Sondra Marshak

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Name: Sondra Marshak
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Type: writer
Fandoms: Star Trek
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a 1977 photo printed in the 3rd Space-Con program book, it portrays Marshak and her writing partner, Myrna Culbreath

Sondra Marshak was an early Star Trek fan.

Marshak was an avowed Objectivist (a devotee of Ayn Rand) from the age of thirteen, and believed that Star Trek advanced Objectivist ideals. She explained these ideals at several points in Star Trek Lives!

Marshak's writing partner was Myrna Culbreath.

According to Marshak and Culbreath answering questions "jointly" in the 2006 compendium Star Trek: Voyages of the Imagination, Marshak "earned a Master's degree in history, with straight-A honors"[1] and planned to earn a Ph.D., teach university classes and "write culture-changing nonfiction". When she discovered Star Trek, the "powerful relationship between Kirk and Spock and the focus on moral and philosophical issues", she decided to devote her energy to the show and to writing fan fiction.

Aside from the Voyages of the Imagination interview, the pair disappeared from fandom in the early '80s. Their last professional Star Trek novel, Triangle, appeared in 1983.

Professional Books

She was one of the authors of Star Trek Lives! and Shatner: Where No Man. She also co-wrote and edited some commercial Star Trek books such as the early collection Star Trek: The New Voyages. With her writing partner, Myrna Culbreath, she wrote four professionally published Star Trek novels, The Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of the Phoenix (for Bantam Books) and The Prometheus Design and Triangle (for Pocket Books). The pair also had a couple of stories in the New Voyages collections of short stories that many fans felt were the closest fandom ever came to professionally published slash.

Also see the 1976 (revised in 1978) book: Star Trek Puzzle Manual ("puzzles, mazes, and trivia to baffle, enlighten and amuse 'Star Trek' fans everywhere").

In 1977, Marshak and Myrna Culbreath did the introduction to the LP William Shatner "Live".

Frequent Con Guest of Honor

Marshak, Myrna Culbreath, and Mrs. Anna Tornheim Hassan (Marshak's mother) were frequent con guests of honor.

Some examples:

A 1977 Bio and Description

From the TreKon 1977 program book:

Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath have that rare fortune most STAR TREK fans only dream about; not only are they the authors and editors of several well-known books in the field, they are also personal friends o( many of those who helped make that dream real to twenty million ardent fans across the U.S.A. Sondra and Myrna have been working together for the past three years and their accomplishments stand on their own merits: STAR TREK LIVES!; STAR TREK: THE NEW VOYAGES volumes one and two; a new STAR TREK novel PRICE OF THE PHOENIX; UHURA!,c o-authored with Nichelle Nichols; the long-awaited SHATNER: WHERE NO MAN... "the biography and autobiography of a working actor's encounter with legend". The list goes on and on.

A typical 36 (or is it 37?) hour day for the team might include amending the official Washington, D.C. reception to honor Nichelle and her company's NASA contract, to assist in intergrathg the astronaunt corps; being asked to write the back cover notes for William Shatner's magnificient new double album set SHATNER LIVE; or writing a STAR TREK novel or two-and getting paid for it; or a luncheon interview with Wiliiam Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, "Kirk meets Spock" for SHATNER: WHERE NO MAN...

And in between all of that, squeezing in 10-15 pages of writing a day... every day. In Sondra's own words- "The working conditions are just... not to be believed." Myrna now lives a few blocks from the Marshaks' Baton Rouge home where Sondra and husband Alan live with their son of five, Jerry, and Sondra's mother, Mrs. Anna Tornheim Hassan -"Mama" to the world of STAR TREK. The latest member of the family is a German Shepherd puppy, "Omna" [sic] - named for the villian in their novel, PRICE OF THE PHOENIX [2] . Omna [sic] lives—and prospers—having turned into a horse while no one was looking-on a diet of straight pins, telephone wires, trees, and the seat of Sondra's favorite recliner.

The two have been heard to say, "Maybe we shouldn't have named him for the villain!"

