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My dinner with David Gerrold
I am very fortunate in my friends. A good example is an email I received this past June from sci-fi novelist and Star Trek fan Robert J. Sawyer. Rob and his wife Carolyn were planning a dinner with David Gerrold, and he asked me to join them. “Let me know if that works for you,” Rob wrote.
It did, indeed, work for me. The dinner setting was the big 60th anniversary celebration at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY. Rob and I had been invited to give talks, and we were in great company: the celebrity guest list included William Shatner, BarBara Luna, Louise Sorel, Nancy Kovack, France Nuyen, Phil Morris, Clint Howard, and Pamelyn Ferdin. And David Gerrold, Star Trek royalty and Rob’s longtime friend. (See also my article on their book Boarding the Enterprise.)
I spent the week before Ticonderoga rereading David’s The World of Star Trek, published in 1973. It’s a book I loved as a teen but hadn’t read in years. I am pleased to say it holds up. It’s an important early non-fiction work; I also wrote an article on the book itself.
But back to dinner. A few hours before we were to gather, I asked Rob if it would be okay to request an interview with David during the meal. I wanted to discuss The World of Star Trek but I didn’t know if that was proper dinner behaviour. Ask him, Rob said, and so I did. And I asked if I could record the conversation.
David talked to me between entrée and cappuccino about one of the foundational works of Star Trek scholarship. Here is an edited transcript.
The first printing of the US edition (left) and the Canadian tenth.
[The book] was enthusiastic. I think that was part of its success. But it wasn’t blindly enthusiastic. There was a chapter at the end where I said here’s how it could be better, here’s what they could have done and should have done.
[I had pitched] a book about The Trouble with Tribbles but halfway through I realized there was too much material. And I called [the publisher] and said, “Let’s break it into two books” and so one book was about The Trouble with Tribbles and the other was The World of Star Trek. And they both sold very, very well.
I bought a house. My first house.
My biggest regret was we didn’t do the pictures in color and charge $1.75 for the books. We only charged $1.50. The World of Star Trek outsold The Trouble with Tribbles back then; now, The Trouble with Tribbles outsells The World of Star Trek.
[The publisher] had faith not only in me, but she had faith in Star Trek, because they had done so well with the Gene Roddenberry book (The Making of Star Trek). And the Gene Roddenberry book was really: here’s the bible, and here’s the publicity for it…all Stephen Whitfield did was compile all of the stuff, maybe a couple interviews, but nothing more. And me, I interviewed every actor I could get to, every person I could get to. And I heard some of their stories for the first time, like Nichelle with Martin Luther King and so on.
I felt privileged to be able to capture [all that]. I knew that it would sell, but I didn’t know it was going to sell that well. I thought, I love this stuff, behind the scenes. Nobody else had done a behind-the-scenes book. And so, The World of Star Trek peeks behind the scenes, how it was made. And the fans grabbed onto it not just because it was about Star Trek, but it gave them insight into Star Trek.
[When I wrote the book,] I had not yet encountered many of the assholes that were in television. There are people who are in television for the fame, and people who are there for the money, and people who are there because their brother-in-law dragged them in; there are people who are in television for the wrong reasons. Now, I grew up in the theater arts environment, and yeah, there are assholes in theater, but what I learned is the only people who really succeed in theater are people who love theater. Television doesn’t work that way because there’s too much money floating around. And…money is addictive. It is like heroin.
But if you can be on a show that you love, and you love going in, and you love solving the problems… You know, Bob Justman was that way. Dorothy Fontana got it. Gene L. Coon got it. Most of the actors understood that because…actors do connect with the audience. And with Star Trek, once they discovered that the fans were in love with them, they suddenly blossomed. They were stars, they weren’t just actors anymore.
If I had to pick the nicest person in the cast, De Kelley would be way up there. Leonard, when he wasn’t being Spock, he was terrific. Bill had to do like 14-hour days, but when he had time he was playful, he was generous. Nichelle was the warmest.
Once you figured out the writing for the show, you wanted to give De the punchline. He could deliver it.
