What is the problem you have with PocketBooks

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Title: What is the problem you have with PocketBooks
Creator: Randall Landers
Date(s): early 2000s
Medium: online
Fandom: Star Trek
Topic:
External Links: Questions and Answers, Archived version
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What is the problem you have with PocketBooks is by Randall Landers.

It is a posted essay on the Orion Press website.

In it, he addresses the importance of fandom history, and his displeasure over what he perceives as a disregard by TPTB towards fanworks.

From the Essay

A long time ago, when Star Trek books were being published at Bantam, the good folks at Bantam published stories written in Star Trek fanzines in a collection known as Star Trek: New Voyages. There were two editions of this anthology series, edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. These two books, along with Star Trek Lives! (written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston), introduced fans to fanzines. And for decades, fanzines were the main means Star Trek fans could express their creativity. Fans would write their stories, have them edited, and the zine editor/publisher would produce an anthology or novel-lengthed fanzine that would be read and adored by thousands of readers. Fanzines, like INTERSTAT, were also one of the best means of communication that fans could exchange ideas with each other. Imagine, if you will, a letterzine delivered monthly, filled with commentaries from fans all over the world...in other words, a hard-copy analog-equivalent of the Internet. Once the BBS's such as GEnie and CompuServe's started popping up, slowly and surely fans moved from the long wait between printed issues to the instant gratification (and conflagration) that the world wide web provides. Nowadays, a fan who writes a story can post it to his or her website (or someone else's) with instant gratification or disappointment from its readers. Clearly, the Internet has put an end to much of the printed fanzines. (Sadly, it also has put an end to much of the feedback we used to receive on our fan fiction, but that's another story...)

The folks at Pocketbooks don't want you to know and appreciate those historical facts. They want you to believe that fanzines weren't widespread, that they never had more than a few readers, and that they simply didn't matter. They want you to believe that they "can't know about" fanzines otherwise they'd have to prosecute their editors and publishers (despite the fact that the good folks at Bantam published those anthologies featuring that material). They want you to believe that fanzines didn't disseminate information released to us by the folks at Paramount (despite the fact that in a recent Harve Bennett interview he expressed his displeasure that the news of Spock's death had been released to fanzines by Gene Roddenberry (and more accurately Susan Sackett)). They want you to believe that fan fiction writers never developed into professional writers (despite the fact that you can go through Joan Marie Verba's Boldly Writing and see where folks did just that). They want you to believe that professional writers don't "waste their time" writing fan fiction (despite the fact that Carmen Carter and Joan Winston, to name a few, actually did so for ORION PRESS, and Jean Lorrah, Peter David and others did for other zines). They want you to believe that fandom doesn't matter (despite the fact that it was our threats of boycotting Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that resulted in changes in that movie--again, see Joan Marie Verba's Boldly Writing and see where it happened).

Fandom does matter, folks. The fact that the writing and editing staff at PocketBooks has said that "fandom doesn't matter" means that they're not the ones who should writing and editing for Star Trek books. Small wonder that we get a Perry Mason murder-mystery rewritten as a "Samuel T. Cogley" murder-mystery (along with his own Della and Paul). Small wonder that we get a space station novel with cameos from Kirk and Spock, and they call it "Original Series" fiction. Small wonder that their readership dwindles every year, and small wonder I have a problem with them.

Further Reading and Context

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