Product Description

Back by popular demand -- again! Our third anthology featuring original Star Trek®, Star Trek: The Next Generation®, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine®, and Star Trek: Voyager® stories written by Star Trek fans, for Star Trek fans!

Each Strange New Worlds competition draws a greater response than the last. The final selections gathered here were chosen from an overwhelming number of entries by virtue of their originality and style. With wit, compassion, and an affection for all things Star Trek, these brand-new authors take us where Star Trek has never gone before.

Their tales rocket across the length and breadth of Federation time and space, from when Captain Kirk explored the galaxy on the first Starship Enterprise™, through Captain Picard's U.S.S. Enterprise™ 1701-D and Captain Sisko's Deep Space Nine™, to Captain Janeway's Starship Voyager™, with many more fascinating stops along the way.

Find out what happens in the Star Trek universe when fans -- like you -- take the helm!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #920334 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Sarah A. Hoyt ("If I Lose Thee...") occasionally takes time away from writing to keep her husband, two kids, four cats, and two guinea pigs from starving and/or suffocating beneath piles of laundry. The idea for this story grew out of research for her upcoming first novel from Ace, Down the Rushy Glen, which, happily, makes her ineligible to enter the contest next year.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One: [First Prize] If I Lose Thee...

Sarah A. Hoyt and Rebecca Lickiss

A bleak, gray, ancient plain stretched out to the horizon, scattered ruins punctuating the distance. Uhura turned away from the steady dust-laden wind to face the gauntlet of historians and officers leading up to the flickering arch of the Guardian.

"Now, don't forget," one of the historians, a tense man with a thin face, said. "The halfpenny is the silver coin you use to pay for a quart of ale, but a loaf of bread is worth a penny, and a twopenny half-groat will buy you dinner at an inn. Be careful how much you pay. You could change history by making someone rich accidentally." He fixed Uhura with an earnest, pleading gaze.

The coins' names made Uhura dizzy. Half crown, quarter angel, angelet, and the other gold coins, added to a confusion of silver coins. She nodded sagely to the anxious, thin-faced man.

"Have you got all that?"

Quite sure of already having forgotten it, Uhura nodded reassuringly and patted the hidden purse of coins near the top of her dress, where her red bodice squashed her breasts uncomfortably, so that they protruded above, much exposed and unnecessarily enhanced. "Got them right here."

If she didn't find that idiotic boy, William Harrod, and actually had to buy food or, worse, lodging, she would have to find a local and -- using age-old techniques of promising without delivering -- part him from his money, which he knew how to spend. As for her own money, she'd keep it where it belonged. Hidden.

"Now, remember not to go into a tavern or a public place, unless you find a man to accompany you, or they might think..." another of the historians said.

Uhura nodded with a confidence she didn't feel and walked by. She hoped they were right about the costume she was wearing. It had no underwear, just a sort of smock beneath the stiff gown, and the skirts were slashed, the puke-green one showing the sickly yellow one showing the bloodred one. She trusted the red hadn't been slashed to show her backside.

"Don't go into a plague house. You can't do anything for the victims without changing history."

She adjusted the red and gold turban on her head, wondering if real Moorish princesses had to tolerate this sort of coaching. If so, she was doubly thankful to be a Federation officer.

"Remember, anything you do could potentially endanger the present. Just find William Harrod and come back, quickly."

Unfortunately no one was yet sure how to come back, but they didn't dwell on that trivial detail. Just as no one was willing to explain precisely how historian William Harrod had accidentally fallen into the Guardian's time portal and become lost, either.

Uhura walked on, trying to escape the thronging mass of anxious, twittering scientists, hampered by the dress's layers of skirts, ridiculously tight waist which prohibited breathing, and flat bodice hardened by several layers of stuffing.

One of the historians kept following her, twitching at the ties that attached her slashed puke-green and sickly yellow sleeves, and rearranging their dangling, ground-dragging tassels. In a pinch she supposed she might be able to use the sleeves to strangle someone. Maybe one of the scientist-historians.

