Hollow Eve's Mourning After (2021)

Some Truth (Betwixt the Lies)

Many moons ago, in a Kingdom United, October's end was a seasonal occasion duly respected by the nature-loving folk who dwelled there. But all things change, sooner or later, and during a night of storms and knives a wicked hunger was born in the hearts of some men, which quickly spread.

The Kingdom's protectors were unwilling or unable to stop the capitalist greed that slowly consumed the once-good people.

In time, the cruel equation that ensures the rich get richer and the poor become poorer was added to a child's primary education.

Generations later, behind closed doors, handpicked scientists, doctors, and surgeons began working on a method to have it coded directly into the DNA of newborns. But it wasn't necessary, because the children copied what their parents did: as they grew, they looked around and deemed what they had to be of lesser economic value to what they felt their peers had, so they embraced the government approved ideology with great zeal, as if it were mandate.

The Official Star Trek Fact Files (1997-2002)

The Official Star Trek Fact Files (1997-2002)

Authors: Various | Illustrators: Various | Page Count: 8512 (28 pp x 304 issues)

(Alternatively, 7904 not counting the cover + table of contents of each individual issue.)

Partworks - they keep making them, so there must be an acceptable profit margin in it for publishers, even though a huge percentage of folks will get pissed off with the duration and expense and give up buying the damned things before the final issue rolls off the presses.

The Official STFF ran longer than most, over five years, and anyone buying the bi-monthly issues was lucky if their copy wasn't dog-eared and coming apart at the seams, which were designed to come apart (they were perforated), but not, I think, before they even left the fuggin' store!

Information on what the Files contain is better documented on the dedicated Star Trek wikis (Memory Alpha, for example), so if you want a detailed rundown, I recommend visiting those.

What's below is just one person's thoughts on the publication. I didn't have the full collection, I stopped buying the issues when the store that I got them from failed to fulfil the request, but I'd a hell of a lot. I donated the entirety of what I had to a children's charity some years back, when moving into a smaller property, but I got years of enjoyment from them and am pleased that they also aided a good cause - and this post.

Edgar Allan Poe: A Dream Within a Dream (1849)

A Dream Within a Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe | 1849

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.