The Sixth Year

Star Trek TOS Fanfiction
Title:	The Sixth Year
Author(s):	Ed Zdrojewski
Date(s):	1975
Length:
Genre:	het, gen
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
External Links:	The Sixth Year at AO3
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The Sixth Year is a Star Trek: TOS story by Ed Zdrojewski. This is the story on which Leslie Fish based The Weight.

It was published in the print zine Warped Space #3.

first page of the story in Warped Space

Reactions and Reviews

Unknown Date

This one grew on me. Poorly crafted, but I liked the basic plot. Kirk & co. get a weird message, originating well outside the galaxy, asking them to send a starship to "Chicago" at the signal's point of origin to verify historical data. For untidy reasons, they embark into the past to find out what it's all about. (In this universe, the Earth was set back into an agrarian, anarchic society by biological war and the melting of the ice caps; industrialization survived only on the Moon, from whence conquerors later took back the Earth and the Federation was born.) Now a new crop of Enterprise cadets turn out to be plotting to change history and keep Earth agrarian. One gets a phaser to an engineer, resulting in Earth defeating the Lunar invasion and remaining agrarian. Spock and McCoy, meantime, are stranded in dead Chicago - but get inadvertently scooped with up with the city by extra-galactic archaeologists who put them in hibernation until their own time. They disappear before they get there. Enterprise returns to her own time, where: there is no Federation; they find McCoy a true country doctor. All but Kirk beam down to live out their lives; he resolves to stay aboard and single-handedly fend off the Klingons when they come.

1975

I've got lots to criticize (nicely) in some of the stories printed in this issue, but I'll leave all that to someone who wants to write letters, at least for the time being. Some of my criticisms are just pet peeves I've developed as a result of typing the stories up and rereading and rereading them for typos, etc., and some are a result of simply knowing the person who submitted the thing. Ed Zdrojewski's story has a lot of flaws (to my way of thinking, and I'm prepared to defend my case), but the overall effect was to me, quite haunting.

1979

"The Sixth Year" sets the stage for Ms Fish's fabulous ST adventure. In this story, Kirk takes the Enterprise back to 1990 to examine the fabled "lost city of Chicago". At that time, Chicago was a dead city wiped out by a biological weapon during the Malthusian Disaster of 1987. While in the past a member of the landing party, Pennington, disappears taking with her the plans for a crude phaser, and Spock and McCoy are apparently killed when a flash flood wipes out Chicago. Being short on dilithium crystals, Kirk is forced to return to the future, where he finds that the theft of the phaser plans has changed history. The Earth he finds has a medieval level of technology and is steeped in anarchy. With no power to go anywhere, the crew deserts and starts a new life on Earth, leaving Kirk alone on the Enterprise to await the Klingons or the Romulans. The Weight begins approximately three months after the disaster. Kirk is alone on the Enterprise and slowly going mad when there is a knock on the door. He comes across the Sunfire, a primitive chemical powered rocket headed for the Moon. He makes contact with it, and it was sent by a pocket of science lovers in High Harbor, Michigan. The crew is the most unbelievable collection of longhaired, bearded, tattooed, free-living, independent, devout practicing anarchists led by Coordinator Jenneth Roantree. Eager for company, Kirk brings them aboard the Enterprise. While visiting, they find out why he is there, and High Harbor is attacked by anti-science neighbors. Kirk is barely able to save the town. The Anarchists are depressed by their losses and start to think about the alternate universe Kirk comes from. It sounds like paradise. (Kirk neglected to mention that there were laws and governments, that Star Fleet was a military organization, and a few other things. Keeping "The Awful Truth" a secret will become a big problem.) Kirk explains that he could restore the universe if only he had enough dilithium crystals to power the ship for a trip to the Guardian of Forever. One of the Anarchists points out that that would be an easy problem to solve. The crystals had been found on the Moon in Kirk's universe, and the Sunfire was going there full of mining equipment. If he could prove that alternate universes exist, they might help him. Proof is soon found when Jenneth Roantree is shown to be Kirk's alternate universe counterpart. Kirk persuades part of the Enterprise crew to beam up: and, together with the Anarchists, they set off on a mission to restore time. They mine the crystals on the Moor, and start on the long journey to the Guardian just as the Romulans attack Earth. Will they be able to cross Romulan dominated space safely to the Guardian? Who will go through the Guardian? Will they be able to stop Pennington? Who will come back through the Guardian? What kind of universe will result? Most authors would be satisfied just to dream up such a splendid action/adventure story, but not Ms Fish. There is much more. Among the goodies are love affair between Kirk and one of the Anarchists, a feminist plot against Star Fleet by Uhura and Chapel, numerous personal identity crises, and all the social and political satire that can be mined from a cultural clash between two such different cultures as the Anarchists and the Federation. How to get: Publication is expected in the next six months. Reserve your copy with a deposit of $10 and a SASE for notification of final cost and postage.