Thursday Preview: Between Worlds (Preview #3)

Click on the image at the upper left to read the pdf file in your browser, or do whatever you do with your browser (usually right-click with a two-button mouse, or control-click with a one-button mouse, and select "Download Linked File") to download.

Between Worlds is the second volume in our Thrilling Wonder Stories Origins Series of works from the formative years of science fiction. This novel by Garret Smith originally appeared as a five-part serial in The Argosy in 1919. Our edition includes five illustrations created by Virgil Finlay for an edited reprint in Fantastic Novels Magazine in 1949.

Considering it's my job to push all the saleable elements of our edition, I'm kind of embarrassed I've forgotten to mention one until now. As I've said before, this is the first book edition of Between Worlds since 1929, and the first I'm aware of in any form since 1949. What I haven't mentioned is that this is the first appearance of the complete text since its original publication in 1919.

I'll talk about the excisions from the 1929 trade paperback next time. Fantastic Novels cut the 1919 text both for space and for content. As a regular magazine, Fantastic Novels had a very specific amount of space to fill, and to make it, they excluded up to two paragraphs at a time. Near the end, they even replaced words with shorter synonyms in order to shorten paragraphs by a line.

But it's the alterations for content that are most amusing. They twice used "sweetheart" as a replacement for "lover," and once for "inamorata" (egad! fetch my smelling salts!). "Passion" became "interest" or "love" (even if the person who now felt "love" could not be a "lover").

But now, on to the preview. Last time, Hunter, son of the Chief Patriarch of Venus, and his crew (including Scribner, the narrator) discovered that their world was not, in fact, a bright hemisphere in an unending sea of darkness, but a sphere, half light and half dark, in a great firmament of tiny, bright lights. As we join our heroes, they have set the course of their flying ship toward the brightest. But as the ship leaves Venus behind, they are horrified to see their planet apparently engulfed in flames!

And this week, as they approach the halfway point in their journey to the blue-white world, our heroes, for whom everything they believed and depended upon has changed in unexpected and/or frightening ways, find reality going even more topsy-turvy....

Thursday Preview: Between Worlds (Preview #2)

I mentioned last time that Hugo Gernsback published the only previous book edition of Between Worlds in 1929. I bought a copy from an Amazon Marketplace seller as source material for my edition.

There was a name inside: Oswald Train. Partly because the name amused me, I Googled it. Turns out he was the founder of small fantasy and science fiction publisher Prime Press. I took it as another good omen that this copy has now been owned by two publishers. Granted, Train never published an edition of Between Worlds, but I take my kismet where I can get it.

Actually, I'm almost sorry I brought it up, because now I can't stop singing:

Ah-hahs-wald Train, high on cocaine.

Casey Jones, you'd better watch your speed.

It's a well-known fact, incidentally, that I'm totally insane.

When last we left him, Hunter, son of the Chief Patriarch of Venus, and his crew had entered the Land of Darkness beyond their native Land of Light. They have some smashing and exciting adventures there that you'll just have to buy the book and read about. As this week's preview begins, they've had enough, and are trying to get the hell out of Dodge. Hunter unveils a surprising capacity of his vessel, and makes discoveries about his world and its place in the cosmos that completely change the scope of his mission....

Click on the cover image at the upper left to read the pdf file in your browser, or do whatever you do with your browser (usually right-click with a two-button mouse, or control-click with a one-button mouse, and select "Download Linked File") to download.

Thursday Preview: Between Worlds (Preview #1)

The envelope please!

Thrilling Wonder Stories Origins Series #2 is...

Between Worlds, by Garret Smith!

(long pause, sound of crickets)

Okay, it's not nearly as well known as When the Sleeper Wakes, but that's pretty much the point. As we say on the back cover banner of each book in the series:

Science Fiction from before there was "Science Fiction." Whether they called it "scientific romance," "scientific fiction," "scientifiction," "fantastic mystery," or just "'different' stories," it laid the foundation for a new genre. Thrilling Wonder Stories Origins Series brings back the great authors and stories of the formative years of SF.

And brother, are we bringing Between Worlds back. As far as I've been able to tell, this is the first edition of the novel since 1929, and the first it's appeared anywhere since the edited and altered version in Fantastic Novels magazine in 1948. Anyone can bring out an edition of, say, A Princess of Mars. (Look it up on Amazon--it looks like everyone has.) But it takes guts to restore a novel to print after 81 years, by a writer no one's heard of.

Garret Smith (1876?-1954) was a prolific author of the early pulp era, writing primarily for Argosy, and working in many genres. His other works of scientific fiction include On the Brink of 2000 (1910), After a Million Years (1919), and The Treasures of Tantalus (1920-1).

I'd already decided to publish Between Worlds when I found out about the 1929 edition. Who published it? Hugo Gernsback's Stellar Publishing Corporation, as the first in their Science Fiction Classics series. You just can't mess with that kind of kismet.