Marshak and Kraith

Starting in 1973, Marshak co-authored Kraith stories with Jacqueline Lichtenberg beginning with the novella "Spock's Decision", in Kraith Collected #4. By Lichtenberg's description in her preface to "Spock's Pilgrimage", Marshak all but took over the plot plans for Kraith, leaving Lichtenberg a bit breathless and slightly annoyed:

"I had planned for Kirk’s Vulcan education to soak up about a year of his life. Several of Sondra’s brainstorms later, it seems it is going to take Kirk several years to extricate himself from increasingly complex entanglements with Vulcan women, Vulcan politics, Vulcan customs, and Spock’s Warder-Liege Control. It makes for several hundred thousand words of good drama if any of us have the courage to publish it. We’ve been talking in a semi-facetious way about a volume of Kraith for Grups Only! Otherwise, there’s going to have to be some hatchet editing done!"

Lichtenberg speaks of Marshak's "incredible mind" and states that "For those of you who don’t know Sondra -- well, suffice it to say that when it comes to logical argument, Spock had just better watch out if he goes up against her! (I lost.)"[3]

In 2012, Lichtenberg contributed a comment to Steve Donoghue's blog Notes for a Star Trek Bibliography as follows:

I was browsing the sales statistics on my current, newly released, novels in my Sime~Gen universe on Amazon, when I remembered how House of Zeor was mentioned in STAR TREK LIVES! and so remembered Sondra Marshak.

I keep looking for her online, but I don’t find a homepage or Facebook presence for her. Since Joan Winston passed, and I don’t have touch with her heirs, there’s no hope that we can re-release STAR TREK LIVES! in ebook format, as most of my other books have been. Since I basically live online these days, with a presence on a wide variety of social networks (Google+, Facebook, Tumblr, blogger etc etc)I can’t understand why I haven’t run into Sondra.

But google tossed up this blog item and I was glad to find it! Thank you.[4]

The New Voyages

See also: Star Trek: The New Voyages

According to Marshak and Culbreath in Voyages of Imagination, Bantam editor Fred Pohl had initially turned down the proposal for Star Trek Lives!, then later accepted it, realizing that the Star Trek phenomenon was by no means dead. While it was in production, Marshak and Culbreath proposed that "with the right editing, the best of the fan fiction could be made professionally publishable.... New Voyages was to become the true mass-marketing breakthrough. It has been widely credited with helping fuel the growing fan phenomenon that led to increasingly massive Star Trek conventions and eventually to the revival of Star Trek in movies, then in ongoing new formats." Marshak and Culbreath refer to this period as "the birth of new Star Trek fiction."[5]

We were collecting, editing, and sometimes, at the authors' requests, extensively cutting or partially rewriting some stories or long novellas for fan authors who threw up their hands and said that they couldn't do it, please do it for them. While there was exciting raw material, fanzines had different editing standards and no great limitations on length. Everything we would send to Fred to show Paramount had to pay off on our promise that it could be extremely professional, marketable, meet space requirements, and leave Fred some options for final choices. Probably that editing or rewriting process was foredoomed to be an example of "no good deed goes unpunished." While the fan authors wanted us to do it, it's hard for any writers to let editors touch a hair on a story's head. Eventually our judgment was vindicated when Star Trek: The New Voyages became one of the most beloved books of Star Trek fiction.[5]

Response to New Voyages was mixed. Many fans saw it as another sign that fan fiction was being taken seriously by the mainstream culture and by Paramount as well as the Star Trek producers. However, it appears that the heavy editing and rewriting -- in some places, completely rewritten from the originals -- took place without the authors' knowledge, control or permission. The authors did not receive copies of their contracts before the book went to press. None of the material was ever returned to the authors, and the stories were presented as "never before published", which was untrue: every one of them had appeared in a copyrighted fanzine, and no fanzine was mentioned or credited.[6]

A fan in 1983 wrote:

Problem with the stories picked up in a pro book, as was done in New Voyages 1, not 2 (which had mostly original work), was that the authors of [sic] not given their just share of the profits. No one would object to that, but that isn't what happened. There was a big controversy at the time and that's why none of the fan authors wanted to submit anything more. One of my best evenings was watching [Marshak] trying to wangle a story out of one of fandom's best writers who kept repeating "show me a contract I can show my lawyer" while [Marshak] kept trying to get around it. The first book burned too many authors for the rest of us to look kindly on another one. [7]