Mr. Spock melted the confusion of scientists around her merely by raising one eyebrow. She smiled at him gratefully.

"If only we could send you with a tricorder, a phaser, something..." McCoy looked at her sadly.

"A tricorder will do me no good, sir," Uhura said. "And it might cause a temporal disruption." She nodded, and did her best to look competent and calm. "I'll be fine."

"Good luck, lass," Scotty said. "Do you remember what William Harrod looks like?"

"Yes, sir." Uhura nodded. The memory of the image taken from the Guardian was burned into her brain. A blank-faced, blandly blond young man, with a weak chin and watery-blue eyes, wearing a woman's costume similar to this one, holding her hand, preparing to kiss it. The sight of herself in that ancient picture was one she'd never forget. One she feared would come back to haunt her nightmares. She'd also heard enough of William Harrod to suspect he, too, would be a nightmare.

In front of the arch, Captain Kirk waited and looked at Uhura, head to toe, with an amused gaze. "Good job of period dressing, Lieutenant," he said, and smiled. "Very becoming."

"Thank you, sir." Uhura felt her cheeks heat, but kept her expression rigidly professional. She had to admit that, having looked at herself in the mirror before leaving her quarters, this uncomfortable combination of straitjacket and ball gown was very flattering indeed. Which didn't alter her impression that she was sauntering breathless, bare-breasted, and bare-assed into Elizabethan England.

"I still think one of us should go with her," McCoy said, stubbornly holding to his earlier objections.

"The Guardian shows only her and William Harrod." Kirk's frown indicated he agreed with McCoy whatever his words might be. "And the Guardian says only she can enter without changing the shape of time." He glared accusingly at the arch next to him.

"I'll be fine." She would be, too, because she had no intention of dying in Elizabethan England, of all the rat-infested plague-holes in the universe. If she got lucky, she would find that the reason William Harrod hadn't caused any disruption was that he died right after he kissed her hand. Though she feared that strangling him for his stupidity in accidentally falling into the portal would look bad when reported in her log, she must, therefore, rule it out as an option.

Half-smiling at the thought, she saluted her captain and stepped into the portal.

Uhura stood in what she decided must be a back alley. It didn't look at all as she imagined London would. She'd been to London, once, and she'd found it a charming, if boring, place with an atrocious cuisine and very good tea.

But the London in which she found herself looked much like a village. Well, at least, from where she stood she could see three pigs, and four...no, make that five scrawny chickens, scavenging their way amid piles of refuse. Rotten vegetables, human waste, and things she truly didn't want to identify, mixed in with the mud into which her brand-new ankle boots sank.

All right, the buildings were probably too tall for a village. They towered up three or four stories, and the alley -- she hoped it was an alley, she would hate for it to be a main street -- that separated them was no wider than her arm span. Which meant that precious little light filtered through.

From somewhere nearby came a deafening roar, like thousands of people speaking, screaming, and screeching at the same time. It sounded like a disturbance of some sort, but this was where William had arrived, and Uhura reasoned that her chances of finding William were better if she went toward the noise.

"Will, Will, Will." The shriek came from above her. Looking up, Uhura saw, in the half-light above, a disheveled female head sticking out of a window.

"Will, Will. Where has that boy got to?"

"Coming, Mum," sounded from the end of the alley farthest away from the noise. From the dim distance, a small boy came running, splashing mud everywhere, and stepping on who knew what without caring. The chickens ran squawking ahead of him, as he plunged past Uhura -- barely pausing for a curious look -- and into a darkened doorway.

Well...Maybe a Will, but definitely not William Harrod.

Gingerly, she walked toward the noise, trying not to step on anything that looked too obviously rank. She grabbed her skirts on either side, but, unfortunately, as she reached down to pull them up, the golden tassels at the end of her sleeves dragged in the mud.