And speaking of its publication in Fantastic Novels... our edition features the five full-page illustrations from that issue, drawn by Virgil Finlay. And they're gorgeous, even for Finlays. Three of them have appeared in collections of his work. The other two make their first appearance in more than sixty years in the pages of our little book. (Well, not so little as all that; it's 184 pages.)

Between Worlds was one of those "'different' stories" mentioned in the banner text. That's the phrase the Munsey magazines used for tales with an element of the fantastic. And Between Worlds originally ran as a five-part serial in Munsey's Argosy in October and November 1919.

It's also as good an example as you can find of "scientific romance." Not so much for what's usually known as romance, although it does have that. But what Between Worlds has in spades is, to quote from my Langenscheidt's, "imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usu. heroic, adventurous, or mysterious" and "an emotional attraction or aura belonging to an esp. heroic era, adventure, or activity."

Between Worlds is the story of Hunter, son of the Chief Patriarch of Venus. To Hunter, Venus is the "Land of Never Change," its culture and civilization as static as its eternally light and cloudy sky. (When the novel was written, Venus, like Mercury, was thought to keep one face always towards the Sun.) He outfits an expedition to broaden his people's frontiers. As this week's preview begins, Hunter, his friend Scribner (editor of the Central Chronicle of Venus, and the tale's narrator), and his crew set out from the Land of Light to discover new worlds. As the odyssey begins, they have no idea what kind of worlds they will ultimately find....

Click on the cover image at the upper left to read the pdf file in your browser, or do whatever you do with your browser (usually right-click with a two-button mouse, or control-click with a one-button mouse, and select "Download Linked File") to download.

Thursday Preview: In Caverns Below (Preview #3)

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Presenting the third and final preview of In Caverns Below, that subterranean Swiftian satire. Originally run as a serial in Wonder Stories in 1935, and revised for book publication in 1957, it returns to print in our new Vintage Series of novels for the first time in 35 years.

When last* we met Frank Comstock, the mining engineer who accidentally plunged into the underground land of Wu, he had decided that, when it comes to the romantic advances of Loa, the daughter of his host in Wu, discretion is the better part of amour.

This week's preview picks up the story a couple of chapters later, with Frank happening upon a celebration of Wu's latest victory in its neverending war against rival Zu (a war, you'll remember from last week's preview, that Wu keeps going for the benefit of investors in the armaments industry).

The main body of the procession was now passing—and a gallant sight it was! There were several other generals, who, like Commander-in-Chief Bing, were dressed either in crimson, or in crimson striped with black; there were hundreds of banners of green and vermilion, and several yellow-and-purple banners, said to have been captured during the strategic retreat from Nullnull. There were scores of large scoots laden with blackened uniforms taken from the enemy. There were several dozen war heroes, who had received the Dictatorial Badge of Honor, and were so covered with decorations that it was impossible to see their faces. There were innumerable placards proclaiming the vastness of the recent victories, which, it seemed, were without precedent “in the history of civilized massacre.” And there were, finally, thousands of common soldiers, who walked twenty abreast, with the peculiar high-swinging foot motion of the native infantry.

The illustration in this week's preview is by Frank R. Paul. Our edition of In Caverns Below features illustrations by two of science fiction's great artists: Paul's from the original 1935 serial, and Virgil Finlay's from the 1950 omnibus reprint in Fantastic Story Quarterly.

You can buy In Caverns Below from Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and many other online booksellers. Or order it from your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore, using its ISBN-13 code of 978-0-9796718-9-0.

Next week: A Venusian odyssey** begins as we unveil the second volume in our Thrilling Wonder Stories Origins Series.

*- Chronologically, that is. It was actually the first preview. Maybe I should have given this some advance thought.

**- We say that because "A Venerean odyssey" gets giggles.

Thursday Preview: In Caverns Below (Preview #2)

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It's time for the second preview of In Caverns Below, the Gulliver's Travels of underground adventure, and the first in our Thrilling Wonder Stories Vintage Series of novels which originally appeared the 1929-55 Wonder magazines!

We missed last week's Thursday Preview, but that's okay, because this week, we're making up for it by bringing you a pdf file of two consecutive chapters.

This week's preview actually comes just before last week's. Mining engineer Frank Comstock, having accidentally fallen into the subterranean country of Wu, was about to be put to death when a curious professor, Tan Torm, elects to take responsibility for the stranger in order to find out about the land he comes from. Tan Torm takes Frank to live in his home along with his wife Tan Tal, and their daughters Loa, Moa, and Noa. 

And in this week's preview, the learning works both ways, as Frank finds out about war, investment, and leadership in the land of Wu. It's irrational, absurd... and vaguely familiar.

"You see, my dear young man," explained the Professor, turning to me not unkindly, "we live in an age of reason. Reason and science--these are the two features of our life, and both of these tell us that man is a fighting animal. Biology assures us that he was created with the instinct of aggression, which is necessary for the sake of self-preservation. Psychology declares that all the instincts planted in him by nature must be satisfied. Accordingly, men satisfy their instinct of self-preservation by destroying one another. That fact was demonstrated long ago by the world’s leading military psychologist, the great philosopher Yil Zom."