Never Published

In Star Trek: The New Voyages 2, Marshak and Culbreath announced plans to write a novel with Nichelle Nichols, to be called Uhura!. This book was also referred to as The Uhura Connection. They claim that getting started on this book "set her and us off on a NASA trek which helped to shape not only Uhura! but this New Voyages, with its NASA connection." (One of the stories in New Voyages 2 was written by NASA engineer Jesco von Puttkamer.) According to Ian McLean, of the website Have Phaser, Will Travel, "the book would have been a mix of fact and fiction about Nichols and Uhura, with Uhura exploring the life of her ancestor, Nichols, who had worked with NASA, among other things." (In the 1970s, Nichols worked with NASA to recruit astronauts from minority groups.) Marshak and Culbreath also planned a book called Mr. Spock's Guide to the Planet Vulcan (circa 1979), according to the "About the Authors" note in The Fate of the Phoenix. Nichols eventually wrote her own autobiography, Beyond Uhura (Bantam, November 1994). [8]

Marshak's "Slashy Subtext"

Many fans have observed that Marshak and Culbreath's Star Trek writing is thinly veiled (or not so veiled) Kirk/Spock slash. A fan in 2001 wrote:

I'd read Marshak and Culbreath, which is absolutely slash without the actual anal penetration -- I bet they'd never publish those novels now that TPTB know that slash exists. In the fanfic anthology collection New Voyages (or maybe New Voyages 2), they mention in an editorial note that someone wrote them saying he'd written an X-rated story about Spock. For years I thought *that* was my first introduction to the concept of slash, but I finally tracked it down and realized that it was probably a het story--it didn't *say* it was K/S. That tells me a lot about where my subconscious mind was. [9]

The pulp-romantic style and the abundance of nude scenes and bondage situations contribute to slashy impressions. Kirk is often feminized, repeatedly described as impressed by or yielding to Spock's immeasurable physical strength, etc., etc.[10]

A fan wrote in 2013: "It's my understanding that blackmarket K/S "bonus chapters" for all four of their ST novels were available in the "slash" fanfic circles." [11]

In 1998, another fan commented:

Although there is no overt sexuality in those books, there is enough going on beneath the surface to keep psychoanalysts and K/S hurt-comfort writers working for years. In direct language the books were very proper but in feel they should have made my hands sticky <EEW!>. Marshak and Culbreath made a lot of noise about Federation culture and the male dominated Starfleet that was interesting. the cultural stuff bears looking at and thinking about. The gender issues always seemed anachronistic and a touch hysterical to me. One of their Short Stories in "New Voyages" called the "Protruscan Petard" <sp?> was a delightful story just because they put the characters in a wonderfully bad spot. I didn't quite care for Spock with the double X chromosome, or the testosterone charged madness that came from it.[12] Actually I thought the whole "Alpha Male" thing was way, way over done,[13] but the basic idea was sound. Anyway, I take it from the context of your post, Meg, that K/S is something you like. The Phoenix books are loaded with sexual energy even if they aren't really allowed to say so directly. K/S, hurt-comfort, and dominance games are just not my cup of tea, but they're in there.... [14]

Another comment in 1998:

Re: Shatner's biography. If there are any still out there, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath's novels might be of interest to you-- hint: their "agenda" oozes throughout their writing, and is so heavy handed that it becomes difficult to read. (I'm referring to the Phoenix novels). I tried to re-read it again recently (my 6th time now?) but find other fan writing much more desireable. (Thanks K/Sers!) [15]

A review of "Surprise!", a story by Marshak, Culbreath and Nichelle Nichols in New Voyages 2, characterized it as "the slashiest thing I have read so far in this fandom", citing Spock's attempts to get Kirk to go to bed, a discussion of birthday spanking, and references to a secret alcove between their bedrooms where they have an ongoing chess match (presumably the reviewer thinks this is a euphemism). However, slash historian klangley56 responds that this screwball comedy was probably not intended as slash, but as "an intended humorous story that just ends up being silly and out of character and a bit too 'precious'."[16]

Marshak and Culbreath notably interviewed Gene Roddenberry, discussing the comparison of Kirk and Spock to Alexander the Great and Hephaistion in the context of Roddenberry's casting of Shatner inspired by his performance of Alexander in a 1968 TV-movie, regarding which Roddenberry stated the potential for "physical love between [Kirk and Spock]" as part of their canon characterization.