Writing has paid David Gerrold’s mortgage and grocery bills, and congratulations to him for making that work. And income was certainly one motivation for writing The World of Star Trek. But David also loves the show, and that love is in his book and was obvious in his dinner conversation: “With The World of Star Trek, I said it in the book but I’ll say it again: Star Trek was a dream. It is a dream that the way things are is not the way they have to be. It is a vision of the future, that we’re going to learn how to be a mature species. It is a dream.”
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Revisiting The World of Star Trek
Robert J. Sawyer recently invited me to join him and Star Trek luminary David Gerrold for dinner. I interviewed David after the dishes had been cleared, and that story is told here.
David is every bit as interesting and charming as you would wish. Knowing I would soon have the chance to speak with him, I reread two of his books: The Martian Child (which made me cry, darn you, David) and The World of Star Trek, which I had not read since my teen years. The piece linked above is about the writing of that book. Here, I will share two excerpts in the hope that, to continue the dinner theme, they serve as an amuse-bouche that will prompt you to pull the book off your shelf or go buy a copy.
The World of Star Trek is David’s exploration both of what made the show so popular and of what the producers could have done better, and is told from the standpoint of a writer. He talks a lot about the successes, failures, and hurdles of the creative process that built Star Trek, including this early framing of the genre’s challenge:
Science fiction is not a western with ray guns and spaceships. It is a genre so demanding that few of its practitioners are more than moderately competent at it. The responsibility to be logical and scientifically accurate, while at the same time telling a good dramatic story, will continually defeat any writer who approaches the field with less than total respect for its requirements.
One of the book’s most interesting analyses is of the transporter. Fans like it because it’s cool, and it kept the plot moving for writers and directors. But David explains the trap it created.
[The transporter] was one of Star Trek’s best ideas—a teleportation device so that the Captain and crew could “beam down” to a planet whenever they chose. Thus, the special-effects crew was relieved of the responsibility of having to show either the starship or its shuttlecraft landing on a new planet each week. A golden flicker mixed with a dissolve and an over-dubbed reverberated whine is not only cheaper—it’s more versatile and impressive.
Unfortunately the use of the transporter set up conditions of its own that were not foreseen in the initial postulation.
David at the Star Trek Set Tour And that was the miscalculation. If the transporter had been designed for the express purpose (pun intended) of getting our heroes into the story faster, then it also allowed for them to get out of it just as quickly.
Any time Captain Kirk got himself into real trouble, all he needed to do was call the Enterprise and holler “Scotty! Save my ass!” and Scotty would beam him up so fast the air would crackle. Knowing that, then, there would certainly be no suspense whenever Captain Kirk was captured by the giant Yang-Yangs or the Creeping Blorch.
Therefore, one of three things had to happen to keep Kirk in a story where he was personally menaced:
He would run into aliens of such superior ability that they could nullify his transporter beam. Thus he got captured.
He could run into aliens of such inferior ability that they would knock him over the head and take his communicator away from him without knowing what it was. Again, he got captured.
Or—contact between the Captain and the Enterprise would be cut off by some arbitrary force created by the writer for this specific purpose, thus trapping Kirk in the story until contact could be restored—usually not until just before the last commercial.
This constraint was often solved in a way that served the story. David cites The Squire of Gothos, Tomorrow is Yesterday, and Errand of Mercy as, respectively, examples of when this worked. But as the series progressed, we got The Apple, Bread and Circuses, A Private Little War, The Omega Glory, A Piece of the Action, and Spectre of the Gun — and “the cumulative effect is the focusing of attention on the mechanism used to prevent Kirk from being rescued. We begin to realize that Plato’s Stepchildren is the same story as The Gamesters of Triskelion; the only difference is in the details.”
Pick up the book for more. The World of Star Trek is a fascinating look at the craft of writing this show we love, and it delivers ’70s interviews with stars and production staff, details of early fan activities, and, in David’s words, an account of “some of that magic so that years from now some yet unborn Trekkie may open it up and be able to recapture at least a hint of Star Trek’s magic seasons.”