Tan Tal once more lifted her voice. "Besides, there is another reason. If we didn’t fight, think of the loss to industry! Think of all the millions invested in Mulflar Works and land-battleship factories! Why, if we didn’t have any war, all this investment would be wasted."

"Yes, and my stocks in Mulflar Products, Amalgamated, couldn’t possibly maintain their present high of 311!" said the Professor.

Taking advantage of a gap in the conversation, I asked, “What’s the present war all about, Professor Tan Torm? What is the issue, the principle behind it?”

“Issue? Principle behind it?” snorted Tan Torm. “What makes you think there is any issue, any principle behind it? We’re fighting for the national honor—and, certainly, there is no principle behind that!”

In the next chapter of the preview, Tan Torm takes Frank to pledge his allegiance to Wu, and Frank finds patriotism a hard pill to swallow.

“Do as the man says!” shrilled the Professor’s voice in my ear. “What use is the Oath of Fidelity if you don’t swallow it—and swallow it whole?”

I reached for the pellet, and regarded it suspiciously. It was as hard and unappetizing as a chip of granite.

“What are you waiting for?” demanded the official. “Don’t you want to swallow it? Will we have to call a recruiting sergeant and force it down your throat?”

Realizing that he was in earnest, I lifted the pellet toward my lips; it had an odor of overripe cheese. And so once more I hesitated.

“Great caverns! I suppose we’ll have to force it down your throat after all!” threatened the official.

I thrust the Oath into my mouth, but not so easily could I gulp it down. The seconds that followed were among the most miserable of my existence; the Oath of Fidelity caught, and would not go up or down.

They tell me that my face went blue in the ensuing struggle, and that I sank down and almost fainted. I was aware that Tan Torm was pounding on my back; someone had snatched a tool like a pair of pliers and was forcing the ball down my throat.

At last, thanks to heroic efforts, the refractory bit of paper went down after all, the reviving air entered my lungs. A minute longer, and the Oath would have killed me.

As I gradually regained my senses, I saw the Professor passing out a bright piece of brass, and heard the ringing of the cash register.

“Congratulations, young man!” exclaimed Tan Torm heartily, as he led me away. “The Oath of Fidelity pretty nearly didn’t take—but I’m glad you swallowed it after all. Now you’re a full-fledged citizen!”

You can buy In Caverns Below from Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and many other online booksellers. Or order it from your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore. Its ISBN code is 978-0-9796718-9-0.

Thursday Preview: In Caverns Below (Preview #1)

It's here! It's here! It's finally here! It's the first in our Thrilling Wonder Stories Vintage Series of novels which originally appeared in one or another of the 1929-55 Wonder magazines!

It's In Caverns Below! Originally published as a three-part serial in Wonder Stories in 1935, our edition uses the text as edited and rewritten by author Stanton A. Coblentz for the 1957 book, also known as Hidden World. This is its first appearance in book form since 1975.

Also in this edition, and appearing in a book for the first time, are the original 1935 illustrations by Frank R. Paul, the illustrations by Virgil Finlay for the 1950 reprint in Fantastic Story Quarterly, and extracts deleted or altered from the serial text.

Yes, but what's it about, you ask? Well, it's a Gulliver's Travels-type satire of our foibles writ large on a strange, subterranean society. Or, as the back cover text says:

Mining engineer Frank Comstock and his partner Philip Clay take a job checking out the integrity of a shut-down mine in Nevada. They get their answer when the mine caves in, plunging them far underground into a network of tunnels occupied by two warring races of unknown chalk-skinned humans!

Caught in a battle, Frank loses Phil, but finds himself in a world of trouble as he's captured, taken under the protection of a curious professor, and integrated into this strange society.

Frank finds Wu a bizarre place. Diplomats invent reasons to continue a pointless war just to protect the jobs and dividends of arms producers. Prosperity is measured by the amount of excess production they need to throw away. Workers and owners regularly clash, and neither side comes out ahead. Plus, there are differences from the land he's left behind!

In this week's preview, Frank's integration into Wu's working world begins with a customer service job in the Ventilation Company. Meanwhile, he still lives in the home of the above-mentioned curious professor, Tan Torm, and his daughters, including the lovelorn Loa. She tries to attract Frank, but her people's standards of beauty aren't helping... though they do lead to a "Finlay female" illustration with a new wrinkle.

(Click on the cover illustration to read the pdf file in your browser. To download it, left-click on the illustration and select "Download Linked File" if you have a two-button mouse, or control-click with a one-button mouse.)

You can buy In Caverns Below from Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and many other booksellers.

Thursday Preview: When the Sleeper Wakes

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Yes, I know we've been giving H.G. Wells' 1899 novel of dystopian 22nd-century London away for free here at the Thrilling Wonder Stories site, but if you can't wait to see how it ends, or want an actual copy to hold in your own hands, or just have something against trees, here it is, available now at the Thrilling Wonder Store for only $7.