Marshak and Culbreath: "There's a great deal of writing in the Star Trek movement now which compares the relationship between Alexander and Hephaistion to the relationship between Kirk and Spock -- focusing on the closeness of the friendship, the feeling that they would die for one another --"

Roddenberry: "Yes, there's certainly some of that, certainly with love overtones. Deep love. The only difference being, the Greek ideal... we never suggested in the series... physical love between the two. But it's the... we certainly had the feeling that the affection was sufficient for that, if that were the particular style of the 23rd century."[17]

Despite these views from Roddenberry himself, some members of the production team were hostile to the idea of Kirk and Spock as lovers. D.C. Fontana, script editor for the first two seasons, was asked about this in May 2016 in regards to "Amok Time"[18], and replied as follows:

In answer to your question, NO - there were no homosexual double-entendres in the script - at least none that were deliberate. If some viewers chose to read that into the dialogue, etc. that's their point of view, but certainly not ours. Writer Theodore Sturgeon was trying to reveal Spock's inner human in a struggle with what his culture, his upbringing and his half-human/half-Vulcan heritage had instilled in him about emotion and controlling it in an out-of-control situation. It also was a peek into the Vulcan culture that no one had seen before. That's ALL we were doing. I've heard this nonsense (especially about Kirk/Spock) for years. There is no basis to it. I hope this answer is helpful to you.[19]

Without mentioning their names, Star Trek writer/advisor David Gerrold spoke scathingly of their "aggressive" promotion of The Premise in the 1988 edition of his book The World of Star Trek and in several online open letters.

In one of these letters, printed in Not Tonight, Spock! #5 in September 1984, Gerrold stated that "The people who created STAR TREK neither share nor endorse the belief that Kirk & Spock are gay lovers. Indeed, two of the most aggressive promulgators of this belief have been barred from the lot and from the offices of those who produce ST."

In his 1985 Open Letter to K/S Fandom, Gerrold said he and his editor had had experience dealing with

...some of the more... uh, aggressive individuals. (These particular individuals have managed to alienate — and offend — 3 publishers, several members of the STAR TREK cast & production crew, & Paramount Pictures legal department. These individuals are very probably the main reason why K/S fandom has generated such a tarnished reputation in TREK fandom.)

Exactly what Marshak and Culbreath did that got them banished is unknown, but it is possible this has something to do with their campaign to make sure Leonard Nimoy would be cast in the upcoming Star Trek: The Motion Picture.[20][21][22]

In 2013 Gerrold returned to this subject, describing "the two most aggressive women behind the phenomenon", saying that they had once turned down a story submitted to them (presumably for a third edition of Star Trek: The New Voyages) by a young gay man, telling him that he didn't understand male homosexuality. Gerrold added, "I met those two women once. One of them began her conversation with, 'What you Star Trek writers don't understand--' Oh, really? I was trained by Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana. '--is that Kirk secretly wants to be raped by Spock.' I gnawed off a leg and escaped."[23]

And in 2016, regarding the controversy over portraying Hikaru Sulu as gay in the J.J. Abrams reimagined Star Trek films, Gerrold again wrote about the women he calls "M" and "C", repeating earlier anecdotes and adding that Marshak claimed that Gene Roddenberry's amiable reaction to her lengthy essay on Spock and Vulcan made her the "authorized expert" on the subject. He also described how the pair

... assumed ownership of the entire K/S phenomenon and proceeded to chase any fan holding a divergent view out of fandom. They did it in the social media that predated the internet -- the fanzine, they did it by creating hoax identities that abused and degraded anyone they chose as an enemy....

... they were bullying other fans with the idea that their interpretation was the only possible interpretation of who Kirk and Spock really were and what Star Trek fandom was really about. Their behavior was simply unfannish. They were working out their own issues on the body of fandom and they hurt a lot of other fans in the process. They hurt people deliberately and that is villainy, no matter how you try to justify it.

They did eventually co-write a Star Trek novel. One chapter of it was distinctly pornographic. That was the chapter they left out when the book was published, but which they privately distributed. To me, that was deliberately unprofessional -- a kind of deliberate subversion of the Trek universe. (That their book was published was their claim to additional credibility in fandom.)... Eventually, M&C faded away. I have no idea where they went, why they went, or even if they're still alive.[24]

Avoid ALL by Marshak and Culbreath who cowrote at least 4 novels. They also were the earliest fan fic writers and may have created slash Kirk/Spock but not certain. Very masochistic novels. Kirk is almost always near death or close to it. I just read their published novels. ... Yesterday I wrote that Marshak was involved in early ST fan fiction and may have created slash. I did research on her. She was heavily involved with kraith. It is heavily Vulcan centric stories. Marshak got involved seems like midway and had Sarek adopt Kirk and be Spock's student. On other sites I found one description of Spock spanking Kirk for disobeying. Kraith seems to focus at least from wikipedia definition on the main object at the start how Star Trek's federation is Earth centric and Kirk pushes not just Earth centric ideas but white male. Kraith seems like it did impact Roddenberry, Spock's death and rebirth appears to have Kraith foundations. Marshak's slash was one of hurt/heal a precursor to the modern slash.[25]

