Futures Past is publishing Mirror, Mirror & More Classic Short Stories by the Screenwriter of Star Trek, Fantastic Voyage, Twilight Zone, and Other SF Movies and TV Shows by Jerome Bixby this summer. The book will be “the first collection of Jerome Bixby’s science fiction in nearly fifty years,” and will feature two forgotten pulp magazine stories by that Bixby adapted for Star Trek episodes.
Bixby (1923-98) was the editor of Planet Stories from 1950 to 1951. As a writer, his career began with “Tubemonkey” (1949, it’s included in this volume), and peaked in the mid-1950s. But he soon made the move to Hollywood, writing a number of low-budget, late-1950s monster movies, including It: The Terror from Beyond Space. He also moved into television, as a writer for the series Men Into Space.
He is best remembered, however, for the four episodes he wrote for the original Star Trek, the first of which, “Mirror, Mirror” introduced the long-running concept of the mirror universe. That episode was based on his story by the same name, which will be included in this book. Additionally, he wrote the episodes “By Any Other Name” (based on his “Cargo to Callisto”), “Day of the Dove”, and “Requiem for Methuselah”.
The collection will also contain Bixby’s most famous short story, “It’s a Good Life”, which was adapted for the original Twilight Zone television series, and then for the Twilight Zone Movie, and finally 2002-03 TZ series as “It’s Still a Good Life”.
The book will be released as both a trade paperback ($15.99) and an e-book ($7.99).