The historians and the computer must have gotten the idea for the tassels from some picture of an Elizabethan court lady. Uhura, mincing her way through Elizabethan muck, wished very much that she could grab one of the historians and make him try to keep each portion of this sumptuous wardrobe clean.

The alley turned in a tight, blind curve, and suddenly opened up onto a street at least five times as wide. Wide enough, Uhura judged, for a cart, or maybe for five people to walk side by side. Before she could see much of it, though, a grizzled, scarred face pushed itself in front of her.

"Alms, milady. Alms for poor one-leg Will, a veteran of the Spanish wars, by your kind mercy." The man leered at her, a dubious leer that showed a near-toothless mouth, and breathed a reek of alcohol in her direction. His right leg, below the knee, ended in the proverbial peg-leg.

She turned away from him, not sure what to do. She'd never met a beggar before. She wanted to reach between her breasts and give him the whole leather purse, but in her mind she heard the thin-faced historian telling her that she could change history by giving anyone too much money.

As she turned away, she heard the beggar behind her calling out names that she was sure were obscene -- "bawd" and "painted Jezebel" being the only ones she recognized.

Feeling a little better about not helping him, she looked at the other people on the street. There were a lot of them to look at -- hundreds in her vicinity, many more than should fit the street. And they weren't, unlike Uhura had first surmised, engaged in anything half so rational as mayhem or disturbance. Instead, all scrambled everywhere, like a disturbed ant hill, each speaking or yelling at the top of his or her voice to other people who were speaking or screaming at someone else.

She dismissed her first fear, that her clothes might be too gaudy. Men and women alike wore clothes so bright as to make the eyes hurt. And they smelled. Not of sweat or unwashed flesh, as she'd expected, not even of the stuff that every one of them must be carrying around on their soles, since this street looked as filthy as the alley. No, they stank of perfume. The odors of all sorts of spices, the smells of most trees, and every flower known to botany, clashed in the air, and each wide-skirted lady, each tight-garbed gentleman who pranced past wafted a different one to add to the mix....

Customer Reviews

Visiting "Strange New Worlds"
The Strange New Worlds anthologies just keep getting better. I enjoyed all the stories in this anthology. Usually, there are one or two I don't care for, but not this time! If I hadn't known the writers were amateurs, I'd never have guessed. Dean Wesley Smith picks a wide variety of stories covering lots of different aspects of the Star Trek universe. Time travel, adventures on the holodeck, visits from our favorite villians and friends, this book has it all! A couple of the stories even managed to sneak in a little romance for the characters. Any Star Trek fan will find something to enjoy in this book.

Another great Fan Creation
This book is on par with, if not better that the previous 2 volumes. I really thought some of the stories had a novel approach to writing Star Trek ficiton. The best example by far of this would be the story "Whatever You Do, Don't Read This Story". It's a truely novel approach. Two other truely impressive stories were "Out Of The Box, Thinking" whic deals w/ Professor Moriearty, and "The ONes Left Behind", a story about the family of a Voyager crewman's family. This is an excellent book. Don't hesitate to buy it.

Strange New Worlds III - Very intriguing tales!
I have to admit that prior to reading the first Strange New Worlds novel I was a little reticent about fan fiction. That being said, the Strange New Worlds I & II novels more than removed that reticence, they turned me into a huge fan of these fan fiction novels, leaving me very much looking forward to the third one. Strange New Worlds III is an even more impressive collection than its predecessors. I highly recommend this novel to any and all fans of Star Trek, for in each and every story lays the principles, ethics and overall atmosphere that Star Trek fans have come to love about Gene Roddenberry's universe.

Star Trek

If I Lose Thee (First Prize) by Sarah A. Hoyt & Rebecca Lickiss - It is extremely easy to see why this particularly great story involving Uhura and the Guardian of Forever won first prize and these two fine authors are now professional writers!