Controversy

Marshak's approach to fandom and fan fiction were criticized by some of the writers who had been left out of her inner circle. In an article in Trek magazine in the fall of 1979, author Mary Jo Lawrence described her experiences as a "late bloomer" Trek fan, having encountered the show for the first time by way of James Blish's stories. Determined to be a Trekker, not a Trekkie, Lawrence wanted to contribute to the culture of Trek fandom and began writing to Marshak and Culbreath after the publication of the two New Voyages books, wherein they had issued what appeared to be an open invitation to amateur authors to submit material for further volumes. Taking this literally, Lawrence did send a short story. However, she then read Joan Winston's The Making of the Trek Conventions, which gave her the impression that "Miss Winston and her cronies were on the 'inside Trek' and she obviously wanted us to know it.

My concern deepened as I found a dismal pattern emerging. Joan Winston, Jackie Lichtenberg, and Sondra Marshak (who collaborated on the popular Star Trek Lives!) were right in the center of an elitist group which expanded, as the narrative progressed, to include Myrna Culbreath (of course) and, to my growing consternation, such people as Shirley Maiewski and Connie Faddis. Now, these are all very versatile and extremely talented people, but, as I checked back over the list of contributing authors in my volumes of The New Voyages, I found my suspicions completely confirmed. It was these, along with such obvious insiders as Nichelle Nichols and Jescoe von Puttkamer [a prominent NASA engineer], Russell Bates (who wrote a script for the animateds) and Jennifer Guttridge (who was published in both volumes) who were getting their work into print. This was in direct conflict with what Marshak and Culbreath were purporting in their prefaces. It seemed that if you wanted to get anywhere in Star Trek fandom it wasn't what you knew, it was who you knew. There are thousands of artistic Trekkers in the world, but only a handful of mutually supportive individuals are getting to share their talent and ideas with the rest of us. I was angered and hurt by what I felt was a betrayal of everything Star Trek fandom stood for. I could feel my enthusiasm ebb and my momentum come to a grinding halt. [26]

Personal Recollections and Fan Comments

Also see the comments at Star Trek Lives!, Shatner: Where No Man, Star Trek: The New Voyages, The Price of the Phoenix, The Fate of the Phoenix, The Prometheus Design, Triangle, and Star Trek: The New Voyages.

1974

Jacqueline Lichtenberg, preface to "Spock's Pilgrimage" in Kraith Collected #4: "Ever seen a kitten wound up in a ball of yarn? That’s the kind of plot Sondra turns."

1978

In her memoir Reminisce With Me, the late Nancy Kippax spoke about how she and her sister Bev, inspired by the section on fanfiction in Star Trek Lives!, created the fanzine Contact. It featured Kirk-Spock relationship and hurt/comfort stories. The sisters began sending out flyers asking for material. A few weeks later, Marshak contacted the sisters:

The Great and Powerful Sondra, one of the authors of our "bible"! This was mind-boggling, indeed! I wondered what we had done to rate such attention. Little did we know that we had bitten into one of the largest apples in Star Trek fandom, and the particular orchard of Sondra and Myrna Culbraith. When we had sent out our flyers, with the heading, "A New Fanzine Devoted to the Kirk-Spock Relationship", we had sent out a fireball to the people who would be interested.

Bev went on to relate that The Mighty One had demanded that we send her everything we had. That meant stories, pieces of stories, submissions, story ideas and outlines, every scrap of paper we had with anything at all written on it. She wanted to know all about us, where we got our ideas, what we liked and didn't like, how we saw the Kirk-Spock relationship, and on and on. [27]

Kippax subsequently spoke about "complying with Sondra Marshak's demands" and later expressed impatience with Sondra's behavior at an unnamed convention in Atlanta (perhaps Star Trek Atlanta in 1978):

It was a great convention, marred only by the unrelenting presence of Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbraith [sic]. One day, Bev wore a teeshirt with the cover illo from Contact IV, which Sondra almost ripped from her body, saying, "I want that shirt!" We did a panel on the Kirk-Spock relationship with them, as I recall.[28]

