New ‘Star Trek Series’ and Self-Publishing Wide

Credit: Pixabay.com

As I said last post, I’m postponing the Book-To-Movie review to next week like I did last month because of the inevitable delays in the library’s services where I check out movies from. So today I have some views about some upcoming sci fi TV shows, especially the “Star Trek” series, and updates about the self-publishing of my work

Upcoming ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Series

The problem with a lot of science fiction TV series right now is that they don’t do much more to take a person’s mind off of the gloom and depression of the present world-wide plague that continues killing thousands of people. We go outside of our homes for the essentials and see that everyone is wearing masks and remembering that we too are, if we’re wise, wearing one. It’s so surreal since nothing like this has happened before in most of our life spans. (Most of us weren’t around yet to experience the early 20th century flu pandemic.) It’s as if we’ve been living in a post-apocalyptic science fiction story ourselves. Because so much current sci fi in all mediums—movies, TV, books and games—are post-apocalyptic or dystopian, as an escape genre sci fi isn’t much of an escape from our present reality. But the new “Star Trek” series coming to streaming television, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”, will be much different.

As with the current state of sci fi, today’s “Star Trek” series such as “Discovery” and “Picard” have been bleak in their outlook at least compared to TV science fiction of the 1960s on back. Sci fi creators and fans are obsessed with bleak and even pessimistic science fiction especially in TV. They have been for the last two decades. The revived “Battlestar Galactica” series’ big ratings reflect that, ironically since it’s a series based on an earlier one of the same name from the ‘70s that had a positive outlook on space travel. And because “Star Trek” has been one of the longest running TV franchises in sci fi that has typically had an optimistic outlook, beginning with the original series in the 1960s and ending with the spinoffs of the 1990s (e.g. “Deep Space Nine”, “Voyager”), it’s been ironic that some of the newer series have had darker storylines even if just by comparison. But because their storylines have been darker it shows how even “Star Trek” producers and fans have sold out to this pessimism thing.

I have no problem with dark science fiction. In fact, it’s mostly the type of science fiction that I write. What I have a problem with is when the airwaves and streaming services bump off or turn down optimistic science fiction TV series for the bleak, depressing ones all because they are so in (demand). Also, what I don’t like is when dark sci fi goes too far and has not even the hint of hope in its storytelling all because its creators want to satisfy a capitalist-driven and brainwashed society with the entertainment of gore and violence. And the last thing we need today is a dominating message in pop cultural storytelling that is absent of hope during this time of darkness that is made up of the pandemic, revived racial violence by both corrupt cops and citizens fueled by the Trump administration, and mass shootings.

“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”, however, declares to bring optimism back to “Star Trek”, the message of hope and possibilities that the original series had. In fact, this series will go back to even before the beginning. It will cover the period that predates that of the original series. It will give us the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike of the original series’ pilot episode who was in charge of the Enterprise before James T. Kirk took over, yet will also feature Spock as a major character. In fact, in a video titled “A Special Message for Star Trek Fans” the starring members of the cast themselves declare the series to return to the classic optimism of Star Trek.

A release date for “Strange New Worlds” has not been announced yet but the series will be streamed on CBS Access. Don’t have CBS Access? Neither do I. So we’ll either have to purchase it or just hope it will come out in rental format of some sort, such as DVD or Amazon Prime Video, soon enough.

A ‘Star Trek’-Inspired Series May Be Coming

If you think “Strange New Worlds” will be the only optimistic science fiction show around, there’s at least a small oasis for sci fi TV. However, hopefully it won’t remain too small. “Space Command” is a space opera series in production. It’s one that is being crowdfunded and so has no release date yet and no contract for release. However, director Marc Zicree and his crew have been dedicated to the production and marketing of it since the beginning more than three years ago. Even though it has not been fully produced yet or officially released, the first two episodes have been completed and are available to watch for free.

“Space Command” embodies the optimism of the original “Star Trek” series, the original “Battlestar Galactica” (Glen Larson’s) and 1950s-and-back space opera movie serials and television. Even the culture with in it reflects 1950s sci fi except with future technology based on today’s advanced technology. Because of this, it can be considered atompunk. But because it has an optimistic storyline it can also fall under the category of hopepunk.

Going Wide With Self-Publishing

When I self-published my first book, “The Fool’s Illusion”, back in 2013, online self-publishing was relatively new. Most self-published material was looked at as second rate and even though it’s given a little more praise now it’s still pretty much looked down on compared to books that go through traditional publishers. When I published “Fool’s Illusion” it was like the most miraculous thing that happened to my fiction because it helped my fiction reach more audiences than ever.

But I’ve recently learned that distributing your self-published material through one platform, even if it’s through the world’s largest one which is Amazon/Kindle Direct Publishing, is not going to do much in reaching a wide audience. There’s much more competition in publishing and selling books online now than there was back then and even then it was competitive. So, as far as online self-publishing and book distribution go, I’ve decided to move beyond Amazon. Note: I am not removing my books from Amazon; I’m not even planning to stop using Amazon’s self-publishing service, Kindle Direct Publishing; I am moving beyond it. That means I have decided to go wide with publishing and distributing my books.

What do I mean by going wide, for those of you who are not that familiar with self-publishing? I mean that instead of just publishing and distributing my fiction via one platform, in this case Amazon, I am going to publish and distribute it through other platforms as well. So, I’ve created an account with Smashwords which provides both self-publishing and book distribution services like Amazon’s Kindle Direct. Two differences are 1) it distributes to other online bookstores than just their own; and 2) it serves mostly e-books. So, there’s one reason why I wouldn’t stop using Kindle Direct: I believe in preserving the culture of print books. But as much as I don’t like them for myself, e-books are really in right now and probably will be for an undetermined length of time.

The good news about my going wide is that if you’re a reader of e-books and use an e-reader device other than Kindle, such as Barnes and Noble’s Nook, you won’t have to worry as much about compatibility issues or having to convert e-reader formats (e.g. from Epub to .mobi) if you want to purchase and download any of my books. Once my books publish to these other platforms I’ll be sure to let you know!


Be here next week for our Book-To-Movie review! Do you think our sci fi of today has gone too pessimistic? Are you looking forward to when “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” releases? Fellow self-publishing authors: do you publish wide or do you stick to one self-publishing platform?

Until next time . . .