This is the first in our Thrilling Wonder Stories Origins Series, reprinting works from the early days of science fiction—so early, in fact, that they didn't even call it "science fiction" yet.

From the back cover:

From the author of The Time Machine comes a different kind of futuristic adventure. Near the end of the nineteenth century, Graham falls into an ageless trance. He awakens at the dawn of the twenty-second century. A Council rules the world. They began simply as trustees of a large financial estate, but their snowballing wealth and power, over the course of two centuries, rendered government by the people impotent, irrelevant, and ultimately extinct. But who owns this wealth? Graham finds, to his shock, that he does. The men who first took responsibility for him in his trance left him their fortunes, and he is now the master of the world!

But real power is only his if he can claim it. The Council controls the lives of the people, literally from cradle to grave. They keep the laboring classes trapped in an perpetual cycle of drudgery and dependence. They keep the upper classes satiated with entertainment and the Pleasure Cities. Not happy to have Graham conscious and potentially able to take this power into his own hands, the Council seeks to keep him isolated and ignorant. And a rebel group aims to capture him as a figurehead for their revolution, using the people’s veneration of the Sleeper as a savior to seize the Council’s power for their own. But when Graham, a democrat and liberal in his own time, learns the truth about the future world, he seeks to exercise his power for the people.

To truly be master of the world, Graham must first master his fate—become a leader of people, and defeat those who would sooner kill them than see them free. Timeless as its protagonist, When the Sleeper Wakes is a tale from a century ago about a century hence that enthralls today’s reader with its odyssey of prophetic vision and gripping adventure.

Thursday Preview: I Canna Change the Laws of Physics!

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You ever wanted a phaser? Sure, we all have. But if it came down to a gunfight, you'd be better off with a good old bullet-slinging pistol.

This is one of the surprising conclusions physics teacher Adam Weiner reaches in "I Canna Change the Laws of Physics!" Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, continues its Star Trek theme with this article, pitting the Franchise against its most implacable foes: the laws of physics. Yes, they may have given Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein guest spots on The Next Generation, but they just can't be bought.

Sir Isaac could tell you that, given artificial gravity that always points toward the floor, a photon torpedo hit should not fling you out of your seat. And Einstein would question the notion of bringing the Enterprise to a "full stop" in empty space, in the absence of an absolute frame of reference.

Adam Weiner also wrote the book Don't Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies, and articles for Popular Science about Hollywood physics. But don't get the idea that Adam Weiner turns his nose up at Star Trek. He loves the Franchise—especially the original series—and confronts it, he says, "in the spirit of a good natured ribbing."

Illustrator Winston Engle is his own artist of last resort. He can turn out a tolerable image, provided he has lots and lots of photographic reference.

Thursday Preview: Columbus of the Stars

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Since I wrote the introduction to this in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, I suppose the sensible thing is just to give myself permission to post it here. Me, you may proceed.

Thank you, me.

***

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

In 1964, a successful writer begins shopping around Hollywod a pitch for a science fiction series of a new kind.

Unlike previous such series, which have tended to be either anthologies, or else cheap daytime fare for children, this is a series for prime time with continuing characters, aimed at an adult audience.

It’s the story of a starship and her crew. Their assignment is to survey for undiscovered planets, to contact alien beings and cultures, to probe into reaches never visited by mankind.

I’m sure you’re ahead of me. The writer is, of course, Ib Melchior, and the series is Columbus of the Stars.

No? Well, that other series pitch did have the advantage of selling. Although its synchronicitous sibling never left the launch pad, it’s interesting to consider that sometimes, an idea may only seem unique in retrospect because it succeeded, while other iterations of the notion did not.
If things had gone a little differently, might this be an issue on Columbus of the Stars, with an article about a forgotten and somewhat similar pitch with the unlikely name Star Trek?

At the time, the safer bet might have been Columbus of the Stars. Ib Melchior had worked in television since 1948, and wrote for the series Men into Space. He was a published science fiction author. He had moved to the big screen, writing and directing The Angry Red Planet. In 1964, he had two films in the pipeline: Robinson Crusoe on Mars, which he wrote, and The Time Travelers, again as writer-director. (Crusoe’s Friday, Vic Lundin, developed Columbus of the Stars with Melchior.)

Gene Roddenberry had impressive television credits, with scores of produced scripts and a Writers Guild award, but his only science fiction was an anthology episode, “The Secret Weapon of 117,” in which a covert alien invasion falls to that little human thing called love. He had recently become a showrunner with The Lieutenant, but did better provoking conflict with the Marine Corps, which withdrew its production support in mid-season, than in drumming up ratings. The network had not picked the show up for a second season.

Imagine yourself a network executive in 1964, and this crosses your desk. Might you have given it a shot?

***

Me, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, me, that was beautiful.

No, really, me, my modesty! I couldn't have done it without you.

