Strange New Worlds

[Danger Ace]

Does anyone know if the "Strange New Worlds" contest and anthology series will ever return? Or if there is something like it out there?

I miss it and the outlet it provided. I can't even find a good, active fan fiction website. Any suggestions?

 

[Defcon]

Highly unlikely that the contest will return.

According to Dean Wesley Smith (see quote under this paragraph from a SNW dicsussion I had with him and several authors a few years ago) they did loose money with these books every time, and I doubt that Pocket would even consider to re-establish a moneyloser in the curren economic climate.

“Anthologies never make enough money in publishing.” Dean explains. “Nature of the beast, but Pocket Books and Paramount wanted to fund this to get the new writers in, to keep the fans writing Trek, and it worked for ten wonderful years. But even deep pockets like Pocket Books and Paramount couldn’t continue to lose as much money as this was costing them, so ten years seemed to be like a good place to stop. I didn’t expect it to go past year one, to be honest.”

I'm not into fan-fiction, but have you checked this board's fan-fiction forum?

 

[Relayer1]

I was disappointed they only accepted submissions from the USA...

Would like to see it back though. Maybe it would be viable as ebooks ?

 

[Christopher]

According to Dean Wesley Smith (see quote under this paragraph from a SNW dicsussion I had with him and several authors a few years ago) they did loose money with these books every time, and I doubt that Pocket would even consider to re-establish a moneyloser in the curren economic climate.

“Anthologies never make enough money in publishing.” Dean explains. “Nature of the beast, but Pocket Books and Paramount wanted to fund this to get the new writers in, to keep the fans writing Trek, and it worked for ten wonderful years....

Sounds like what they call a loss leader, IIRC -- something that costs the company money, but supports/promotes other things that turn a profit. Which is appopriate, I guess, since that's the same kind of thinking that kept TOS on the air for three seasons -- the network lost money on the show, but its parent company RCA cleaned up from all the color TV sets people were buying to watch Star Trek on.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I miss it and the outlet it provided. I can't even find a good, active fan fiction website. Any suggestions?

http://archiveofourown.org/
All stories are available to download as ebooks, which is pretty damn awesome and time saving.

 

[Danger Ace]

Sounds like what they call a loss leader, IIRC -- something that costs the company money, but supports/promotes other things that turn a profit.

Exactly. I know it's old-school promotions, however, as Relayer1 pointed out, the eBook angle would, I think, reduce the cost considerably.

Which is appopriate, I guess, since that's the same kind of thinking that kept TOS on the air for three seasons -- the network lost money on the show, but its parent company RCA cleaned up from all the color TV sets people were buying to watch Star Trek on.

Well, that's kind of overstating it a bit (a lot actually).

 

[Christopher]

Exactly. I know it's old-school promotions, however, as Relayer1 pointed out, the eBook angle would, I think, reduce the cost considerably.

Actually it wouldn't reduce the cost by any significant amount at all. It's a common misconception that ebooks are cheaper to publish than physical books. The fact is that when you're printing books by the thousands or tens of thousands, the cost of printing and shipping each individual unit is mere pennies due to economies of scale. Most of the cost of publishing a book goes into things that are the same regardless of whether the book ends up in print or electronic form: the author's advance and the payment for the person-hours put in by the editor, copyeditors, proofreaders, cover designer, cover artist, typesetters, marketing and publicity people, accountants, and everyone else involved in the process.

And when you're talking about SNW, there were the added costs of running a contest -- prize money, legal fees, the labor of processing and reading and judging all the entries, etc. It was those extra costs that caused Pocket to lose so much on SNW and forced them to abandon the series while continuing to publish other anthologies. There's no reason why those costs would be affected in the least by publishing the results electronically rather than on paper.

Which is appopriate, I guess, since that's the same kind of thinking that kept TOS on the air for three seasons -- the network lost money on the show, but its parent company RCA cleaned up from all the color TV sets people were buying to watch Star Trek on.

Well, that's kind of overstating it a bit (a lot actually).

No, it's stating just what Herb Solow and Bob Justman said in Inside Star Trek. A 1966 survey showed that ST was the main reason that color-TV buyers that year cited for their purchases. Since RCA owned the patent on color TV, they made enough profit from those sales that NBC was able to justify keeping ST on the air despite losing money on it.

 

[Worf2DS9]

I was disappointed they only accepted submissions from the USA...

As you're in England, you must mean "North America," since I got 3 stories into SNW and I'm from Canada.

 

[Relayer1]

I was disappointed they only accepted submissions from the USA...

As you're in England, you must mean "North America," since I got 3 stories into SNW and I'm from Canada.

Pah - Canada, America, it's all the same...

PS - that is very definitely a joke !

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I totally love SNW. My favorite stories are "Immortality Blues", "Staying the Course" (which makes me tear up every time I read it) and "Gone Native".

 

[tomswift2002]

No, it's stating just what Herb Solow and Bob Justman said in Inside Star Trek. A 1966 survey showed that ST was the main reason that color-TV buyers that year cited for their purchases. Since RCA owned the patent on color TV, they made enough profit from those sales that NBC was able to justify keeping ST on the air despite losing money on it.

Didn't Solow and Justman say in "Inside Star Trek" (I've got the book on cassette, so I know that it's on Tape 2 somewhere, but I'm not to sure where) that on all the ratings charts, the only one that Trek seemed to hit he Top 5 in was the Color TV program section (I think they even said that it was the #1 color program on the air during its run).

 

[F. King Daniel]

I read SNW I and II, although I have several of them. The only stories I remember are the 2 DTI ones, which I sought out after reading Christopher's Watching the Clock annotations. Despite some differences in character interpretation, I saw them as fun little extra DTI adventures.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I can think of at least one character who debuted in a SNW story and then 'graduated' to an actual Treklit novel.

Spoiler: novel

T'Rama, the future mother of Sarek. She first appeared in a SNW story called "A Girl For Every Star" where she meets Jonathan Archer in childhood. Recently she showed up in one of the Romulan War novels as T'Pau's bodyguard.

Has this ever happened any other time?

 

[Christopher]

The only stories I remember are the 2 DTI ones, which I sought out after reading Christopher's Watching the Clock annotations. Despite some differences in character interpretation, I saw them as fun little extra DTI adventures.

I did count "Gods, Fate, and Fractals" as a "real" DTI adventure for the purposes of my novels -- I got the concept of the protected DTI archives from it -- but my interpretation of the DTI was incompatible with "Almost, But Not Quite," because I didn't believe the DTI would routinely engage in time travel any more than the FBI would routinely engage in racketeering.

 

[ryan123450]

Also...

• Bum Radish and Ancient History from Volume VI, Dorian's Diary from Volume III, and Full Circle from Volume VII were all referenced in SCE: The Future Begins.
• The Aliens Are Coming from Volume III was referenced in the Eugenics Wars novels.
• A Bad Day for Koloth was referenced in The Unhappy Ones from Seven Deadly Sins

 

[William Leisner]

I can think of at least one character who debuted in a SNW story and then 'graduated' to an actual Treklit novel.

Spoiler: novel

T'Rama, the future mother of Sarek. She first appeared in a SNW story called "A Girl For Every Star" where she meets Jonathan Archer in childhood. Recently she showed up in one of the Romulan War novels as T'Pau's bodyguard.

Has this ever happened any other time?

Christopher was good enough to give DTI Assistant Director Kreinns, from my SNW II story, a role in Watching the Clock.

Also, Marta Jensen, an FNS reporter from Scott Pearson's story "Terra Tonight" in SNW 9, re-appeared in Scott's Myriad Universes short novel Honor in the Night.