|
|
The following is an answer to this email inquiry about my first
sold story OPERATION HIGH TIME in WORLDS OF IF MAGAZINE, and the connection between
WORLDS OF IF Magazine and STAR TREK.
To: <jl@simegen.com>
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 9:06 AM
Subject: Early Days
Dear Jacqueline,
Mike:
Yes, I remember you! I'm so pleased you were able to find
me, and I'd love to know what trail of breadcrumbs led you to www.simegen.com .
As you can see from our domain, especially the Sime~Gen section, (www.simegen.com/sgfandom/ )
, OPERATION HIGH TIME started something that's burgeoned beyond expectations.
And yes, there are a number of major, critical cross-linkages from S~G
into and out of STAR TREK, Gene Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy and ST
fandom.
How did I come to submit a FIRST STORY SALE to "IF" ???
I'd been reading IF since grammar school. I read used
copies of
AMAZING, ASTOUNDING, ANALOG, GALAXY and F&SF etc. all the
way back to the 1930's editions (PLANETS OF WONDER) from used book
stores and still have some of them!
I read and reread every word, cover to cover. I always turned
first to the editorials, read all the stories, then read the editorials
again, and came to understand the stories on a new level because of the
discussion in the editorials.
I knew Fred Pohl only from years and years of his editorials and his
own novels -- and John Campbell's counter-editorials to Pohl's
Pohl-emmics. (later, getting to know Fred personally, I
discovered he really is that smart).
When I was a new mother, I chose to launch a writing career while
waiting for the kids to go to school -- rather than going back to lab
work in chemistry full time and abandoning my kids to day-care. (I
actually did try day-care for a while, and it was very bad for the
kids).
I took the FAMOUS WRITERS COURSE -- a correspondence course in
writing that later fell into ill repute for their marketing practices
(which were actually very, very bad). They promised the wannabees
that they'd sell a story by the 4th lesson. Hundreds and hundreds
signed up for that over-priced course, and only a very sparse handful of
us ever sold anything -- only a couple by the 4th lesson. I was
one of those few who sold by the 4th lesson.
OPERATION HIGH TIME was my own version of the HOMEWORK for LESSON 4
-- I rewrote all the lessons and instructions to suit the sf field which
I knew better than any of the instructors did. SF violated most of
the principles they were teaching, but I knew what I was doing, and so I
learned.
I applied the principles of the first 4 lessons to my own personal
problem of selling an sf story to Fred Pohl.
The most basic principle was "study your market." Of
all the editors and magazines in the sf field, I knew Fred Pohl's
preferences best. I carved a tiny piece out of the gigantic
"Universe" I had been inventing and working on for 10 years or
more, wrote a story that was "Tailored" (see STAR TREK LIVES!
for THE TAILORED EFFECT -- that's what I'm referring to here, the
principle of the TAILORED EFFECT) specifically for Fred Pohl, and he
bought the story.
That's right, my first sale was bought on its first submission by
applying the principles taught in the FAMOUS WRITERS SCHOOL. And
that story sold for $90 and then went on to found a
ground-breaking, unique 8 novel, two short story, sf series that has
spawned a fandom and a phenomenon shaped pretty much the way that STAR
TREK itself developed.
In 2011 and 2012, the body of professionally published Sime~Gen
grew to 12 volumes, while the fan stories continue to be written.
See
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com ,
http://www.out-territory.blogspot.com/
The first novel in the series, HOUSE OF ZEOR was in print
continuously in various editions and languages for 20 years while the
series developed. HoZ was also used in STL! as an example of the
Tailored Effect. I sold the expensive HoZ hardcover to 65
Spock fans on a money back guarantee and never had one returned. HoZ
delivers the Spock Effect as described in Star Trek Lives!
OPERATION HIGH TIME delivers the Fred Pohl Effect.
HOUSE OF ZEOR sold to Doubleday while I was in Louisiana visiting my
co-author on STAR TREK LIVES!, Sondra Marshak, and we were transcribing
and working on the interviews with Leonard Nimoy and Gene Roddenberry
that appeared in the book. (At that point we hadn't sold STAR TREK
LIVES!)
A short time later, FRED POHL bought STAR TREK LIVES! for Bantam (he
had become the SF editor for Bantam after leaving Galaxy). Joan
Winston, my other co-author on STL! had encountered him at WorldCon in
Toronto and mentioned that we still hadn't sold that book which he had
already rejected. A couple months later James Blish fell ill and
couldn't deliver a ST novel which was already scheduled into production,
and Fred called us up and asked if STL! was still available and ready
for production. It was though with a bid from another publishing
company currently active -- Fred out-bid them.