But there's more to "Columbus of the Stars: A Trek Not Taken?" than the introduction and the never-before-published series pitch bible. There's also the story of how it came to the desk of that other guy with that other pitch about a starship crew. Did he go where two men had gone before?

Whoops, look at the time! Guess you'll just have to buy Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, and read all about it.

That was a dirty trick, me.

Hey, me, lay off, I gotta make a living, here.

Thursday Preview: F - - -

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This week, we come to the end of the Thursday Previews for stories in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2. There are still three items to come, but this is the last of the volume's main features: seven new and six classic stories by writers involved with the television incarnations of Star Trek.

Richard Matheson wrote the early episode "The Enemy Within." If it were an episode of Friends, it would be called "The One with the Evil Kirk."

He wrote far more for the original Twilight Zone. After Rod Serling adapted two of his stories, Matheson went on to write fourteen scripts of his own, making him the series' third most prolific writer, after Serling and Charles Beaumont. However, he arguably had a greater proportion of classic episodes than the other two. All three of the episodes remade in Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983 had scripts by Matheson.

Movies based on stories by Matheson include The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Legend of Hell House, Somewhere in Time, What Dreams May Come, Stir of Echoes, and three adaptations of I Am Legend—the same-named recent feature starring Will Smith, The Last Man on Earth, and The Omega Man.

Matheson also wrote two of the most memorable TV movies of the 1970's: Duel, based on his own story and directed by Steven Spielberg; and Trilogy of Terror, based on three of his stories, one featuring the unforgettable living, bloodthirsty Zuni warrior doll.

Today's story originally appeared in the April 1952 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories under a different title. Maybe the editor didn't think he could get away with "F - - -," even though it turns out to stand for a different four-letter word entirely. The title he did use, though, does rather give away a surprise that Matheson carefully keeps for a third of the story.

"F - - -" is a light-hearted time travel story that, twelve years before the Supreme Court adopted "I know it when I see it" as the standard for pornography, demonstrates that obscenity is indeed in the eye—and other sensory apparatus—of the beholder.

The new accompanying artwork is by Kevin Farrell, whose work we've seen here before. Here, he gives us a futuristic crowd scene, which must absorb a lot of time in designing the costumes.

Thursday Preview: Where No Scribe Had Gone Before

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As you know, and I keep reminding Google's spiders, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, is a special Star Trek volume. All seven new, and all six classic, stories are by writers from the various TV series. Plus, it features more than 40 pages of articles about various aspects of the Star Trek phenomenon.

(It's also available for pre-order for the low, low price of $10, and ships March 12! Click on the banner to go to the Thrilling Wonder Store and reserve a copy!! Hurry, before I have to drag out more exclamation points!!!)

The subject of this week's Thursday Preview is where everything comes together. It's one of the aforementioned articles, it's about the literary writers of Star Trek on the big and small screens, and it's written by one of those very writers.

Marc Scott Zicree originated and co-wrote the Magic Time trilogy of novels. He also had story credit on the Next Generation episode "First Contact" and the much-loved Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond the Stars." Tying TWS2 into even more of a nice thematic bow, he directed and co-wrote the Hugo and Nebula-nominated "World Enough and Time," the episode of Internet production Star Trek New Voyages about which we have a 21-page feature article.

Zicree also practically invented the genre of in-depth, episode-by-episode examinations of the writing and production of television series with The Twilight Zone Companion. And he had the persistence to do it even after twenty-some publishers had told him no one could possibly be interested about a guide to some twenty-year-old science fiction show. To cut a long story short, it found a publisher, and has been continuously in print ever since, more than 25 years now.

The Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek are probably the two most literate science fiction series in television history. They employed numerous published writers, some practically institutions in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Although this hasn't been as true of the subsequent Star Trek series, all of them, from the animated series to Enterprise, had novelists amongst their writers, as did the movies.

So if you just know, say, Theodore Sturgeon as the guy who wrote "Shore Leave" and "Amok Time," here's your chance to learn more about him and many other writers from Star Trek. And even if you're familiar with their work both in print and on the screen, you'll probably find some surprises.

Thursday Preview: A Gift Though Small

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'Twas twenty years ago next Wednesday. I'd been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation since it premiered, more than fifteen months before. Like, I think, many Star Trek fans, I was so glad to have new episodes on television, I wouldn't miss an episode, even though many of them weren't particularly... well, good.

But that evening in February 1989, I almost held by breath through the episode, because it went from strength to strength. Could it keep this up, or would it stumble short of the finish line (as I've always felt my previous TNG favorite, "Conspiracy," did)? It could! TNG had finally had an episode that earned a place in my personal Trek Top ten. "Now we're getting somewhere!" I said.

Unfortunately, the rest of Season Two turned out to be pretty hit-or-miss, but "The Measure of a Man," written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, became the episode I'd weigh Next Generation's drama against for the rest of the run.

(All of this isn't to diss the other writers who worked on the show at that time—such as Diane Duane and Michael Reaves. I've been told the creative process, especially during the first season, could be chaotic and unrewarding, with notes and rewrites from on high sometimes bordering on the inexplicable.)

