrawn]

^ Heather Jarman wrote the Nasat homeworld story, not Kirsten Beyer.

And sorry it wasn't your cuppa....

Yeah; I had the right person in mind, just got the wrong name. Happens to me a lot. Quite embarrassing, as I'm a high school teacher and often call students I've known for months the wrong name.

Oh well, moving on...

 

[Defcon]

Part two of the article is now online.

 

[JD]

Cool, but it's getting late here so I'll read it in the morning.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Some interesting little tit bits there and I would love to see the Lovell return. I would also like to see a time travel story where the Lovell crew meets the Da Vinci crew. That would be great.

 

[JD]

The Lovell crew are pretty big recurring characters in Vanguard now. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen the last of them.

 

[shanejayell]

Good articles, looking forward to part three.

I like how the SCE characters are turning up in other books too, like the cameos in 'Singular Destiny' and over in the new Voyager books.

 

[Technobuilder]

Ready for Part 3...

 

[fleetcaptain]

Reading it right now. Very interesting. I have loved this series and the ties to the past and present. I hope it comes back some day. I'm in the middle of reading the last collection that came out a month ago.

 

[Technobuilder]

Did Part 3 get postponed?

 

[shanejayell]

It's the weekend, chill. *lol*

 

[Defcon]

Thanks for all the kind words.

Did Part 3 get postponed?

Not to my knowledge. I'm not involved with the technical side of the site, so I can't promise it, but my guess would be that it will be online within in the next 24 hours or so.