1984

Regarding your comments about the Ardrey Morris brand of sociobiology. Personally, I found it disconcerting to read a whole series of ST books (Marshak's and Culbreath's) based on that school of thought. I guess it shows you can see anything in Trek if you want to. [29]

1985

Regarding Marshak-Culbreath. I think you are mistaken about these books. Marsak and Culbreath used the terminology of Alpha and Beta male in their first book The Price of the Phoenix, but this was dropped in the later books and even in the first one, Ardrey-Morris ideology is certainly not the basis of the philosophy presented. This Alpha and Beta terminology was the philosophy of Omme, the villain. He tries to set Kirk and Spock against each other by using those terms indicating a power imbalance between them. They don't accept his terms in the end. I[f] you remember Star Trek Lives, Sondra Marshak stated that she was s student of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand sees human beings as motivated by reason -- not instincts as Ardery-Morris do. Also in Marshak-Culbreath, women are shown to be confident and leaders. This is consistent with Rand but not with Ardery-Morris sociobiology. The woman shown in Triangle seems particularly independent. Now, while it is true that Rand believed that women ought to fall in love with men and be in a monogamous relationship with them, she insisted that women most be the equals of men in these relationships, unlike sociobiology with states that men ought to be dominant. An honest look at the Marshak-Culbreath novels shows the Rand pattern rather than the sociobiological pattern, and in "Triangle," they go beyond Rand by suggesting the possibly of a triad. [30]

If I read one more sneer at the fine team of Marshak and Culbreath, I'll scream, 'T'Vareth!' ["Disobedient fool-whelp" according to Marshak in The Prometheus Design, where she has Spock snarling this at Kirk.] ... Rather than stamping out cardboard Trek figures like so many uninspired authors, these two take us on a non-stop-no-holds-barred adventure through the characters' minds and souls. The brooding depth of their crew leaves you breathless. Marshak and Culbreath write straight from their hearts -- and their hearts are obviously full of love for Star Trek. No other Trek writers have stirred me to quite the same degree. [She admits, though, that she "choked a bit on 'Vulcan Command Mode'" in The Prometheus Design.] [31].

2010

Steve Donoghue, in his ongoing analysis of Star Trek fandom, refers to Marshak and Culbreath as among the "first ladies of fandom"[32] and cites their fan novels as "the Star Trek fan fiction novels to end all Star Trek fan fiction novels."

Claiming that "sado-erotic excesses" were a staple of the earliest fan fiction[33], he speaks glowingly about the professionally published novels as steering away from that. Then he enthuses:

... [The Price of the Phoenix could never be published today. Even though its every page is glowing not only with knowledge of the show ... but with fidelity to its spirit, these books are too violent, too sexually charged, too adult to get green-lighted in today’s franchise sci-fi market.

2010s

They are both still alive and living in Torrance, CA. That is all that I've been able to unearth. Neither have literary agents at present, or at least literary agents that are known by any of the folks I've reached out to. From what I heard it was exceptionally difficult for Jeff Ayers to get a hold of them when he assembled Voyages of Imagination. And this was more than ten years ago. [34]

Meta

Marshak & Culbreath - Psychological H/C?

External Links

Discussion of Marshak and Culbreath and their writing at TrekBBS.