So what I'm saying is, I'm pleased as punch to have a story by Melinda Snodgrass in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2. Like her classic Next Gen script, "A Gift Though Small" uses science fiction not to tell a slam-bang, broad-canvas sort of story, but to provide a setting for a story of dramatic and emotional depth.

An interesting thing to me is the different ways in which the settings bring focus to the two tales. "The Measure of a Man" tackled some of the Big Questions science fiction is so good for: what is sentience? What does it mean to be human? The basic themes in "A Gift Though Small"—of trying to maintain dignity and hope for advancement in a patently unfair society, of a parent's delicate balance between guiding and letting go—certainly don't need a science fiction backdrop. But in this case, I think setting the story in the far future—removing it from the identifiably "real" world—helps isolate and strengthen the very recognizable, universal human issues it's really about.

Yikes, this is sounding like a college Lit essay. "A Gift Though Small" is groovy, and you'll love it. Okay?

The illustration is by Don Anderson, whose work we recently saw gracing Diane Duane's "Palladium." I love that it looks like it could have come out of an issue of Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952, without seeming at all an exercise in retro. Like "Gift" itself, it achieves a certain timelessness in its use of SF motifs. Which is one of the things I revived Thrilling Wonder Stories for in the first place.

Thursday Preview: The Contents!

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I know that showing you the table of contents may look like we're scraping bottom as far as Thursday Previews are concerned. But no, we've got a few more items yet.

It's just that I'm so insanely happyhappyhappy to have Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 finished and at the printers that I want to share with you exactly what the 252 packed pages that make this book/magazine up consist of. (All the English teachers I ever had probably felt a tremor in the Force from that last sentence. But as it turns out Winston Churchill did not actually say, not ending sentences with prepositions is an absurd rule, up with which I shall not put.)

Thursday Preview: Palladium

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Okay, I know it's unlikely we'll find many—if any—planets where we can open the door of our spaceship and breathe the air.  And the chances are practically zero that we'll find such planets with intelligent life within a few thousand years of our technological level, who think and live pretty much the way that we do.

You can explain it away if you like—that it's not normal Earth air, it's just converted with nanowhatsits and technoblaaah—but it doesn't matter that much to me. Sometimes, I just love me some old-fashioned space adventure with strange—but not too strange—people in different—but not too different—lands.

And here we have a member of that particular species, Diane Duane's novelet "Palladium." Our heroes are a two-man... uh, two-person... uh, two-intelligent-life-form team from an interstellar confederation including Earth.  Their mission is to make contact with a pre-industrial world torn by the continual war of two major powers.  They find a way to, well, gently help the development process along.

As you may have read here a few dozen times by now, all thirteen of the tales in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, are by writers associated with televised Star Trek in its various incarnations. "Palladium" author Diane Duane co-wrote the early Next Generation episode "Where No One Has Gone Before" (so early, if I remember correctly, that its working title, "Where None Have Gone Before," was from an early draft of the opening narration).

However, she's better known in the Star Trek franchise as a novelist, having written nine so far and co-written another. (In fact, "Where No One Has Gone Before" used elements of her novel The Wounded Sky.) Her 1984 book My Enemy, My Ally and its sequels revolutionized our view of the Romulans... or as she taught us to think of them, Rihannsu. She also wrote for the first volume of DC's Star Trek comics series, and for DC's Next Generation comic.

Outside the Franchise, she's written novels based on Spider-Man, the X-Men, and SeaQuest DSV, and a story for a Doctor Who anthology. She has a novel franchise of her own with the Young Wizards series, and its spinoffs Adult Wizards, Feline Wizards, and Alternate Universes. And she's written for many, many animated series.

So we're as pleased that she found the time to write this story for us, as you will be to read it.

Don Anderson, who illustrated Isaac Asimov's "The Portable Star" for Volume 1, created the exciting full-page illustration. Really full-page; he asked we push it all the way to the edges of the page, and who are we to argue with printing something this good as big as possible?  In fact, if you saw last week's Thursday Preview, we felt it was so nice, we used it twice—here, and on the back cover.

Thursday Preview: The Cover!

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Monday night, I uploaded the files for Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 to the printers. So with luck, I should have a proof soon, and be ready to put the thing up for sale in a few weeks. But since I never have luck, your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, to celebrate reaching the next stage at which things will inexplicably and irreparably go wrong, we present as this week's Thursday Preview... the cover!

The front cover painting is by the Chesley and Hugo Award-winning artist Bob Eggleton. When I looked at images on his website, this one absolutely screamed "Thrilling Wonder" to me.

It also brought to mind a gag from Mystery Science Theater 3000. The movie of the week was the 1961 film The Phantom Planet, and the protagonist thereof, the pilot of a U.S. rocket operating from a base on the Moon, reads the date into his log: March 16, 1980. "Oh," says Crow, "our old future."

So here we have it, an image from "our old future," showing a Moon rocket as it ought to have been.

