WINSTON (cont.):  “. . . as a baby.  Then I started creating Africa in the twenty-third century, and it got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and BIGGER.  Present plan now is five major Uhura pieces, twenty-two short stories — which will be a collection called ‘The Death-Song of Uhura and Other Tales’ — plus three other characters that have nothing to do with Starfleet, but all come out of the United States of Africa.  So, all together, I have about nine novels and twenty-two short stories mapped out.  This all started because I sat down and wrote ‘Last Skimmer to Jericho’, and liked to do Uhura stories, they were well-received.  I think the audience response is one of the greater creative-generators.  People say, ‘I want more of this,’ so you tell a little more of this, and then you start getting involved in it.  And in order to justify something you did here, you fill in a hole there, and it all begins to pull together.

“At one point, I needed it because I didn’t know where I was going with my fanzine.  I thought PROBE was going to end after issue number eight.  Now, it’s going to end after issue number thirteen, but because I want it to end.  I’ve said all I want to say as a general fanzine editor, and now there are specific stories I want to write, and specific points that I want to make.  What I’ve been talking about is sexism that we saw on STAR TREK when it was still a T.V. series, and why we saw what we saw.  The meaning of the term ‘Your world of starship captains does not admit women!’  from ‘Turnabout Intruder.’  What does that mean?  That can be taken any one of three or four different ways.  So there are statements I have to make, and things that I want to say.  Just being in Fandom and seeing how many women there are in Fandom and what types of women they are has fascinated me.  It’s a reflection of what I’ve seen in the world around me.  It’s not just telling stories, but making statements.”

JEAN:  “I have two STAR TREK universes, and then I’m involved in other things.  Some of you may be familiar with EPILOGUE, which is one of my TREK universes, which is a closed universe.  That is, it is a complete novel in two volumes — eight chapters — and the eight chapters tell independent stories, with beginnings, middles and ends.  But they are not really independent of one another, even though the first three appeared in TRISKELLION, way back in the early 1970’s.  They don’t leave you satisfied, they leave you wanting the rest of the story, but it’s closed.  There’s no more EPILOGUE. I will not write any more and no one else will write any more that in official EPILOGUE.  You cannot prevent someone else from writing a story, but I will not recognize it—no matter how brilliant it is — as part of that universe because that one is complete.