Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (sometimes abbreviated as SNW or ST:SNW) is an annual collection of short stories set in the Star Trek universe, written by amateur writers chosen through an open submissions process. The first volume was published in 1998, with the tenth and final volume published in 2007. Each of the anthologies has been published by Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The main editor of these anthologies has been Dean Wesley Smith, though he has announced that Strange New Worlds 10 represents his last work on the project.^[1] Co-editors of the series have included John J. Ordover, Paula M. Block, and Elisa J. Kassin.

Stories in the book anthologies "can be set in any of the Star Trek time frames and may feature any one or more of the Star Trek characters," according to the submission guidelines, and each anthology has included a selection of stories for all of the live-action Star Trek series: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and (2002–2007) Star Trek: Enterprise. In more recent years, each anthology has also included a section called "Speculations," containing stories which cannot be neatly ascribed to any one of those series.

1 Submission guidelines
- 1.1 Publication details
2 Careers launched
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Submission guidelines

The rules for each anthology were first announced in the pages of the preceding anthology, and can also be found at the Simon & Schuster website.^[2]

Submissions are open only to "nonprofessional writers" (which the rules define as those who have sold no more than two short stories) who are residents of the United States (excluding Puerto Rico) and Canada (excluding Quebec) over the age of 18 at the time of their submission. The stories themselves must be original creations no more than 7500 words long and must not have been previously published elsewhere. Writers are permitted to submit more than one story, but each submission must be mailed separately, and no writer can have more than one story published per anthology.

Certain tropes that are common to fan fiction are explicitly outlined in the submission rules as cause for a story to be disqualified from consideration, including "hurt/comfort" and Mary Sue stories, though fans have occasionally claimed that some stories published in the anthologies do fall into these two categories.^{[citation needed]} Slash fiction is implicitly excluded by prohibiting stories "focusing on explicit sexual activity" or revealing "the hidden passion two characters feel for each other." Original characters are also prohibited to the extent that stories cannot be centered around "characters that are not past or present Star Trek regulars or familiar Star Trek guest characters," but again, some stories have focused on characters so minor or unknown in the Star Trek mythos that fans have stated that they might as well have been original characters.

Other prohibitions include "graphic depictions of violence or sadism" and major changes to the canon, such as "the previously unestablished death of a Star Trek character" or the existence of "a long-lost sibling." (However, the rules do not indicate how important a character has to be before such changes are disallowed, and some of the published stories have established important facts about or events in the life of relatively minor characters.)

[edit] Publication details

Each Strange New Worlds collection contains a Grand Prize, Second Prize, and Third Prize winner, along with as many as twenty honorable mentions, meaning that an anthology can contain no more than twenty-three stories in total. Every writer is paid ten cents a word for their story and is entitled to a share of royalties on the anthology, with the top three writers receiving additional bonus advances of $1000, $600, and $400, respectively.

Authors who have been published three times in Strange New Worlds are, as outlined by the rules, no longer eligible for further publication. Getting to such a point has become known as making one eligible for a "Wardy," named for Dayton Ward, the first writer to fall into this category.

[edit] Careers launched

Various writers who first had their Star Trek short stories published in Strange New Worlds collections have gone on to write other Star Trek short stories and novels for Pocket Books, including Ilsa J. Bick, Robert T. Jeschonek, Kevin Lauderdale, Kathy Oltion, Peg Robinson, Mary Scott-Wiecek, Kim Sheard, Kevin G. Summers, Louisa M. Swann, Geoffrey Thorne, Dayton Ward, and Christina F. York.