The drawing on the back cover is by Don Anderson, who illustrated Isaac Asimov's "The Portable Star" in Volume 1. As he'll be surprised to find out if he reads this, he has two illustrations in the new issue. (On account of some late-stage contents shuffling, the story accompanying his third illustration won't appear until Volume 3—coming, I hope, later this year.) This one is for Diane Duane's novelet of space adventure, "Palladium."

As you can see from the back cover blurb, there are enough stories and articles yet to take Thursday Preview through the actual publication of the volume. Knock on laminated particleboard.

Thursday Preview: Arena

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Okay, I've mentioned it often enough; it's about time I posted a preview of Fredric Brown's "Arena."

As you may know by now, and certainly will after you read this, all the fiction in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, old and new, is from writers who plied their trade both in print and in the televised incarnations of Star Trek.

Well, pretty much. Fredric Brown never wrote a script for Star Trek, but he sort of became a Trek writer at one remove. This story, originally published in 1944, was the only one to be adapted into an episode. And that happened inadvertently. It was only after routine clearance by Desilu's research department that scriptwriter/producer Gene L. Coon realized he'd unconsciously used the plot of Brown's story. Star Trek quickly purchased the appropriate rights... making sure not to tell Brown that the script had already been written.

Fredric Brown (1906-72) was not a prolific science fiction writer. NESFA reprinted all of his short fiction in one volume in 2001 and his three novels in another volume in 2002. However, he is widely considered a master of the short story (2,000 to 7,500 words), and especially the short-short. His short story "Knock" begins with a two-sentence short-short of its own.

Fortunately for his income, he didn't need to live on his science fiction output, producing many mystery novels. Mickey Spillane called Brown "my favorite writer of all time." Still, Brown claimed he wrote mysteries for the money, but science fiction for fun.

The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Arena" one of the twenty best science fiction stories written before 1965. The story appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 with a dramatic illustration by Kevin Farrell, showing a couple of ways in which Brown's original differs from the Star Trek episode it inspired. For one, we luckily did not have to see Captain Kirk fight in the nude.

Why did I wait this long to post a Thursday Preview of "Arena"? I really don't know, but it gives me another chance to reach for holiday relevance. On New Year's Eve, we watch the ball drop. In "Arena," we read about someone trying to keep a ball from getting the drop on him. (Suddenly I feel like the Yakov Smirnoff of science fiction.)

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(Star_Trek)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredric_Brown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Smirnoff (to learn how to spell "Yakov Smirnoff")

Thursday Preview: Moon over Luna

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Four weeks ago, I lamented that I didn't have a Thanksgiving-themed Thursday Preview.

As it happens, Christmas is also on a Thursday this year, and I do have a story that... well, mentions Christmas. Three times, though. It's also the only one of our new stories to mention Star Trek, and on the same page, yet!

So pleased am I at the page's appositeness that I present it, rather than the story's first page, as this week's Thursday Preview. Fortunately, the illustration by artist/chip off the old block Mishi McCaig is a full page, so it took but a moment in Photoshop to put it together. The story page in question is even a right-hand page, while the illustration is a left-hand, so they make a spread together. It's kismet, I tell you! Kismet!

In "Moon over Luna," Earth suddenly gains an extra natural satellite, a blank, mysterious body soon dubbed Aurora. But the story is far more about people than about this celestial newcomer. How do they react to Aurora's unexpected arrival? As you might imagine, in many different ways. And David R. George III deftly shows us several of them.

Among other forays into the Star Trek universe in print, David R. George III has written the Crucible trilogy, expanding on the events of the classic original series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" with a novel each on their effects on McCoy, Spock, and Kirk. He also had co-story credit on the first season Star Trek: Voyager episode "Prime Factors," making him the most recent contributor to televised Star Trek to appear in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2.

(Please feel free to download, share, make a highly economical Christmas present of, and/or post the jpg file in its original and unaltered form, including all credits and copyrights.)

Thursday Preview: Dark Energies

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As you know, and I try to tell Google frequently, all the fiction, old and new, in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 is by writers associated with the various televised incarnations of Star Trek.

Eventually, we're going to get around to a preview of Fredric Brown's "Arena." It has the distinction of being the only existing story adapted into an episode of the original series... although, as I've mentioned, producer Gene Coon wasn't consciously aware he'd adapted a story until after he wrote the script.

But it's not the only story adapted for Star Trek. Larry Niven adapted his own 1967 novella "The Soft Weapon" into the animated episode "The Slaver Weapon."

But that's not this week's preview, either. In fact, it's not in TWS2 at all. Why not? Well, hell, man, if you had a choice between reprinting a Larry Niven story and printing an entirely new one, which would you choose?

To be honest, it's a short-short. Still, it's not short enough to be a two-page "Wonder Storiette" like Ben Bova's "Jovian Dreams" from Volume 1. As a result, it has its own illustration, the second in TWS2 by longtime Trek TV and film scenic art supervisor Michael Okuda.

