'Star Trek Communicator' Stops Publication

The Star Trek Communicator, the official magazine of the Star Trek Fan Club, has ceased publication, and subscribers will be refunded their payments.

Decipher, which had published the official fan magazine, made the announcement on its web site. "Decipher Inc. will not publish the Star Trek Communicator magazine after Issue #155," wrote company president Cindy Thornburg. "We are in the process of developing a program to access and process subscriber data, calculate refunds, and post to subscriber accounts." Instructions for refunds will be mailed to each subscriber.

As previously reported, the company faced lawsuits and numerous letters from fans complaining about delays in publication and lack of available information about a schedule. Editor Larry Nemecek said that Decipher would cease publication of the magazine, but told fans at a convention this summer that "Paramount will not let the Fan Club and magazine die."

On the Comic Boards, frequent Communicator contributor Kevin Dilmore told fans that he was "confident that you should not completely write off the Communicator's future just yet."

Dilmore said that the goal at the Communicator had always been to create a magazine that people would want to buy. "When they don't, that sends a message: Either people are not as interested in Star Trek as a whole anymore, or that they're not as interested in the magazine as a whole. In either case, that's enough for a company to decide to cease publication."

He added that, should publication resume with another publisher, he hoped that fans would let the new management what kind of material they wanted to see included.

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