[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
STAR TREK STORY CONTEST
WINNER 1979-1980 SCHOLASTIC VOICE MAGAZINE CONTEST JUDGED BY GENE RODDENBERRY
Originally Published in Scholastic Voice Magazine April 17, 1980
The Story Behind The Story
Thomas Vinciguerra was a
High School Junior in 1979 when Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the first
Star Trek film) was hitting theaters. Today, he's a widely published
journalist with a list of articles in the New York Times and elsewhere
about Star Trek, its production, and its fandom, as well as other subjects.
In 1979, Scholastic Voice Magazine ran its third story
idea contest, with Gene Roddenberry as the judge. Tom entered -- and
won with the story posted here below.
But first a little about Tom, his career and how
this story came to be on simegen.com.
So it's not surprising that, when Tom remembered
Jacqueline's non-fiction book STAR TREK LIVES!, he thought to look her up
on Facebook.
With a message and a friending, a long conversation started which included
this list of published articles about Star Trek.
Articles for major media written by Thomas
Vinciguerra
As a kicker, here is a “Briefing” he did about the Trek phenomenon
for the newsmagazine The Week on the occasion of the 2008 reboot. It’s
anonymous, but he assures me it’s all his:
He regrets being unable to recover two minor pieces. One was in
the Times magazine in early ’97 about Paramount’s crackdown on unlicensed
prop replicas. The other was from GQ in the summer of ’01; it concerned
why the classic uniform endures.
From High
School to Nationally Published Journalist
In Tom's Own Words
As
anticipation built in the late fall of 1979 for the release of Star
Trek: The Motion Picture, my younger brother, Billy, brought to my
attention a promotional Star Trek story idea contest sponsored by
Scholastic Voice magazine and judged by none other than Gene
Roddenberry. Billy was a freshman at Garden City High School on Long
Island; I was a junior.
For a couple of years I’d been writing crude
Star Trek fanzine-type stories in longhand on loose-leaf notebook
paper in the vague hopes of getting them published professionally. My
attempts to place them with Bantam went nowhere, given their commitment
to their “New Voyages” series (I still have the rejection letter). It
didn’t help that my own efforts were wretched to boot. But for the
Scholastic Voice competition, I cannibalized the least egregious of
them. As God is my witness, I had titled it “The Final Frontier.” I
boiled it down to a little over two meticulously typed pages and, with
baited breath, submitted it.
A few weeks later, toward the end of January
1980, Scholastic told me that I’d won the contest. I believe I literally
danced around my parents' house.
Not long afterward I called Scholastic to ask how many fellow geeks had
entered. “About a thousand,” they said.
In due course I received my prizes—a $25 check, a copy of The
Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Susan Sackett and Gene
R., and a 1980 Trek calendar that I have yet to unpack from its
original box (the calendars came in boxes in those days). In early
April, an abridged version of the story appeared in Scholastic Voice.
Triumphantly, I brought an armful of copies from my high school’s
English department office to my English class. Responding to my
teacher’s request, I shared them with my compatriots and read the
abbreviated story aloud. I distinctly remember the applause.
In the 34 years since then, the story and the story behind the
story have dwindled to a minor but occasionally fond memory. I do have a
couple of poignant footnotes. Several times, I wrote to Gene at
Paramount to thank him for blessing me, and to see if he could help me
develop the story in some officially sanctioned way. But he never
acknowledged, even when I sent one of my letters via registered mail.
Then, in 1990 I attempted to further cannibalize the story into a
novel for Pocket Books. However their associate editor, Kevin J. Ryan,
told my agent that they were trying to get away from time travel stories
like the one I had concocted. In a last attempt at salvaging something
from my handiwork, I wrote my treatment up as a spec script for Next
Generation (I called it “Abyss” but should have named it “For
Tomorrow We Die”), adding new dimensions
and subplots and adapting it for the new crew. My Columbia College
near-classmate, the artful and masterful Adam Belanoff, who had recently
co-written “The Masterpiece Society” for Next Gen, put in a good
word for me. Alas, I received a form rejection letter. Apparently the
imprimatur of the Great Bird no longer carried much weight at that
point.
