Margaret Wander Bonanno Speaks
Timothy W. Lynch
response to my interview with Richard Arnold. She asked that it be reprinted
and distributed as widely as possible.
Tim Lynch
==============================================================================
Dear Mr. Lynch:
I do not own a computer, and therefore do not subscribe to any of the computer
nets. Your recent "Interview with Richard Arnold" [10 Sep 91] was forwarded
to me by a friend. As Mr. Arnold not only mentions me several times in the
interview, but also makes reference to the letterzine ENGAGE!, I have enclosed
for your consideration a copy of a letter I wrote to ENGAGE! in July of this
year regarding the Star Trek novel PROBE.
The events surrounding PROBE, as described in this letter (and updated to
September 5, 1991, when my agent was informed by Dave Stern that PROBE had
been cancelled), have also been reiterated in my portion of the SFWA [Science
Fiction Writers of America] grievance currently being brought against Pocket
Books, Inc. As I am willing to swear to the truth of these events under oath
if necessary as part of the legal process of that grievance, you may be
assured that this is the truth as I know it. Any portion of this account
which is untrue or inaccurate is the result of untruths or inaccuracies which
were relayed to me or to my agent by personnel at Pocket Books.
You will note that I do not mention Mr. Arnold by name anywhere in my letter
to ENGAGE! My difficulties with PROBE began and ended with Dave Stern at
Pocket Books. Mr. Arnold's involvement with the book was, in fact, never with
the manuscript I submitted in December, 1990, but rather with a version of the
novel which had already been rewritten twice or possibly three times under
Dave Stern's direction, and from which I had been denied permission to remove
my name, even though less than 50% of it was still recognizably mine. Mr.
Arnold's instrumentality toward that particular version of PROBE, if any, was
inconsequential.
And I state here unequivocally, for the record, and in direct contradiction to
Mr. Arnold's statements in your interview, that I have never heretofore, in
any public context, in writing or by spoken word, mentioned him by name. Nor
have I ever mentioned the official rewriter of PROBE by name. If Mr. Arnold
is as accurate in all else as he is in his misrepresentation of someone he
does not know, one can understand the nature of the problem.
And isn't it curious that, one full day after Dave Stern officially announced
the cancellation of PROBE, Mr. Arnold was insisting to you that it was still
scheduled for release?
Hello, Alice; welcome to Wonderland...If Mr. Arnold cares to take this up with
me personally--I accept the challenge.
Margaret Wander Bonanno
September 25, 1991
=============================================================================
And now, the letter to ENGAGE!.
The letter appears verbatim except for the correction of obvious typos. Any
obvious mistakes left over are probably my fault.
==========================================================================
Some of you probably already know what this letter is about. Either you've
heard what I've been saying at various East Coast cons this spring, or you've
encountered a rumor or two on CompuServe or GEnie. If the thought of yet
another Trek writer lamenting her fate bores or infuriates you, read no
further. If not...
Pocket Books' June hardcover release is a novel called PROBE. Mine is the
only name on the cover and on the title page. This is not to say the book is
entirely my work. Approximately fifty percent of the manuscript I submitted
in December, 1990 comprises sixty percent of what is contained in those pages.
More about those percentages later. For now, it is perhaps best to explain
what happened in terms of questions I am most often asked.
Q: "Isn't there a list of rules for what's allowed or not allowed in Trek
novels? Isn't it written down somewhere so you writers can have access to it?
You must have broken some heavy-duty rules in order to have your novel so
drastically rewritten."
Yes, there is. No, it isn't. And as far as I can as ascertain, the only
mistake I made was in taking Paramount Licensing at their word, a patently
foolish thing to do considering what's happened to at least four other Trek
writers whom I know about.
Anyone who sets about to write a Trek novel understands the ground rules; we
know the characters, we know what they would or would not do based upon the TV
series and the films. The problem comes under what I call the Flavor of the
Wekek category--a series of nebulous, unwritten taboos which ferment in the
brains of various Paramount personnel and change with the prevailing wind.
Things like whether or not Sulu has a first name (in some novels he does, in
some he doesn't). Things like whether or not characters like Riley can be
taken from the screen and used in a novel. Then there is the "sequel" taboo.
This was the one that got me into trouble.
See, Dave Stern, my editor at Pocket, wanted me to write about what happened
to the Probe after it left Earth, tracing it back to its planet of origin.
Fine, I said, but let me work that around a Romulan/Federation peace
conference in the Neutral Zone, and may I reuse my two original characters,
Cleante and T'Shael, from DWELLERS IN THE CRUCIBLE? DWELLERS was, in Dave's
own words, his "best-seller in 1985."
