"Mirror, Mirror" New Jerome Bixby Collection Reaches Top 10 on Star Trek Bestseller List at Amazon Kindle

  The famed Star Trek script writer's new collection of eleven stories from the pulp science fiction magazines, Mirror, Mirror, has reached the top 10 on the Star Trek bestseller list at Amazon Kindle and the top 50 among science fiction anthologies and collections.

   Before he wrote four fan-favorite Star Trek episodes, and the screen story for the movie Fantastic Voyage, Jerome Bixby (1923-1998) was a highly regarded professional science fiction magazine editor. But Bixby deserted magazine editing for Hollywood. Bixby is best remembered for episodes he wrote for the original Star Trek television series, and is much revered by series fans for introducing, in "Mirror, Mirror," the concept of the "mirror universe" where The Federation and Kirk, Spock, et al, are all their evil exact opposites in character and deed.  

   Bixby also wrote three other episodes, "By Any Other Name," "Day of the Dove," and, "Requiem for Methuselah," which are ranked among the best in the series. The new collection contains a trio of rarely reprinted novelettes containing ideas that Bixby would later mine and transmogrify in two of his highly regarded Star Trek episodes. These stories are "One-Way Street" and "Mirror, Mirror" (both used in the ST script "Mirror, Mirror") and "Cargo to Callisto" (used in "By Any Other Name"). The collection also contains Bixby's most famous short story, "It's a Good Life," memorably dramatized first on The Twilight Zone, then in the Twilight Zone Movie, and finally reinterpreted for the twenty-first century on the series 2002 incarnation, in "It's Still a Good Life." 

Buy Mirror, Mirror in  Kindle only $3.99.

SCIENCE FICTION HISTORY: THE FIRST SCIENCE FICTION EDITORS – PART 2

In 1936 Hugo Gernsback lost his second set of science fiction magazines, and barely escaped another bankruptcy, by selling Wonder Stories and it's companions to Ned Pines' Standard Publications. A streamlined publisher of successful pulp magazines, Pines put a savvy young man who had been a reader and fan of science fiction since childhood, Mort Weisinger, in charge. Weisinger jettsoned Gernsback's preoccupation with with Victorian gagetry and scientific lectures on how everything worked for the kind of juvenile whiz-bang ray guns and monsters slant Ray Palmer would later be pilloried for taking (often by authors who had grown up writing for Weisinger). A decade on, in the more ambitious hands of Sam Merwin Jr., Standard's line of pulps shot high in the field virtually overnight, becoming second only to John W. Campbell Jr.'s Astounding.

When [in 1936] Standard Publications bought Wonder Stories and renamed it Thrilling Wonder Stories, they had a man on their editorial staff just made for the magazine, Mort Weisinger. Weisinger was one of the early group of fans, including Ray Palmer, Julius Schwartz, and Forrest J. Ackerman, who published the legendary fan mag, Fantasy Magazine. Mort had had a few stories sold and wanted nothing more than to edit a stf magazine. He was given the assignment and carried on until he left in 1941 for an editorial position with the Superman comic magazine group. But this didn't end his stf editing career. Today, with Julius Schwartz, he co-edits two stf comic magazines, Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space, produced by the publisher of Superman.

Oscar J. Friend ran Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, from 1941 until 1945, when Sam Merwin Jr., took them over.

Sam Merwin Jr. took over a tough job when TWS and Startling were handed to him. They were in a sad, sad state. Though Merwin didn't know too much about science-fiction, he is a darn good editor and knows a good story when he sees one. Slowly he built the mags up until when he left them only a few months ago, they were (and are) among the best of their types. Sam is a big man, about six-foot, heavily built and with an extra strong sense of humor. He left

the Standard mags to free-lance in writing science-fiction and other "pop" was doing. Young Merwin assured me his father was hard at work on a stf novel.types of stories. I had the pleasure of meeting his teen-age son at Steve Takacs' book shop only recently and inquired what his

Merwin leaves his stf magazines in good hands—in the hands of his silent partner, Sam Mines, who will carry on the policies of Merwin and add some of his own. Mines is an old-time stf fan. He started reading our favorite brand of literature during the early days of Gernsback, got sidetracked into westerns when he started writing, but now he's with his old love, scientifiction. Merwin paid him the greatest compliment possible when, at the 1st Fan-Vet Convention in New York, in April, he stated that Mines is the man who should have gotten the job of editing the Standard stf mags in the first place, "as he knows more about stf than I'll ever know." [Mines would purchase Philip Jose Farmer's The Lovers, for the first time bringing science fiction to a truly adult level.]

Sam Mines, back left. Ted Dikty (Best SF of the Year editor), back center, Jerome Bixby, back right.

Sitting left, Phil Farmer, sitting right Melvin Korshak. Circa 1950.

Science Fiction History: 1954 Autobiographical Profile by Jerome Bixby Star Trek, Fantastic Voyage Author

Long before he penned television and movie classics like Fantastic Voyage, "Mirror, Mirror" "Day of the Dove", "Requiem for Methuselah", and "By Any Other Name", Jerome Bixby was a young short story writer trying to make a living selling yarns to any publication that appeared likely. His sly comedy, "The Battle of the Bells" appeared in the September 1954 issue of Imagination (the illustration for the story is reproduced below). Along with the story the editors requested a 500 word bio, and Bixby supplied one. This "About the Author" contains some illumination stories for fans of Fantastic Voyage,  Star Trek, and his other work for the screen and tv. Bixby wrote:

"Was born in Hollywood, January 11, 1923, at 3:48 A. M., began rolling slowly eastward, and fourteen years later found myself in New York City.

"In the interim I'd had measles, whooping cough and mumps all at the same time; bit a dog and apoliceman; outrun a tornado; flown a kite bearing a message to an angel (Lon Chaney's—and it came down without the message), and read a pulp magazine.

"The magazine was Street & Smith's old Wild West Weekly, one half of whose total wordage every issue consisted of gunshots written out as "Crang-g-g-g!" Soon I graduated to Doc Savage, Bill Barnes, Operator #5, G-8, The Spider, ad nostalgium (collected, swapped, ran a store for the neighborhood kids in my garage) . . . and at last to Astounding, because I wondered how the rocketships on the cover flew without wings. I immediately grew antennae, and haven't stopped reading science fiction since . . . and a year afterward, at thirteen, I sold my first story I ever wrote. To Astounding, you ask? Nope—to Wild West Weekly. Crang-g-g-g!

"My first ironclad ambition was to be a concert pianist; was just beginning to shape up when somebody broke my fist with his jaw . . . that ended that. Turned to composition; was an early member of The New Chamber Music Society, and had some radio and recital performances of piano works. Dropped music for ten years then (had a stomach to support)—but now the bug is starting to bite again: am sketching an orchestral work.

"Have worked as: soda jerk, office boy, lathe hand—(break here for military service: Air Corps, last war) —record salesman, insurance investigator, pianist in a dance band, portrait sculptor, freelance cartoonist, and recently (since '49) as a stf editor on and off. The ons have included Planet, TWS, Startling, Galaxy and Beyond; during the offs I've free-lanced. Five wonderful years . . . I only hope the next five are half as much fun.

"Likes: cats (her name is En-gram), Beethoven, bittersweet chocolate, Prokofieff, Adlai Stevenson, summer, and disputatious sophistry.

"Dislikes: overexuberant dogs, liver, 99% of all popular music, the advertising racket, mobiles, coffee that isn't quite sweet enough, and big fat cars with chromium smiles.

"Am 5'10", weigh about 135, and have muscles only in my fingers. I am content as I review the list to those who like and dislike me. I write my stories in a 4' by 4' closet, because I grind my Royal at night and sleep days when I hit a writing streak, and people who aren't crazy like to sleep at night . . . a man banged on the door and told me so.

"I'm glad to be alive, and in this country. I would, however, happily employ time-travel, catalepsy, deep freeze, transposition of souls or any other workable device in order to escape the childswarm of not-quite-yets and just-around-thecorners (and the goofball demands) of this gestating century." —Jerome Bixby

Watch for news of a new collection of Jerome Bixby's short stories and novelettes with a very personal introduction by his son, Emerson Bixby from Futures-Past Editions. Visit the Jerome Bixby Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jerome-Bixby/253812261442534/