We then had the problem of what to name the book. We had marketed it without a title. Fred asked us to submit a list of names. One of the names on our list was derived from a bumper sticker sold at one of the more commercial Star Trek Conventions -- Star Trek Lives! which had become a fannish slogan. Fred chose that one.
Meanwhile, the other ingredient in the success of the Sime~Gen
Universe novels was my writing of the Kraith Series of Star Trek
fanzine stories. Note: when we went online we changed the colophon from
Sime/Gen to Sime~Gen because we're not "slash."
In the 1970's, "Kraith" took the ESP ingredient of Marion
Zimmer Bradley's DARKOVER NOVELS and added that to STAR TREK to tell a
STAR TREK new kind of story. In addition, Kraith used not the
'anthology' structure of aired-Trek but rather the format that Babylon 5
made famous in the 1990's as the "story arc."
Kraith gathered more than 50 creative people -- writers, poets,
artists -- together to create this alternate universe ST tale.
Kraith became so popular that several groups of ST writers here and in
England spun off ALTERNATE KRAITH universes. In the 1980's,
there was an article in the NEW YORK TIMES featuring Kraith and Jean
Lorrah's "NTM" ST fanzine stories.
Jean Lorrah had become (in 1980) my co-author on Sime~Gen, with
her novel FIRST CHANNEL. Jean and I first encountered each other
because we were contributors to Devra Langsam's famous (first) Star Trek fanzine,
SPOCKANALIA. And after much work on Sime~Gen, Jean went on to
write a number of professional STAR TREK novels, along with her own
universe SAVAGE EMPIRE, to which Winston Howlett, another ST fanzine
writer and editor, contributed a professional novel (Wolfston's
Odyssey). (Winston now has a website on simegen.com). Joan
Winston and Winston Howlett both worked for ABC-TV, in different
departments.
For me the real significance of Kraith was as a laboratory to develop
and test my theory of what it was that made STAR TREK spawn a whole
world full of fanzines, conventions, artwork, and an ever growing fandom
that wouldn't let the show die.
My theory was THE TAILORED EFFECT. I developed and field tested
the theory in Kraith -- it worked, as noted above. Kraith, as a
fictional product, behaved just the way Trek did. It attracted
creative writers who contributed their own ideas, spawned controversy
and alternate universes, and an ever growing body of work.
I took the principles developed in Kraith and applied them to
Sime~Gen, and again it has worked and is still working.
Yes, the scale of Kraith and S~G is sub-microscopic
compared to ST -- and the full proof is not yet in because ST
has recently done some things that S~G has not yet accomplished.
But I can see the seeds of those accomplishments starting to quicken.
Sime~Gen went for 8 novels in its "first incarnation"
(Classic S~G if you will). That period ended with Jean
Lorrah's own DAW book, AMBROV KEON in 1986 -- as Trek barely limped to
the finish line of 3 seasons.
The fans of Sime~Gen would not let it die. They've produced and
published more words of professional quality fiction in the Sime~Gen
fanzines than were published professionally and for decades there has
been an annual Sime~Gen gathering, hidden inside the annual Darkover
Grand Council Meeting. Trek was also kept alive in the fanzines
and conventions.
About ten years after AMBROV KEON was published by Daw books, the
fans of Sime~Gen who had become scattered onto the internet began to
gather again via a LISTSERV.
The cost of paper and the shrinking interest in fiction printed on
paper made fanzine production impractical, and in the mid-90's the
fanzine editors declared the 25 years of Sime~Gen fandom at an end.
Within a couple of weeks of the mailing that announced the end of the
fanzines, there was a concerted response among online fans -- again,
sub-microscopic compared to the response to the cancellation of ST, but
of the same emotional texture.
Over the next 3 or 4 years, one little step at a time, a
thousand-man-hours at a time, S~G fen have rebuilt the universe again
online, with many stories and novels posted for reading, IRC rpg's,
listserv, and much more including a functioning online version of
one of the 5 fanzines devoted to Sime~Gen on paper. One of the
Sime~Gen fanzines, THE TECTON STAR (an APA'ZINE) is still publishing on
paper and is posted online as well. And the fans are still
pouring out fiction -- with one difference.
Though the fans who wrote for the paper publications insisted on
writing "main line" (to canon) Sime~Gen, online fans are
finally branching out into "alternate universe Sime~Gen" and
having a ball at it.
Thus the final test of THE TAILORED EFFECT has been met.
Sime~Gen has, just like Trek and Kraith, spawned alternate universes
with their own vitality in a medium vastly different from that in which
the "main line" was originally presented. Note: ST was a
tv show, and spawned alternate universes in paper-printed fanzines.
Sime~Gen was a series of novels printed on paper, and the fans refused
to write Alternate Universe on paper, but now do alternate-universes
in cyberspace, published on websites. So the final test
has been passed.
