- Heartwarming Moments: In the first book, Gene Roddenberry has a message of stunned gratitude for the creative expressions of the fans:We were particularly amazed when thousands, then tens of thousands of people began creating their own personal Star Trek adventures. Stories, and paintings, and sculptures, and cookbooks. And songs, and poems, and fashions. And more. The list is still growing. It took some time for us to fully understand and appreciate what these people were saying. Eventually we realized that there is no more profound way in which people could express what Star Trek has meant to them than by creating their own very personal Star Trek things.Because I am a writer, it was their Star Trek stories that especially gratified me. I have seen these writings in dog-eared notebooks of fans who didn't look old enough to spell "cat." I have seen them in meticulously produced fanzines, complete with excellent artwork. Some of it has even been done by professional writers, and much of it has come from those clearly on their way to becoming professional writers. Best of all, all of it was plainly done with love.
And each story has a foreword from one of the cast members (Nimoy, Doohan, Nichols, Barrett, Takei, Kelley and Shatner), appreciating the love for their characters and the fans' contributions to the mythos.
- Just Here for Godzilla: The second book commonly isn’t seen as good as the first. Most of the stories in it were written by professionals or by Marshak and Culbreath and their very exclusive inner circle. People usually buy it for Nichelle Nichols' "Surprise!", which she intended as Spock/Uhura but to which Marshak and Culbreath added gratuitous Slash Fic elements. Or they're after "The Procrustean Petard," the first (and last) professionally published Gender Swap fic (there were, of course, many such stories, to the point that when Lee Burwasser wrote one for Masiform D in 1975 he titled it "Here We Go Again").
- Values Dissonance: Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath's “The Procrustean Petard” follows from “Turnabout Intruder” in being a genderswap story
, and it makes Turnabout look better in comparison. Kirk becomes a helpless woman and having to be saved from Kang attempting to rape him, and being told multiple times that he’s asking to be raped, seemingly just by existing — and that he's too beautiful to be a Starship Captain. In some ways it's a real Take That! to Roddenberry's misogynistic assumptions in the original show.
