May 13th 2007
ORION PRESS is pleased to announce the release of ANTARES 16. This issue contains stories that focus on the original series characters. Stories written about tertiary characters from the Star Trek universe (such as Doug Roberts’ excellent stories about Captain Kelsey and the crew of the U.S.S. Chosin or Rob Morris’ top-notch story about Ben Finney, Areel Shaw and Samuel T. Cogley) will be found on our website as ON-LINE EXCLUSIVES and in separate publications. This decision was made because of the number of readers who requested that ANTARES be dedicated to the crew of the original series. Even stories from my own CHEKOV’S ENTERPRISE series will no longer be published in ANTARES. We have always listened to our readership, and we hope that this transition will meet with everyone’s approval.
Fanzine sales remain quite stable. Most readers have opted to read our material on-line, and as long as they’re willing to wait six to twelve months before the material is posted, that’s fine with us. I see the day coming that the printed fanzine simply may no longer exist. Most of our readership reads our material on-line, and with more and more material published as on-line exclusives (such as Dave Eversole’s outstanding series of articles on the "Unseen Elements" from Star Trek scripts—including scripts and outlines purchased and never shot—and his "Origins" of Star Trek), our on-line readership dwarfs our current printed readership by nearly two hundred to one! And the total number of visitors to our site has eclipsed the total number of zines we’ve sold since 1979. Clearly, on-line will continue to grow as the printed word diminishes.
It’s interesting to see the parallels between our fanzines and Pocket Books.
They’ve actually decided to get into the fanzine publishing business (despite a pronounced disdain for fanzines). Oh, I know, that’s not what they’re calling it. But they’ve printed one, and it’s called Constellations. It’s an anthology collection of a dozen original series short stories. It’s in a nice large digest format (larger than your average paperback book), and it’s filled with stories from many of their usual clique of writers. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I just find it ironic that they’ve chosen to publish an anthology after decades of refusing to do so (not counting the Strange New Worlds contest books).
I’m glad to see Constellations, though, and I hope that the anthologies continue. As we found out with the SNW contests, when folks have their stories rejected, they often turn to Orion Press to share their work with others. Some of our better short story writers (such as Cathy German) came to us after being referred by the SNW editors. Of course, it means that a few of their authors who’ve written short stories for us over the years will probably not send their stories to us for publication in the hopes that their short stories will get published professionally, but hey, that’s fine.
But following the disappointing Star Trek Corps of Engineers, Star Trek Vanguard, Star Trek Mirror Universe, Star Trek Eugenics War, Star Trek Perry Mason...ahem, Sam Cogley mystery, Star Trek Starfleet Year One, Star Trek Challenger and that ridiculous Star Trek Gateways series, I’d love to see a rebirth of classic Star Trek books. Maybe it will happen...but probably not...
What will probably happen is that Pocketbooks will move to more of an on-line presence, just as we have. I’m sure many of you are completely unaware that there is a complete Classic Trek series called Star Trek: Mere Anarchy that’s only available on-line; yep, it’s an on-line exclusive, similar to what we’re doing. Theirs is available for a charge of around $4.00 for each download, but ours will remain free as long as I have anything to do with it.
Randy