Larry Niven has been one of the giants of science fiction since the 1960's, winning his first Hugo in 1967. He won both the Hugo and Nebula three years later for his novel Ringworld. And among his other Hugos is one for the novelette "The Borderland of Sol," adapted from his original pitch to the animated Star Trek.

For television, he also wrote three episodes of the original Land of the Lost, and adapted his story "Inconstant Moon" (another of his Hugo-winners) for the revival of The Outer Limits. In the Star Trek universe, he also wrote for the syndicated comic strip.

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Thursday Preview: No Studio, No Network, No Problem

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So far, all of our previews from Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 have been for fiction. But TWS2 also has over forty pages of non-fiction features.

The main article this time around is an in-depth look at the making of "World Enough and Time," an episode of the Internet series Star Trek New Voyages (since renamed Star Trek: Phase II).

And these aren't three-minute "webisodes," mind you. "World Enough and Time" (known to the cognoscenti as WEAT—pronounced "wheat") runs over an hour, and features three actors from the original series reprising their roles: George Takei (Sulu), Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand), and Majel Barrett Roddenberry (the computer voice in all of the Star Trek series and, so Wikipedia tells me, the upcoming movie).

But what really amazes me about New Voyages/Phase II is that although it's a series run by fans on a relative shoestring, it looks as good as many modern television shows made by professionals. Or maybe I should say "entirely by professionals," because although it's primarily a fan—ahem—enterprise, many professionals have taken part. Not just the ones on screen that I've mentioned, but writers, special effects artists, graphic artists, and others who have worked on official Star Trek productions, taking part out of love for the franchise, and for the original series in particular.

With modern home computers, affordable broadcast-quality digital video, and the Internet, it doesn't take a studio or a network to make some truly stunning productions. Mostly, it takes skill and dedication. And if you're making Star Trek, it certainly helps when CBS-Paramount understands (as Lucasfilm does with Star Wars fan films), that emulation is not only the truly most sincere kind of flattery, it's also free publicity.

I have to admit, I'm not a disinterested observer. I became involved with WEAT through my friends, director/co-writer Marc Scott Zicree and co-writer Michael Reaves. I shot DV footage of the auditions and other elements of the pre-production. I drove my Macintosh G5 from Los Angeles to upstate New York in my self-titled capacity of Digital Media Wrangler, downloading the high-def footage from P2 flash memory cards, cataloging it, backing it up, and making daily DVDs of the rushes. Near the end of filming, I became associate producer, and during post-production, co-producer.

The author of the article, Crystal Ann Taylor, also came to the project through association with Marc Zicree. As script co-ordinator, documentarian, and (as many of us on the production had to be) person-of-many-trades, she had a front row seat at the eye of the storm (to mix a metaphor). I, by contrast, spent most of my time in New York at my computer, tucked into a niche between sick bay and the bridge.

Through interviews with many of the people involved both behind the scenes and on the screen (including George Takei), Crystal tells the whole story of this production fueled by can-do spirit, including the few instances when it couldn't-didn't. You'll think you're with us on meticulously-recreated sets, swatting flies and getting increasingly giddy from lack of sleep, and yet having one of the major experiences of your life.

(As usual, feel free to download and share the preview, or post it on your blog or website, as long as you leave the file as it is, including all credits and copyrights. A link back here would be nice, too.)

Thursday Preview: The Seventh Order

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Apart from one more recent reprint, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1 featured only reprints from the original magazine and its predecessors. We're casting the net wider this time. In addition to two stories from Thrilling Wonder (one of them previewed here), Volume 2 draws from Astounding, If, and Galaxy (this one), plus one first published in a single-author collection.

Partly, we've done this in order to have all our stories, old and new, from writers of Star Trek. For instance, Jerry Sohl, the author of today's previewed story, wrote numerous stories and novels, but nothing for Thrilling Wonder. In the case of Fredric Brown—who did write for Thrilling Wonder —we wanted to reprint "Arena," which originally appeared in Astounding, because it was the only existing story to be adapted (however unconsciously) into an episode of the original series.

Jerry Sohl (1913-2002) was equally adept at writing for television and print. He ghost-wrote three episodes of the original Twilight Zone, co-plotting with the ailing Charles Beaumont and writing the scripts. He used his own name on the original Outer Limits and The Invaders, as well as series outside the genre, such as Route 66 and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

He seems not to have had a particularly good experience with Star Trek. Although he had a solo writing credit on "The Corbomite Maneuver," the first episode of the series' first production season, he had only co-story on "This Side of Paradise" and "Whom Gods Destroy," his original stories heavily reworked and scripted by other writers.

"The Seventh Order" was Sohl's first published story. Collections of his short stories and Twilight Zone scripts are currently in print.

Ed Emshwiller (about whom more here) drew three illustrations for "The Seventh Order," all of which appear in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2.

As usual, feel free to download the jpg file and/or use it on your blog or website as long as you leave it intact, including all credits and copyrights.