Fiction

In her youth, Pat was enamored with the original Star Trek series. About a decade ago, she found out that there was a writing contest where winning it would allow your work to be included in a Star Trek short story anthology, so she decided to give it a try. Within two years, she not only appeared in them, but would also have several stories in the alternate pile which was kept in case Paramount Pictures – who had the last say on what got published – nixed a story that was chosen by the editor. (Thus the single rejection letter that she saved, with the editor’s scrawl across the bottom: “Paramount didn’t like it.” It’s not often that you get a rejection letter like that . . . . )

After three anthology inclusions you could no longer participate in the contest because you were then considered a “professional.” But it was great fun, and Pat still gets a five-pound packet of royalty statements from Simon & Schuster at least once a year. All of the numbers, however, are still parenthetical.

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To him, a tribble was a life-form as worthy of existence as he was. Or as the Klingons were, for that matter. True, tribbles rated high on the potential pest scale, but they were, nonetheless, life, and to Spock, that meant that they were sacred. Sacred, and warm and fuzzy, and strangely mesmerizing.” – From “Missed” in “Strange New Worlds IV”