David Gerrold

(2003! 2003! 2003!)

Keeping on the science fiction theme (not much news to report in the world of space, so far today!), here's a link to the website of SF author David Gerrold.

Gerrold got his start as a write of short SF and screenplays for the original Star Trek series. He's also written a number of SF novels. One, The Man Who Folded Himself, is an interesting time travel/parallel universe novel. Another, When Harlie Was One, is one of the few SF novels dealing with the development of artificial intelligence where the AI doesn't go berserk and try to kill the human race (the other is Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

Gerrold was also instrumental in the development of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He even had to take a case to arbitration when it was alluded that he was not heavily involved, and was denied back pay (he won).

From his involvement in the original series came a novel Yesterday's Children. He had written a proposal for a script about the Enterprise finding a multi-generation starship. Eventually that book was written as The Galactic Whirlpool, while Yesterday's Children was re-written as Star Hunt.

The introduction to the 1995 edition of Star Hunt has an amusing chronology of the series of books and proposed movies and/or television series based on this story. There have been a number of failed attempts to get the story told on the big and little screen, one even involved another Star Trek veteran (D.C. Fontana).

Gerrold's older stuff has been picked up by BenBella Books, publishers of an excellent reissue of John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up.

They already have a new edition of The Man Who Folded Himself, and are now reissuing the Star Wolf books. They have The Voyage of the Star Wolf out as well as The Middle of Nowhere. No mention of Star Hunt, which shares some of the same characters as the others (and was written first), but appears to be orphaned from the others in this publishing effort.

There is mention of another book in the series, Blood and Fire. From some of the text in other sources, it appears to be a reworking of a story for Star Trek: The Next Generation that did not pan out. I'll be interested in seeing what he's come up with.

Posted by Fred Kiesche at May 23, 2007 09:46 AM