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Deep cuts are the latest collectible trend
We’re seeing an increase in what I call deep-cut collectibles: figures based on secondary and even obscure characters, ornaments depicting oddball 1970s models, and screen-accurate recreations of the bridge, among others.
And I am definitely here for all this — even though I may no longer be the ideal customer. Forty years into this journey, I have slowed and focused my collecting, and I now concentrate on vintage 1960s and 1970s items. Having said that, I really want that sweet Nacelle Toys bridge model.
And I applaud these companies for releasing collectibles that are essentially love letters to us.
Deep cuts are not new
Deep-cut and obscure collectibles have always existed in our fandom. Over the last few decades, we had the Mego Cheron figure, cards signed by seen-once guest stars, the Spock decanter from the Grenadier Spirits Company, the Eaglemoss model of the Jefferies ring-ship design, and the Playmates Dr. McCoy’s Medical Kit, featuring the “Anabolic Protoplaser with light Up Laser Tip!”
And that list is just from looking around my Star Trek room. There are others.
Celebrating the new deep cuts
So, deep-cut collectibles are not new but I am glad to see the recent uptick in this category.
This TrekNews article rounds up some of the latest obscure figures, including Captain Rachel Garrett from Yesterday’s Enterprise, Tuvix from the actually good Voyager episode of the same name, Peter Preston from Star Trek II, In a Mirror Darkly’s Captain Archer, and others.
And then there is my favourite recent addition: Hallmark’s tribute to the weirdest of all AMT products, the Spock shooting the three-headed snake model.
The AMT model and the new Hallmark ornament
I love that model so much that I paid a professional to assemble and paint one for me. (He also did my AMT Enterprise.) I wonder if today’s Hallmark customers will know where this little gem came from.
The 60th anniversary of Star Trek is surely the catalyst for much of this merch activity, but I think licensees are also tapping into a nostalgia for simpler and better times. Spock shooting that snake is not true to Star Trek’s ethos, but it does evoke a time when building models or playing landing party with action figures helped us celebrate these stories.
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Space challenged? DIY some more display room
I have a long-standing fondness for the nine-inch TOS Playmates figures. I own 24 of them but, since moving to a smaller Star Trek room last year, I could only display 14. They ran along one row on top of my bookshelves, with the rest piled out of sight behind. Here is the before shot.
One day, I realized that my high ceiling gave me a fair bit of airspace so, like big cities around the world, I maximized my available real estate by building up.
I built a shelf on legs that sits behind the front row of figures. That may not seem like a big deal: “So…you discovered shelving?” No, but I was inventive in finding more space for a shelf. And it was cheap.
I bought a six foot fence board for $10.21 and an eight foot length of 2×2 for $3.88. I trimmed about six inches off the board, to fit the shelf between my stereo speakers. I chopped the 2×2 into 11-inch legs because the boxes are 12 inches tall, so this would raise the second row to a good viewing height. Wood glue I already owned did the rest.
Total cost, after tax: $15.92.
The new display shows off a large number of figures but still looks neat and organized.
(Did you spot the one Art Asylum figure? It’s over on the right, top row. That Kirk is a placeholder; I’ll swap it out once I pick up one of the 12 TOS nine-inch figures I do not own. And then what will I do when I buy another after that? No idea.)
Lots of collectors are challenged for space, and I am a big believer in displaying as much of your stuff as possible. So, look up by the ceiling and over doorways. Buy a cabinet that suits your items. Consider putting some items behind others — but don’t overdo that: it is easy to slide into a cluttered look.
I even perched my signed Trials and Tribble-ations Dax figure on top of the speaker around one corner. Again, maximizing space. Now if only I could come up with such an easy solution for the bridge set I want but have no room for.
That’s a problem for another day. This morning, when I walked into my Star Trek room to review this post, my eyes went first to my new display. It made me happy.
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This 1978 Nimoy newsletter was the Internet of the ’70s
Leonard Nimoy needed to tell fans about his new movie, new play, new book of poetry, new cassette, and that, yes, he would be in the upcoming Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Today, this would be done on Bluesky, Facebook, and Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, but 50 years ago those updates came to fans in a stapled and folded newsletter from the Leonard Nimoy Association of Fans for $4 (US) per year.