Well, no, not the final-final test. ST went on to reincarnate
with new series, new characters, in new eras, and was still successful.
In fact, there's likely to be yet another new Trek which I expect I will
love.
At this time, S~G has not accomplished that. But there are
several projects being worked on that would qualify as something
similar. Perhaps we are in the era that Trek went through with the
Animated ST Series.
2011 saw publication of a Futuristic
Romance in Sime~Gen:
To Kiss Or To Kill. We have a Sime~Gen movie script that is on the
market and doing very well but not sold yet. HOUSE OF ZEOR is
available in a new edition from Wildside Press Borgo Imprint in
e-book, paper and audiobook and making new fans.
You asked about the connection between STAR TREK and OPERATION HIGH
TIME and IF and ST -- I've sketched some of that from my own
perspective, but there's more than that to the story of Sime~Gen -- and
each person who tells that story will tell it completely differently.
You can see the article THE TREK CONNECTION on my sf/f review column
website at
That will lead you to the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS in my current book on
TAROT. And for more on the Trek/S~G connections you should look at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/welcommittee/
-- particularly the item on Theodore Sturgeon, author of the episode
"Amok Time", whom I first met in person
at a Trek convention.
Note that Kraith is an amalgam of aired-Trek and Darkover.
Darkover is an amalgam of sf and ESP-fantasy, as is Sime~Gen.
Marion Zimmer Bradley introduced me to Astrology and Tarot as a way of
learning to plot. Theodore Sturgeon's wife read Tarot for me once
in San Francisco -- I believe it was at a Trek convention, or possibly a
WorldCon with a fringe-fan track.
And now, Jean Lorrah and I have teamed up with a number of Sime~Gen
fen who are also Trekfen, and created the WorldCrafters Guild on
simegen.com where we are teaching what I learned from the FAMOUS WRITERS
SCHOOL (I was also one of the few to finish the whole 2 year FW course)
and we teach the fundamentals of The Tailored Effect. With one
major difference. We don't charge the students any money.
They pay us in words, and thus become professional writers. See www.simegen.com/school/
You can explore all of what's been completed so far (there's much
more to come of course) by starting at www.simegen.com
and drilling down into the domain.
BTW: my first published writing was a letter to the editor for
AMAZING Magazine when I was in 7th grade, and it brought me an invitation to
join N3F which I did and became a letter hack and joined my first
story-robin. Fred Pohl was at that time a member of N3F. I
am still a member. Now they're online with their domain www.n3f.com
hosted by Sime~Gen Inc.
This email essay is already too long and we haven't even discussed
Isaac Asimov or Hal Clement or Gordon R. Dickson or Bob Tucker, or all
the other IF writers who were and are perennial features at Trek
cons and who have been helpful in the development of Sime~Gen.
If Doc Smith were still alive he'd be among us too.
We held a Parody Contest here with a Trek Space-Opera parody
of the novel CAPTAIN PROTON. That
book is chuck-full of allusions you would miss if you weren't steeped in
IF and GALAXY etc. Roddenberry would have laughed and enjoyed the
whole Captain Proton shtick. According to our click-through stats,
that book cover is getting clicked-on by Buffy fans even though they're
not entering the contest.
Now just think about what that means. There is a BUFFY/IF
connection if you know where to look for it -- and if you're curious
about that, you should read about the definition of Intimate
Adventure.
BUFFY (like FOREVER KNIGHT ) belongs to that new Genre described in that article. The
article had been sold before to other magazines, one of them sf, and I
re-wrote it to conform to the MONTHLY ASPECTARIAN's slant. Later,
I rewrote it again for a feminist magazine that didn't buy it and that
feminist version is now also posted online as an example
item in our WRITER'S WORKSHOP section:
My entire review column (Re-Readable Books) is criss-crossed with
interlinking connections among the writers, readers and fans of the sf/f
field and the fiction they produce, viewed as a conversation among
writers -- and some of those writers are Sime~Gen fans who grew up to
write novels of their own. They may be 2 generations removed
from Fred Pohl's IF MAGAZINE, but the heritage is there.
Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Sime~Gen Inc. and the WorldCrafter's Guild writing school are now on www.simegen.com
I reserve the right to repost any comment that comes to me that is
NOT MARKED DNQ or in some way obviously personal.
My SF Review Column is posted at http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/ Join the Sime~Gen Listserv. Sign up for any of the free Email Newsletters (a few pages, twice a month max)at http://www.simegen.com/archives/ |
This Page Was Last Updated 07/26/15 02:24 PM EST (USA)
|
This Page Was Last Updated 07/26/15 02:24 PM EST (USA) |