The proposal for the novel which was to become PROBE (my eighth submitted;
Dave spent a great deal of time rejecting the first seven proposals on the
basis of their possibly running into trouble at Paramount) went to Paramount
Licensing. The memo sent to Pocket from Paramount Licensing permitted me to
use original characters "as _supporting_ characters in this story, rather than
major characters, as this tends to slight the Star Trek regulars." Unquote.
Whew! I thought: no problem! And I set to work.
Well, needless to say, between the time I received an undated, unsigned copy
of the memo circa December '89, and the time I submitted the completed
manuscript in December '90, the wind had shifted considerably. Cleante and
T'Shael, whom I had carefully woven into approximately one-third of the
narrative, had to go.
Q: "So you refused to do the rewrite, and Dave handed it over to someone
else?"
No, I did not refuse to do the rewrite. First of all, this was not the first
rewrite Dave demanded. Before he even sent the ms. to Paramount, he required
fifty-seven (count 'em!) minor changes in less than two weeks' time (while I
was simultaneously racing a deadline to complete the audio script version of
PROBE, but that's another story), and I complied. When I did not hear
anything further from Dave, I assumed he had approved the manuscript and
forwarded it to Paramount.
When he announced that Cleante and T'Shael had to be expurgated form the book,
I asked why he had approved the ms. with them in it if he didn't think it
would fly. He announced he "hadn't approved the ms.; I only sent it to
Paramount because I was worried about the deadline." (Fact: no manuscript
can leave his desk without his approval.) Then he demanded I rewrite
one-third of a 501-page ms. in six days!
Now, maybe the Earth was created in six days, but I'm not God. I asked for
four weeks--a month, tops. Dave said he'd get back to me.
Three of the six days later, he did. "We can't wait for you," he said, "we're
turning this over to a rewriter."
Bottom line? He gave the rewriter six weeks to accomplish what I'd been
willing to do in four, and he still didn't make the original April 1 deadline.
And the current version of PROBE is shorter by some 87 ms. pages, and full of
loose ends, lost subplots, blown surprises, and lines of dialogue that come
out of nowhere.
Q: "That's outrageous! How could you sit still and let them do that to you?
Why didn't you do something?"
Star Trek novels are written under a work-for-hire contract. Paragraph #7 of
that contract reads as follows: "Publisher and/or Paramount shall own all
right, title and interest in and to the MS, the Work and all additions to,
deletions from, alterations of or revisions in the MS and the Work, and all
drafts, notes, concepts, ideas, suggestions and approaches related
thereto...", etc.
You get the general idea. What it means is that Paramount owns the copyright
(the only entity I write for which does), and the writer is essentially a
slave. A well-paid slave, very often, but a slave nevertheless.
Q: "If you knew this was slave-labor, why did you sign such a contract in the
first place?"
Because I love Star Trek, I want to write Star Trek, and this is the only way
to do it. And because the editors at Pocket used to be on the writers' side,
before they were replaced by their Evil Twins.
Q: "You should be honored that you were even selected to write a Star Trek
novel, much less three of them. If you're so unhappy, why don't you quit
whining and write something else?"
I am, I have, and I do. PROBE happens to be my eleventh novel, but none of my
other work gets nearly the exposure the Trek novels do. This is why it's
especially painful to have a novel which is at best half mine become the
arbiter of my style and talent to hundreds of thousands of readers, whereas my
other works reach only a few thousand.
Q: "If you feel that strongly about PROBE, why didn't you have your name
taken off it?"
One of the things Pocket did to ensure my "loyalty" to this project was to
print the covers for PROBE a full six months before the book was completed
(even the title, incidentally, was not mine; Dave Stern announced that the
book would be called PROBE because his boss needed a title to bring to the
1990 ABA Conference). There was my name emblazoned on x-thousand of covers
(and in cover inserts in subsequent Trek novels throughout last fall). Any
insistence on my part that my name be removed from the novel would have been
outright denied. Or, worst-case scenario, I would have had to reimburse
Pocket to have all those covers reprinted (a frank impossibility), and I have
no doubt that future royalties (which have rarely been on time to begin with)
would have been impacted.
(I did ask for a coauthor byline for the rewriter on the title page. Denied.
A chance to acknowledge the rewriter's contribution on an acknowledgement
page? Also denied. Dave suggested--through my agent at this point; we ceased
speaking directly once my work was in the hands of the rewriter--an
acknowledgement which went something like "To the unsung heroes at Pocket
Books. This work is as much theirs as mine." Ask me why PROBE's
acknowledgement page is blank.)
Q: "Well, so what? You still get your royalties, don't you?"