The Spring 1978 newsletter was produced by LNAF president Louise Stange, and included a letter from Nimoy to his fans. Here is a scan, followed by the highlights.
Collecting money for charity. Nimoy wanted his fan club to have a charitable component. The designated recipient had been UNICEF but this changed in 1975, following the 1973 death of Nimoy’s teenaged nephew from cystic fibrosis. Donations were then split between the Alan Nimoy Memorial Fund and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This letter also details Nimoy’s fundraising for the Boston Children’s Hospital.
Highlighting Invasion. The best movie featuring a Star Trek star prior to The Motion Picture in 1979 was the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Nimoy tells readers that the producer, Rob Solo, is pleased with an early cut of the film.
I don’t own the You and I cassette, but now I want to. Promotion was a main function of the fan clubs, and Nimoy wanted it known people could drop some money on his new cassette of poetry reading. That pitch probably worked then and it just worked now. I hit up eBay looking for one. No luck yet.
Burying the lede. The big news for fans in the spring of 1978 was that Nimoy had settled his dispute with Paramount and would indeed play Spock again — but that was stuck on the second page, following the important announcement that readers could see a preview of his play Vincent at the Sacramento Convention Center Theatre.
Also, early eBay
These newsletters were also a vehicle for collectibles. There are a couple of pages of people looking to buy or sell. I love Ellie Ockert’s complete lack of negotiating skills when she exclaimed “WANTED DESPERATELY – NAME YOUR PRICE.”
I own a bunch of paper from the LNAF but, like this newsletter until just recently, I have barely glanced through the pile. I will try to share more of this 1970s fandom in the future.
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Goodbye, John Wheeler
John Wheeler, the actor who helped create the Tellarites, died on February 6, 2026. His passing was made public a few weeks later.
Before his death, all I knew about Wheeler, beyond his appearance as Gav in Journey to Babel, was that he had a sense of humour about himself. Every autograph of his I have seen includes a little joke, often self-deprecating. You can see this in the signed piece of paper I own.
This and 1.50 will get you a bus ride.
Thanks John Wheeler “GAV” Star Trek
I am not sure where or when he signed this, but it was far enough in the past that a bus ride cost only $1.50.
I own a lot of Star Trek autographs, and almost all of them were obtained in person. That matters because the scrawled name is nice but the real value is the minute or two I get when I reach the front of the autograph line. (That was my experience with Nichelle Nichols, Leonard Nimoy, and many others.)
The two Wheeler autographs I own are an exception; I bought them from a dealer, for two reasons: first, it was unlikely the actor would travel up to Canada for a convention, and second, I liked his joke. It was the 3×5 card that drew my interest; the signed photo card came with it.
I have tried to learn about Wheeler since his death, but sadly all my Star Trek reference works are mute. Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance mentions only Gav, not Wheeler, and Wheeler does not appear in The Fifty-Year Mission or Altman and Gross’ earlier works, or The Star Trek Compendium, The Star Trek Interview Book, The Star Trek Encyclopedia, Star Trek The Complete Unauthorized History, or These are the Voyages.
That is not really surprising. His was a small (albeit important) role in only one episode, and if anyone had asked Wheeler he would probably not have remembered much about the two days he was on set in 1967. It was common for the guest actors, approached by fans decades later, to recall little.
I have since learned from online sources like IMDb and Memory Alpha that he had an extensive list of credits as a character actor, but about his time on the Enterprise I still know nothing.
Thank you, John. You were a working actor and Star Trek was just another job, and not necessarily even among the most interesting or challenging, outside of donning the Tellarite mask. But it meant a lot to us. You helped create a species that continues in our history today.
Left to right: TOS Journey to Babel. TOS Whom Gods Destroy. TAS The Time Trap. ENT Bounty. DIS Short Treks The Escape Artist. LD Moist Vessel
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Space: the final impediment
Nacelle Toys just announced it’s making a 12-piece, 1/10-scale original-series Enterprise bridge model. The modules will be sold one per month, launching later this year to coincide with the 60th anniversary of our show.