No matter. I’m pleased to have been a blip in
classic Trek history. And I continue to delight in plumbing the
depths of—and writing occasional articles about—my favorite series of
all time.
December 13, 1979 issue cover with the call for Star Trek story contest
entries: (click for larger size image)
The text of the call for contest entries
Tom submitted the following untitled story outline,
FIRST PRIZE ENTRY
by
Thomas Vinciguerra (1979)
On at least two occassions (the episodes "Tomorrow Is
Yesterday" and "Assignment: Earth"), the Enterprise has returned to
Earth's past by using a slingshot/warp effect brought on by pulling away,
at hyper-light speed, from the gravitational field of a nearby star. Now,
for the first time in recorded Federation history, people from the known
part of the galaxy will be venturing forward into the future, relative to
subjective time. The Supreme Council of the planet Castor IV has been
seeking membership for the population in the United Federation of Planets.
But the planet itself is in a state of near anarchy and anti-Federation
factions are strong, thus making it impossible for the planet to be
accepted as a whole. General Order No. 1 (the Prime Directive) forbids any
interference with the normal development of a culture, so the Federation
cannot take sides. The UFP intends to use, however, the afore-mentioned
slingshot phenomenon to send the Enterprise one hundred years into the
planet's future so that a team of historians can note all social and
technological progress made in the interim. The team's findings will
thereby make it possible to determine if the planet will eventually "pull
itself together" and gain Federation admission.
The starship uses
the effect successfully and establishes orbit around Castor IV, now a
century older. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, and the research team beam down
to a sparsely settled section of the planet so as not to attract attention
to themselves. Once down, however, Spock's tricorder readings indicate
radiation of a residual nature that has apparently been present for years.
In view of this and the strange lack of even lower forms of life in the
area, Kirk decides to disregard previous instructions and orders the party
to move onto the nearest largely populated area. Arriving there, they find
the remains of a destroyed metropolis. With the radiation and lack, of
life in mind, the landing party concludes that Castor IV has suffered a
nuclear holocaust.
The group splits up. Kirk and Spock come upon a
strange sapient life form, horribly disfigured by any standards. But
tricorder scans indicate that the being is a Castorian, mutated by atomic
fallout. McCoy and Scotty, meanwhile, come upon an archives that has
survived the carnage. Searching through the records, they discover just
what happened to the planet, and they call the landing party to review the
tape they find, Kirk and Spock bringing the disfigured Castorian with
them. The tape reveals that approximately eighty years ago, a demagogue
siezed total planetary power. Setting up a reign of terror, he threatened
to obliterate all life on the globe if any move was made to oust him from
office. A revolutionary group tried and failed, and the threat was carried
out. However, some people with enough foresight had built special shelters
and survived, the Castorian in their midst being, by his own admittance,
one of them. He discloses that an underground colony of Castorians
flouishes, and he also states that the tape was made by the same group so
that future visitors to the planet might learn of what transpired.
The Enterprise returns to its own time and reports its findings to a
Starfleet committee set up for this purpose and the High Council of Castor
IV. When the latter learns of the impending annihilation, it resolves that
all measures should be taken to prevent this sequence of events,
including, if necessary, the killing of the future dictator before his
rise to power. But the historians had previously considered this, and Kirk
and Spock protest on their behalf. They state that not only does the
council have no justification for execution on the basis of crimes not
yet committed, but that any attempt to alter the future might bring
unforseen circumstances even worse than those that have been seen. The
council's president is torn between the two alternatives himself, but he
insists that his planet survive. To drive his point home, he asks Kirk,
"If you could avert your World War Two by killing Hitler in his cradle,
would you?"
Kirk cannot reply. The situation is left unresolved for
time alone to determine its outcome.
And in February, 1980 the following First Prize
notification letter came in the mail
The story was printed in the April 17, 1980 Scholastic Voice Magazine
Cover:
Here are the two pages with the announcement and the winning entry
printed: