Sondra Marshak

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"One presumes at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, since that's where she and her family lived for many years. 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:
* TreKon (1976, 1977)
* Palm Beach Con (1975)
* Space-Con (1977)
* Schuster Star Trek Conventions/1977 Philadelphia Schuster Star Trek Convention (1977)
* Schuster Star Trek Conventions/1977 (September) New York City Schuster Star Trek Convention (1977)
* Schuster Star Trek Conventions/1978 New York City (February) Schuster Star Trek Convention (1978)
* Schuster Star Trek Conventions/1978 Atlanta Schuster Star Trek Convention (1978)
==A 1977 Bio and Description==
From the TreKon 1977 program book: 
==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.)"Jacqueline Lichtenberg, preface to "Spock's Pilgrimage", Kraith Collected vol. 4.
In 2012, Lichtenberg contributed a comment to Steve Donoghue's blog Notes for a Star Trek Bibliography as follows:
==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."Jeff Ayers, Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion. Pocket Books, 2006.
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.More in A Piece of the Action 37, April 1976.
A fan in 1983 wrote: 
==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!. Nichelle Nichols referred to this book as The Uhura Connection. "Someone asked about a book [Nichols] was to work on, called the "Uhura Connection", with Marshak and Culbreath. She said she had had a disagreement with them, but someday would write the book herself. - comments at Aucon '81, reported by Elizabeth Holden in The Final Frontier #7. 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).
Star Trek: The Lost Books.
==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: 
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.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.
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." 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.
In 1998, another fan commented: 
Another comment in 1998: 
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'."Spock Shaped Snickerdoodles, review by delmarsdoll and discussion with klangley56, 2009-07-14 - 27.
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.
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"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., and replied as follows: 
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 
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."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.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).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. 
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."David Gerrold, Facebook article: Somebody asked me again what I thought about K/S fans, 2013-08-27.
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
==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.
==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:
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):
===1984===
 
===1985===
===2010===
Steve Donoghue, in his ongoing analysis of Star Trek fandom, refers to Marshak and Culbreath as among the "first ladies of fandom"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. 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 fictionIn 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., 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===
==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==
Category:Fanwriters