Price of the Phoenix in Five Minutes

Prometheus Design in Five Minutes

References

  1. ^ One presumes at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, since that's where she and her family lived for many years.
  2. ^ The villain's name in that book is "Omne."
  3. ^ Jacqueline Lichtenberg, preface to "Spock's Pilgrimage", Kraith Collected vol. 4.
  4. ^ Jacqueline Lichtenberg, April 17, 2012 comment to Steve Donoghue, The End of an Era, blog post written 2011-02-01 for Notes for a Star Trek Bibliography.
  5. ^ a b Jeff Ayers, Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion. Pocket Books, 2006.
  6. ^ More in A Piece of the Action 37, April 1976.
  7. ^ from a fan in K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) #6 (1983)
  8. ^ Star Trek: The Lost Books.
  9. ^ from a private mailing list, quoted anonymously (December 11, 2001)
  10. ^ In a tribute to Nimoy after his death, Shatner mentioned in passing that Nimoy really was "very powerful, he was a swimmer". He said this was something he would remember as much as Nimoy's sense of humor; "his laughter, entwined in mine." Shatner on Nimoy, 'Spock would not have been the same' at Youtube, Feb. 27, 2015.
  11. ^ Therin of Andor, writing on a thread discussing Marshak & Culbreath on TrekBBS, April 25, 2013. He made the same claim three years earlier in this thread about The Price of the Phoenix. In 2016 a black-market slash chapter of Price of the Phoenix was verified by David Gerrold.
  12. ^ Marshak and Culbreath portrayed Spock as having induced XYY syndrome, which he retained at the end of the story. At the time they were writing, XYY syndrome had been in the news a good deal, with the popular assumption that it caused hypermasculine, aggressive "supermales". It's come in for numerous misunderstandings and mischaracterizations since it was first identified in the 1960s.
  13. ^ The "alpha male", a pet theory of Marshak and Culbreath's, was based on the research of Canadian anthropologist Lionel Tiger, particularly his book Men in Groups, which has since been discredited.
  14. ^ comment by Jay P. Hailey alt.startrek.creative, February 25, 1998
  15. ^ Susie Bowers, July 17, 1998 at alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated
  16. ^ Spock Shaped Snickerdoodles, review by delmarsdoll and discussion with klangley56, 2009-07-14 - 27.
  17. ^ Page 148.
  18. ^ Though Fontana wrote some episodes, Amok Time is not among them. The opinions on the subject of the actual author, Theodore Sturgeon, are not known, and he had long passed away at the time of this interview.
  19. ^ In May 2016, Bluejay Young (Fanlore editor) submitted the "Amok Time" question to D.C. Fontana. This quote is from Fontana's personal correspondence with Bluejay Young from an email dated 2016-05-10, and quoted with permission. His question and DC Fontana's response was facilitated by Greg Mitchell, Writer's Guild Association as part of an interview request.
  20. ^ "It was a very tough time, complicated by the fact that I was pursuing a lawsuit against Paramount at the time, that had to do with merchandising royalties that I had failed to receive. We had a rather important lawsuit pending, and it was difficult to find my way through this process of dealing with Paramount, where they were calling me to go to work for them, while at the same time I had a lawsuit outstanding against them. It takes a little organization of the mind to be able to compartmentalize those things and be able to put them in perspective, and I had a tough time with that." Also, Gene Roddenberry had engaged him for something else and then abruptly dropped him, so he had refused to be in the film, so Spock was left out of the screenplay. It wasn't until Robert Wise arranged to have the promised royalties paid to Nimoy that he agreed to return.
  21. ^ Details of the lawsuit and Nimoy's grievances against Roddenberry are in "How Leonard Nimoy Was Convinced to Join the First 'Star Trek' Movie" (Hollywood Reporter, 2-27-15).
  22. ^ Asked by Marshak and Culbreath about the prevalence of slash and other sexual premises in fan fiction, Nimoy with his characteristic reserve refused to speculate, merely stating that he and Shatner must have done something they were unaware of which caused fans to respond with such ideas.
  23. ^ David Gerrold, Facebook article: Somebody asked me again what I thought about K/S fans, 2013-08-27.
  24. ^ David Gerrold, "Just for the record, I always assumed Sulu was gay." Essay dated July 8, 2016. Gerrold adds that the derogatory term fubba-wubba was created especially to describe Marshak and Culbreath, and that it stood for "fat ugly broad with unbelievably bad attitude."
  25. ^ Blogger EisenBolan writing in Groupthink, 2014-03-16 and 7.
  26. ^ Mary Jo Lawrence, A New Year's Revolution, reprinted in Best of Trek 2, Signet 1979, pp 106-115.
  27. ^ Nancy Kippax, Reminisce With Me/Entering Star Trek Fandom.
  28. ^ Nancy Kippax, Reminisce With Me/The Late '70s Part II.
  29. ^ from K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) #12
  30. ^ from K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) #13
  31. ^ An unnamed fan, from a Letter of Comment in The Propagator 9, May 1985.
  32. ^ Steve Donoghue, The First Ladies of Fandom!, blog post written 2010-10-02 for Notes for a Star Trek Bibliography, page found 2012-06-24.
  33. ^ In The End of an Era, blog post written 2011-02-01 for Notes for a Star Trek Bibliography, page found 2012-06-24. Needless to say, he doesn't provide a single example.
  34. ^ Reddit user rdzogschen, comment in "Are Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath still with us?" In Reddit discussion group /r/trekbooks, December 23, 2017, comment dated April 17, 2018.
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