Pricing has not been announced but it’s a fair guess the set will not be cheap. But that’s not really the problem; I love that bridge and I will find the money. No, the hurdle is space. The fully assembled piece will be 40 inches in diameter. That’s one full metre of TOS excellence.
Where will I put the thing?
I learned about this wonderful new collectible in a TrekCore article, which is where I also grabbed the bridge images; oddly, there does not seem to be anything on the Nacelle site about this. Thanks as always, TrekCore.
I am fortunate to have a sizable room for my Star Trek collection (even after recently moving to a smaller space) but the only way to accommodate the bridge is to remove something large, like a couple of bookcases or the cabinet holding my Polar Lights Enterprise or the cabinet that displays my Mego collection — and those are not options.
The only other candidate is my smallish corner desk, but that’s where I work. If I can’t work, I can’t afford the bridge.
I’ve heard from many collectors who are also space challenged. One woman I know has her stuff in boxes, and she has some excellent stuff that I don’t own. (Hey, Lisa.) So I am not alone.
And there is one more challenge: getting the pieces. I sent inquiries to a couple of local hobby/model stores and it seems Nacelle sells direct only, not through dealers. And here in Canada, getting 12 packages delivered from the US could kick-off border problems and fees.
Nacelle has handed me a real puzzle, but I love that bridge set so I need to figure out something. As Spock is reported to have said, there are always possibilities.
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Dayton Ward and I created a Trek non-fiction reading list
I like that headline but it’s not actually true. Prolific author and well-known Star Trek fan Dayton Ward posted a list of non-fiction Trek books he wants to read or revisit, and I added my picks in an exchange on Bluesky. So, I did not collaborate with him and we’ve never even met (although I think we would get along famously), but his article plus my suggestions add up to a good to-read resource.
First, check out Dayton’s post. It’s always a pleasure to read content from knowledgeable Star Trek fans, and his suggestions are solid. And he was wise to set the following parameters, because otherwise a reading list can just become every book that says Star Trek on the cover:
While some titles will include info on the 1970s animated series and/or the follow-on movies featuring the original series cast, my primary focus will be the original show. Certain books offering an overview of the entire franchise – or at least “the entire franchise” as it was when a particular book was written – may be added to the list at some point as stretch goals if I hit the main targets, but even then I’ll likely stick to the parameters I’ve set up. This also isn’t meant to be an inclusive list…
To his selections I added the following. Some are titles Dayton considered but left off, for the reasons stated above. At least one — the DeForest Kelley biography — was new to him. (You can read his replies to my suggestions at the Bluesky link above.)
Where No Man…William Shatner, Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath
I cannot say I love Marshak’s and Culbreath’s writing style, but this is the first book about Shatner and I am a completist, so this has to be on my list. Also, it comes from a time when Shatner’s public persona was a little less polished. See also this post for more on that era.
Star Trek Concordance. Bjo Trimble
This episode guide and lexicon was groundbreaking and invaluable when Ballantine published it in 1976, plus it had a spinny “Enterprise Index Tricorder” built into the cover. I also love the two fan versions put out in 1969 and 1973.
The Encyclopedia Shatnerica. Robert E. Schnakenberg
Does anyone else own this book? I have seen exactly one other copy out in the world — but in writing this post I discovered the author produced a revised version in 2008. So I have now ordered it. Thanks, Dayton.
Boarding the Enterprise. David Gerrold, Robert J. Sawyer
This is an intelligent and challenging collection of essays examining philosophical, scientific, and cultural questions, edited by two prominent thinkers in our fandom. It is not a light beach read, but it is the best analysis I’ve read of this cultural phenomenon. My article on the book is here.
A Harvest of Memories. Kristine M. Smith
Deforest Kelley is the least known of Star Trek’s major players, because he was a more private person than some and because he never wrote his own book, so perhaps the best way to get a little closer to the actor is through a woman who called him a friend for years.
