Strange New WorldsVI: Star Trek All Series [Anglais] [Broché]

Captain Kirk and his crew were honored by six selections including the Third Prize winner "Whales Weep Not." This was a well-written piece about the natural investigation of the missing Gillian Taylor following her trip to the future ending the fourth feature film. I also have to throw my two cents in for TG Theodore's story and the best title in the book, "Bum Radish: Five Spins on a Turquoise Reindeer."

Star Trek: The New Generation has four stories. The Second Prize winner is nice piece titled the "The Soft Room." It leaves you wondering how things will be resolved as you continue to read on.

Although no prizes where give in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine group of stories, the three pieces include a wonderful look at Nog's encounter with the Boothby and the Kobayashi Maru. Shawn Michael Scott shows a surprisingly tight grip on the character and presents a growing-up story like a professional.

With the return to Earth of the U.S.S. Voyager, the dominant entries in the Star Trek: Voyager group dealt with the homecomings. One of my personal favorite stories was "Widow's Walk." Not all reunions are joyful occasions and this look into the recovery of Joe Cary's widow pulls at the heart.

The latest installment of the Star Trek world-Enterprise-boasts three selections. No winners in this group but a cute little piece demonstrating Commander Tucker's early high school days was well worth the read.

The Grand Prize winner forced a new grouping to be added to the categories. The Speculations section include stories that extend beyond the shows and demonstrate excellence in writing. Both stories here are wonderful but I do not personally agree with the selection of "Our Million-Year Mission" as the Grand Prize winner. It is a great story but I found other contributions more memorable. "The Beginning," the other story in this group, shows the creation of a group we all love to hate from a very unique perspective.

These twenty-three fans have added their individual view to a world they undoubtedly love and every Star Trek fan would be amiss if they did not partake in the strange new worlds of this collection.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book is that you will find that fan written fiction will generally delve in to areas that "professional authors" won't go, or the fact that these are short stories, wouldn't be substantial enough to create a novel from and therefore not worth the effort. The most outstanding stories in this book fall in to that category.

You get quite a few stories of "Let's mix Kirk, Picard and any other character we can think of from different Trek shows", but they are done entertainingly and not nearly as geeky as it could be, if authors of lesser ability attempted it.

With any Star Trek book, you get the arguments of "that's not cannon" and of course Paramount has steadfastly stood by the claim that anything that happens in Star Trek books has nothing to do or add to official Trek lore. With that in mind some of the authors stories tackle subjects such as "solving the Kobiashi Maru scenario" or "Q with Kirk and Janeway"

All in all a good read, I would recommend it if you have read any other Star Trek books, but might not if you are new to reading Trek material.