Dayton's Blog: A pimple on the ass of the Internet.

Jens Deffner (defcons_treklit) of Unreality SF has posted an essay and series of interviews examining the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds writing contest, sponsored by Pocket Books between 1997 and 2007. The annual contest spawned ten anthologies of short stories penned by Star Trek fans with little or no professional publishing experience, and is directly responsible for what many people laughingly refer to as my "writing career."

In addition to myself, Jens interviewed Allyn Gibson (tiggerallyn), William Leisner (bill_leisner), Terri Osborne (terri_osborne), and anthology editor Dean Wesley Smith. The result is a mighty fine retrospective of the contest, the anthologies it spawned, and its effect, if any, on Pocket Books' ongoing line(s) of Star Trek fiction.

Check it out, whydontcha: Unreality SF: Strange New Worlds: A Look Back

Thanks to Jens for a great article!

Congratulations to the winners of this year's Strange New Worlds writing contest!

The official announcement from Pocket Books can be found here.

Among the winners, it looks like the following folks are the latest additions to the Wardy List, in that they've succeeded in placing stories in three different SNW anthologies:

Jerry M. Wolfe
"The Naked Truth" - SNW I
"Out of the Box, Thinking" - SNW III
"Time Line" - SNW 10

Jim Johnson (ineti here on LJ)
"Solemn Duty" - SNW VII
"Home Soil" - SNW 09
"Signal to Noise" - SNW 10

Gerri Leen
"Obligations Discharged" - SNW VII
"Living on the Edge of Existence" - SNW 09
"The Smell of Dead Rose" - SNW 10 (GRAND PRIZE WINNER!)

David DeLee
"Promises Made" - SNW 08
"A Bad Day for Koloth" - SNW 09
"Empty" - SNW 10

Paul C. Tseng
"Don't Call Me Tiny" - SNW 08
"Staying the Course" - SNW 09
"A Dish Served Cold" - SNW 10 

And check out Jerry Wolfe, who first sold a story to SNW back in 1997 for the first volume. He repeated for SNW III in 1999, and finally gets his third sale this year. That, friends, is what we call "sticking with it," and it's great to see him get the hat trick in what sadly will be the final anthology of the series. 

Speaking of that....

Back in October when the rumors began about this being the last year for the contest, I posted my thoughts about it coming to an end. It was posted to my old Blogger account, but it seems appropriate to repost it here: 


Thanks, Pocket Books. It's been ten wonderful years.