To Boldly Go: Season One, Two, and Three. Gerald Gurian
Dayton chose Star Trek: Lost Scenes for his rare-pics fix, and it is an excellent book, but I encouraged him to add this three-volume work to his list. Gerald has a remarkable collection and we are lucky he shared it.
Designing the Final Frontier. Dan Chavkin, Brian McGuire
Star Trek is as defined by its look as by its acting and writing, and this examination through the lens of midcentury modernism is fascinating. Plus, the research is impeccable and the images are excellent.
Star Trek Vault. Scott Tipton
This did not make Dayton’s cut because it is “more of a franchise book than a TOS book” and that is valid, but don’t let that stop you. This is another thoroughly researched work, and it is unique because it includes 14 reproductions of cool collectibles. If you ever feel the need to own some vintage merch, the Vault delivers.
Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual. Franz Joseph
On this point I must simply disagree with Dayton. Again, his reasoning is sound, given his rules: the manual is “‘inside the box’ and I was making a conscious choice to exclude those.” But, for me, any guideline that eliminates this foundational resource must bend to add it.
Those are my nine book suggestions, but I also pushed for the inclusion of the Inside Star Trek newsletters (and here is my ongoing review of those), the Star Trek Giant Poster Books (my series on those) and the Spockanalia fanzine (which I own but have not yet covered).
Thank you, Dayton, for the list and the inspiration to add to it. I am often skeptical of Star Trek lists, as they are written either by people with little knowledge or designed simply to generate clicks (or both), but I really liked what you did here and I recognize the expertise and the years of fandom underpinning it.A Harvest of Memories, Bjo Trimble, Boarding the Enterprise, Brian McGuire, Dan Chavkin, David Gerrold, Dayton Ward, DeForest Kelley, Designing the Final Frontier, Franz Joseph, Gerald Gurian, Inside Star Trek newsletter, Kristine M. Smith, Myrna Culbreath, Robert E. Schnakenberg, Robert J. Sawyer, Scott Tipton, Sondra Marshak, Star Fleet Technical Manual, Star Trek, Star Trek Giant Poster Book, Star Trek Vault, The Encyclopedia Shatnerica, To Boldly Go, Where No Man, William Shatner -
Giant Poster Book four: super aliens, a sort-of review of Babel, plus tribble trivia
The Star Trek Giant Poster Books were the first professionally published Trek magazines. Seventeen issues were produced between September 1976 and April 1978, plus a 1979 “Collectors Issue” devoted to The Motion Picture. Each delivered six pages of content plus the cover and back cover and folded out into a large poster.
I own the complete set and will cover each issue. The story of the magazine’s genesis is told here.
Here are highlights from issue four, published in December 1976, plus a scan of the magazine.
The first three issues of the Star Trek Giant Poster Book are excellent. The fourth is a bit of a miss. It happens. Even the excellent first season of TOS gave us The Alternative Factor.
Issue four opens with a clever editorial from Ron Barlow. Fans had worked to delay the cancellation of the series, so he tried to get some of that same energy behind the pages of the magazine. He urged readers to pester newsstands and book stores to stock it, encourage fanzines to write about it, and — of course — asked them to dig out $10 for a subscription. Eighteen issues were published, so the appeal was a success of sorts.
What follows in this issue, though, may not have pushed many sawbucks into envelopes. We get a review of Journey to Babel that somehow ignores the emotion, excitement, and tension of the story, telling readers:
A diplomatic mission as important as Babel poses a significant threat to Kirk’s hold on his very private, very special community since it is his success at such important matters that will determine his future, not only as a starship captain, but with Star Fleet in general.
What? We also get: “Although Kirk is a good officer and concerned with the well being of the Federation, his first priority (this is, of course, assuming that he is human), is that of a personal nature…” Assuming he is human?
Allan Asherman’s rundown of The Super Aliens of Star Trek is really just a list of powerful beings and a reminder of in which episode each appeared. But this is actually more useful than it might appear today. In 1976, Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance was only just becoming widely available and Asherman’s own The Star Trek Compendium was still five years away. So lists were reference resources, and probably welcomed.