The Aliens Are Coming! By Dayton Ward - As with the two authors above, it is quite easy to see why Dayton Ward is now a professional author as well considering his fluid writing style and his talent for plot development. This particular story draws from the events in DS9's "Little Green Men" and TOS's "Tomorrow is Yesterday," weaving a wonderful tale as to what happened to Captain Christopher after the Enterprise left.

Family Matters by Susan Ross Moore - Another well written and thoughtful story! This extraordinarily interesting tale is about a younger Spock meeting his Aunt on Earth and helping with his cousin.

Star Trek The Next Generation

Whatever You Do, Don't Read This Story (Third Prize) by Robert T. Jeschonek - I must admit that at first, I was wondering why this story made third prize, needless to say though, the story plays out extraordinarily well and this author deserves high praise for such an inventive and original story.

A Private Victory by Tonya D. Price - This is a very well done story about Lieutenant Hawk during the events depicted in Star Trek First Contact. I look forward to this author's future endeavors.

The Fourth Toast by Kelly Cairo - Nods to this author for bringing this exceptional story to print that is one of those follow up stories that "needed" to be told. Following the events of STNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise," we're taken into Richard Castillo's world after the loss of the Enterprise NCC-1701-C. Great story!

One of Forty-seven by E. Catherine Tobler - This story is an exceptionally well done and quite poignant short story!

A Q to Swear By by Shane Zeranski - I look very much forward to any future stories written by this author as he has with this story written some exceptional Star Trek, tying in events from TNG and a certain, troubled character we saw in Star Trek Voyager.

The Change of Seasons by Logan Page - This is another fine short story that quite poignantly tells one of the small, between the scenes, tales within the frame of Star Trek Generations. Quite touching!

Out of the Box, Thinking by Jerry M. Wolfe - Nods to this author as well as he has written an intriguing and quite humorous story bringing back one of STNG's most interesting and endearing characters, Professor Moriarty.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Ninety-three Hours (Second Prize) by Kim Sheard - I'm not sure I can properly express how truly well written this story is and how much praise the author deserves for having written it. Had this author been published previously, this superb story about Ezri Tigan (Dax) would've surely made it between the covers of "The Lives of Dax" anthology!

Dorian's Diary by G. Wood - This is another well written DS9 tale detailing what Ensign Dorian Collins went through after the DS9 episode centered around the USS Valiant and the cadets who were forced to captain her. The author deftly weaves into the tale a couple of the better guest characters from TOS and TNG.

The Bottom Line by Andrew (Drew) Morby - This is another strong DS9 tale that is both highly entertaining and enlightening especially for those who might've been wondering how Cadet Nog was getting along at Starfleet Academy!

The Best Defense... by John Takis - This exceptional tale brings into light what Bashir and O'Brien were doing in the holodeck that the series didn't often have time to elaborate upon. This story was a true joy to read.

An Errant Breeze by Gordon Gross - This is an amazingly well told "short" story that quite poignantly tells the tale of Damar's family near the end of the war.

Star Trek Voyager

The Ones Left Behind by Mary Wiecek - This beautifully well written and quite poignant story told from the perspective of Lieutenant Joe Carey's wife, Anne is made even more poignant by the death of the character late in the seventh season, not long before they made it home.

The Second Star by Diana Kornfeld - This intriguing and well written story plays out quite well, telling the story of a young girl living in a pre-warp society who meets a star man named Chakotay.

The Monster Hunter by Ann Nagy - This story is quite an interesting and well told story involving Paris, Kim and little Naomi Wildman's "monster."

Gift of the Mourners by Jackie Crowell - This is a well told story bringing to light one of the more interesting aspects of Voyager's trip home through the delta quadrant and the myriad of species that they could've encountered.

If Klingons Wrote Star Trek - jubHa' by Dr. Lawrence Schoen - While not being a SNW submission, it was quite interesting to see an entire short story written in Klingon. Many thanks to Chapulina R, a fellow reviewer and highly knowledgeable klinfan, for the translation. {ssintrepid}