Well, yes and no. First of all, $10,000 of my royalties will go to pay the
rewriter. Secondly, for no legal reason I can fathom, Dave Stern attempted to
withhold one-half of my delivery money; only my agent's intervention reduced
that to one-fourth. We might have contested it and won the full amount, but I
honestly needed the money that week, and Dave was well aware of this.
Q: "Why do you think he did this?"
To punish me for being an uppity female? I honestly don't know. The great
mystery in all of this will always be how Dave Stern--the laid back guy who
used to get us free passes to Trek movie premieres, the guy who let us hold
writers' meetings at his office and sprang for dinner later, the sensitive,
hands-on editor who did such a wonderful job on STRANGERS FROM THE SKY (you
may note his name in the acknowledgements)--became transformed, in a matter of
three days, into some alien pod-person. I used to think I was a good judge of
character, but I will never understand this.
Q: "Do you know who did the rewrite? You must really hate the rewriter."
Yes, I do know, although I will not reveal that person's name here. And no, I
do not hate the rewriter, for several reasons. First, as I learned through
several reliable sources, s/he was lied to, having been told by Dave Stern
that I had flatly refused to do the rewrite and s/he was needed to save this
book from cancellation. Secondly, s/he found his/her own work threatened:
Refuse to do the rewrite, and you'll never be allowed to write Trek again.
Given these circumstances, I believe I would have done the same thing.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the rewriter tried mightily to stay within my
framework and my concept; the portions s/he contributed in order to comply
with Paramount's dictate were actually well-crafted. It was Dave Stern's
little editorial chainsaw after the fact that did far more extensive damage.
Q: "What exactly was changed?"
Obviously, all references to Cleante and T'Shael have been eliminated (well,
actually, not *all*; Dave's work was so sloppy he missed a couple). All
subplots connected with them are gone, and only the absolutely essential
dialogue has been given to a Vulcan named T'Drea (if she sometimes sounds like
a Vulcan, and sometimes like a human of Egyptian extraction, this is why);
none of T'Drea's backstory is mine.
Dave's primary agenda seems to have been to give his personal hero James T.
Kirk as much he-man action as possible; therefore most of the scenes I had
given to Riley and/or Sulu are now Kirk's. Also, where I had Kirk in serious
onscreen negotiations with the commander of the Romulan vessel, Dave now has
him duking it out with a bunch of Rom security guards, so Kirk's dialogue has
been indiscriminately redistributed to Spock, McCoy and even Uhura. The
Romulan commander, Hiran, was originally a straight-shooter who enjoyed Kirk's
company; he never lied. In Dave's version, he's busy double-dealing with
another Romulan commander and is a lot less likeable.
Q: "Are you telling us PROBE is that bad? Are you telling us not to buy it?"
If you're looking for an average to above-average Star Trek yarn, PROBE is no
better nor worse than many of the novels Pocket has produced in the past year
or so. If you know my work, and expect something of equal calibre, you will
be disappointed. I won't tell you not to buy PROBE; in pragmatic terms, my
daughter's college tuition is riding on this book. But _caveat emptor_. This
may be the best Trek you're going to get under the present regime, but it's
not the best Bonanno.
Q: "Now that you've gone public with this, aren't you afraid you'll never be
allowed to writer Star Trek again?"
That fear was realized for me over a year ago when a certain Paramount
employee, who has never met me, felt free to describe me as a "wannabe Trek
writer" to an audience at a Creation Con in Tucson, Arizona. This person
presently wields considerable power at Paramount, and I know I will never be
permitted to write another novel as long as he holds his present position.
But before this person continues to risk a libel suit by bad-mouthing me and
other writers in public, he should remember that I have one thing he doesn't
have: a career outside of Star Trek.
As for Dave Stern, many have paid the price of his impatience. Under his
regime, several books have been killed outright (one of them only two weeks
before it was due to be released!), several others mutilated more severely
than PROBE. But, like his namesake, Dave has been playing with protomatter.
Perhaps if you've already read PROBE, you understand what I mean. And we know
what happens to people who play with protomatter.
Q: "We've noticed the quality of Trek novels deteriorating lately. What can
we do about it?"
Letter-writing campaigns have saved Star Trek more than once; perhaps it's
time to try again. Write to Dave Stern at Pocket (the address is inside every
Trek novel). Send him a photocopy of this letter if you'd like. Send a copy
to his boss, Irwyn Applebaum, at the same address (Irwyn has no hands-on
contact with the Trek novels, but he deserves to know what his subordinate is
up to.) Send a copy to Richard Arnold at Paramount. Maybe you might go so
far as to send them back the novels you've been dissatisfied with and demand a
refund. (Don't send PROBE back to me; my "take" is only 60 cents per copy.)
Let them know that you, and Star Trek, deserve better. Thank you for your
attention.