The final two articles are basically fan fiction about the history of the Klingons and Romulans. Again, some perspective helps here: the total number of Star Trek tales then was tiny compared to the ranks of episodes, novels, short stories, and comics we have today, so fans may have enjoyed these pieces.
The best bits of this issue are the last two pages. The ad for the magazine itself is humorous, pushing the publication as a treatment for Star Trek Fever. And the answers to the trivia questions from issue three are interesting, especially the statement that 1,000 tribbles were sewn for The Trouble with Tribbles, in four variations. I have no idea if that is correct.
And the poster is excellent.
Let’s hope the next outing is better. I am about to read issue five for the first time in many years.
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David Gerrold is a good guy — and he needs help
David Gerrold is ill. The author of The Trouble with Tribbles, uncredited polisher of many scripts, writer of the animated episodes More Tribbles, More Troubles and BEM, story editor early in the production of The Next Generation, and prolific fiction writer outside of Star Trek reluctantly launched a GoFundMe to help with medical bills.
I am sad to say I have never met David, but from all I have heard he is a great guy. For example, he is a regular tour guide and presenter at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tours in Ticonderoga, and my friend Robert J. Sawyer (his site, my site) likes him a lot. I asked Rob to tell me just a little about David.
David Gerrold and I have been friends for thirty years — a fact that astonishes me. Not, I hasten to add, because it’s hard to be David’s friend. It isn’t; he’s a warm, wise, caring man. But because, way back in 1972, the very first adult science-fiction novel I ever read was David’s own first novel, Space Skimmer. The notion that someday I’d meet this man, let alone visit him in his home, or travel with him to Turkey, or co-edit with him the essay collection Boarding the Enterprise, or write the introduction to the latest edition of his masterpiece The Man Who Folded Himself, would have been inconceivable to twelve-year-old me.
But it’s a friendship I cherish. David has made the world a better place through his heartfelt and moving writing, through his nurturing of other writers, through his fundraising for AIDS Project Los Angeles, through his advocacy, and through his devotion to his wonderful son Sean. If anyone deserves to live long and prosper, it’s David.
So he’s a good guy and a Star Trek luminary. Send him some money, if you are able.
Photo credit: Star Trek Original Series Set Tour I have not met David, as I said, but I have a few collecting stories to share.
A bookstore find
I own about 150 TOS autographs, and my first was David’s. He had signed a first edition of his book The World of Star Trek and it ended up on the shelf in Toronto’s Bakka book store. It was published in 1973; I bought it about six years later. It was amazing to me that a person so important to Star Trek had held the same book I now owned, and it started my collecting journey.
An eBay find
My second David autograph is on a seri-cel. (What’s a seri-cel?) I spotted it on eBay in 2013. It’s a great scene from his More Tribbles, More Troubles episode, but I did not know if the signature was real. So I emailed him through his site, and he got back to me quickly: “Yes, I did sign those. Thanks for checking.”
That brings up a good collecting tip: if a person related to a collectible is still with us, reach out with any questions about authenticity. They are often happy to be asked. That has also worked for me with Noel Sturgeon, Susan Sackett, Howard Weinstein, and others.
A surprise find
I also have David’s autograph on The Concordance Color Book but I did not know it was there. The signatures of DC Fontana and Gene Roddenberry were also big surprises.
And I have three more: a Tribbles script, purchased from his site; a convention program; and an Escape From The Planet Of The Tribbles script, bought at the Star Trek Tours last year.
I shared some collecting stories, because that’s what this site is about, but my goal here is to encourage people to send David some help, if they are able. We don’t often have the chance to give tangible thanks to the people who helped build this world for us.
I will give David the last words here. This is from his GoFundMe, where he has posted some fiction to thank people for visiting the page, whether they donate or not:
…there are people in much more serious circumstances. If you can afford to donate, donate to them first. If you want to help me finish the book, and if you can afford it, then I thank you in advance. And if you can’t, then just download the files as a thank you for reading this far.
Collecting Trek
A TOS collection 40 years in the making
Collecting Trek 