Even more K/S UST—including a story by Nichelle Nichols that basically proves to me that she's a fan of Kirk/Spock/Uhura. Also includes an intense story featuring genderswapping. Overall, I'd say that even though it includes serious stories by people who'd written for ST:TAS and so on (not to mention a NASA scientist), this really continues the "fan-to-pro" idea that New Voyages 1 did. Also notable: two stories that partially prefigure the Borg.

Most of these shorts were far superior to the longer "good" Trek novels I've read so far. It does serve as a warning to editors from adding stories they wrote to their own anthology. Their story was by far the weakest of the bunch. ( )

Still a great early book on the Star Trek phenomenon in that long, dark time between the series ending and the movie and more Star Trek. There were years when there was *nothing* but the written word and conventions and more written words, and this book is one of those examples. It exists when the space shuttle Enterprise was rolled out onto the tarmak and the impact it had on the cast and crew when they saw it and realized that they themselves had created something that led to its name. And humans would once again continue going to the stars.

But as for the stories themselves . . . they are not as spontaneous as they were in the first New Voyages volume. Which makes sense given that this book was published afterwards, but the instant joyousness fun, and graciousness is missing here. The stories are almost harder to grasp from their language; several of the authors use the technique of leaving out words or phrases and leaving it for the reader to guess on the next events or a character's motivation. Which works in some instances but is too much used here. The plethora of possible adventures is a bit more limited, too - no chasing off after strange animals on a planet surface, but a bit more sobered events on board the ship. Which all still work, just with that "not first date" feeling. ( )

The New Voyages is a compilation of fan-written stories, and at times it certainly shows. This group of stories is not as well-written as the original (volume 1) - there are some weird plots and out of character shenanigans that don't really mesh well with the Trek canon. ( )

I once saw an editor for the later published Strange New Worlds express contempt for the New Voyages anthologies. These stories, after all, have a fanzine feel, several in the first volume were first published in fanzines, as you might know seeing the titles mentioned in Star Trek Lives! the book about Trek fandom co-authored by Sondra Marshak. Strange New Worlds in contrast was a "writing contest" for those with less than three published stories, and saw itself as much more professional--they do it, after all for money. The things is, as someone once involved in online Trek fandom, I could tell them that a lot of the authors on their contents pages--the best ones--wrote fanfic, often under a pseudonym online. Almost always, their fanfic was better than what got published. There is a kind of blandness, a reigned in feeling to much professionally published Trek fiction, that wasn't true early on when it was closer to it's fandom roots.

So the merit of the stories in these volumes is that they feel more out of the box and were written with a deep knowledge of the characters that comes from love. With fans, you know they're actually going to get Kirk's middle name and eye-color right. With the first New Voyages, I immediately remembered the stories just from their titles--and with affection. I don't think the second anthology was nearly as strong--more than one story here struck me as more amateurish than fresh. Maybe it's because in the first volume they were culling some of the best of what had hit fanzines. This one included not-that-good poetry ("Soliloquy" made me cringe with its last line), a story in script format, a story attributed to the actress who played Uhura, a slashy story by the co-editors, and one by a NASA scientist that... well, is possibly far too hard science for my tastes. The best stories are the two by Connie Faddis. It was nice to see Chapel get her due in "Snake Pit" and it would be easy to see "Marginal Existence" as a filmed episode. So, no not as good as the first volume, although I found it marginally enjoyable enough for a (generous) three stars. (While I gave the first volume five.) ( )