David Gerrold, born
Jerrold David Friedman on 24 January 1944, in
Chicago,
Illinois
, is an
American science fiction author who
started his career in 1966 while a college student by submitting an
unsolicited story outline for the television series Star Trek. He was
invited to submit several premises, and the one chosen by
Star
Trek was filmed as "
The
Trouble with Tribbles" and became one of the most popular
episodes of the original series. Gerrold's novelette
The Martian Child won both Hugo and
Nebula awards.
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Within days of seeing the
Star Trek series premiere
"
The Man Trap" on
8 September 1966, Gerrold
wrote a sixty-page outline for a two-part episode called "Tomorrow
Was Yesterday," about the
Enterprise discovering a
generation ship launched from Earth centuries earlier. Although
Star Trek producer
Gene L.
Coon rejected the outline, he realized
Gerrold was talented and expressed interest in him submitting some
story premises. Bearing preliminary titles and, in some cases,
preliminary character names, Gerrold submitted five premises.
Two that he had little recollection of involved a
spaceship-destroying machine, eerily similar to Norman Spinrad's
"
The Doomsday Machine", and a
situation in which Kirk had to play a chess game with an advanced
intelligence using his crew as chess pieces. There has been some
speculation by Trek and comic book historians that the chess game
was inspired by an early issue of
Justice League of America,
published by
DC Comics. The issue in
question had the evil alien conqueror,
Despero, playing a game of chess with one of the
Leaguers, with the pieces depicting the other heroes. Gerrold has
denied this, but the speculation persists. As a similar idea had
been used in
Edgar Rice
Burroughs' novel
The
Chessmen of Mars, about a game of "living
chess", it is hardly an entirely new idea in any
case.A third premise, "Bandi", involved a small being running about
the
Enterprise as someone's pet, and which empathically
sways the crew's feelings and emotions to comfort Bandi, and if
necessary at someone else's expense. Gerrold noted, in retrospect,
that it would not be like the
Enterprise crew to have such
attitudes against Kirk as Bandi induced, and that he might instead
set the episode on another ship where laxity has been
reported.
A fourth premise, "The Protracted Man", applied science fiction to
use an effect seen in
West
Side Story, when Maria twirls in her dancing dress and the
colours separate. Gerrold's story involved a man transported from a
shuttlecraft trying out a new space warp technology. The man is no
longer unified, separating into three visible forms when he moves,
separated by a fraction of a second. As efforts are undertaken to
correct the condition and move the
Enterprise to where
corrective action can be taken, the protraction worsens. According
to Gerrold, while they liked this idea, it was deemed too expensive
in regards to the special effects required.
The fifth premise, "The Fuzzies," was also initially rejected by
Coon, but a while later he changed his mind and called Gerrold's
agent to accept it. Gerrold then expanded the story to a full
television story outline entitled "A Fuzzy Thing Happened To Me. .
.," and it eventually became "The Trouble With Tribbles." The name
"Fuzzy" was changed because
H.
Beam Piper had written novels about a
fictional alien species of the same name (see
Little Fuzzy). The script went through
numerous rewrites, including, at the insistence of Gerrold's agent,
being re-set in a stock frontier town instead of an "expensive"
space station. Gerrold later wrote a book,
The Trouble With
Tribbles, telling the whole story about producing the episode
and his earlier premises. The concept of Tribbles was considered
similar enough to the
flat cats of
Robert Heinlein's novel
The Rolling Stones that
legal permission was obtained from Robert Heinlein.
This was one of two books Gerrold wrote about
Star Trek in
the early 1970s after the original series had been canceled. His
other was a comprehensive analysis of the series entitled
The
World of Star Trek. He discussed them at various
convention where he was a frequent
speaker and guest. In
The World of Star Trek, he
criticized some of the elements of the show, particularly Kirk's
habit of placing himself in dangerous situations and leading
landing parties from the ship himself, and suggested some things he
would change about the show if it were to air again. Among these
were a
Klingon as a member of the crew, a
counselor to look after
crewmembers' inner lives, and crewmembers allowed to bring their
families and children along.
Star Trek: The Animated Series
Gerrold contributed two stories for the
Emmy
Award winning
Star Trek: The Animated
Series which ran from 1973 to 1974: "
More Tribbles, More Troubles"
and "
Bem."
"Bem" featured the first use of James T. Kirk's middle name, which
was revealed, in that installment, to be Tiberius.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
All of the above noted changes were incorporated into
Star Trek: The Next
Generation when it debuted in 1987. In particular, Gerrold
can be credited for reshaping the position of "first officer" as
the ship's
executive officer and
commander of "away teams" (to overcome the unrealism of the ship's
captain routinely beaming into dangerous situations). He parted
company with the producers at the beginning of the first season,
after a dispute before the
Writers' Guild in which the Guild
required that Gerrold be paid additional wages for the work he did
helping to create the series, because he had largely written the
show's
bible rather than the
ailing
Gene Roddenberry. He was
awarded cash but chose to forego additional credit.
A passage in David Alexander's authorized biography,
Star Trek
Creator, suggested that Gerrold had
plagiarized Robert
A. Heinlein's novel
The Rolling
Stones for "The Trouble With Tribbles," (something that
Gerrold had categorically denied in his book on the episode, saying
he thought he was writing the "
rabbits in Australia" story) and that
only Heinlein's age and old-school graciousness had prevented him
from bringing a lawsuit.
In fact, Heinlein and Gerrold became friends in the late 1970s,
when Gerrold was an active blood donor in support of Heinlein's
blood drives. They remained friends for many years, and Gerrold
even dedicated one of his books (
A Matter For Men) to
Robert and Virginia Heinlein. After Heinlein's death, Ginny
Heinlein gave up her California home, and Gerrold adopted
Heinlein's cat, Pixel.
Gerrold wrote an unproduced script that would have had an allegory
to the
AIDS pandemic along with some brief
scenes with two Star Fleet crewmembers that would have subtly been
identified as being a homosexual couple. Gerrold wrote this script
in response to being with Roddenberry at a convention in 1987 where
he had promised that the upcoming
Next Generation series
would deal with the issue of
sexual
orientation in the egalitarian future. The script was rewritten
to remove the homosexual couple. This script was later, after
substantial rewriting, made a part of Gerrold's
Star Wolf planned TV series,
and was novelized as a
Star Wolf story,
Blood and
Fire. (See below.)
Post-Trek involvement
Gerrold wrote a script for
Star Trek: The Next Generation
entitled "
Blood and
Fire", which included an
AIDS metaphor and
an incidentally gay couple in the ship's crew. The script was
purchased by the TNG producers, but eventually shelved. Gerrold
eventually reworked it as a novel,
Blood and Fire, the
third book in the
Star
Wolf series (see below). He later contributed the script
to
Star Trek: New
Voyages, where the script was reworked by staff writer
Carlos Pedraza to place the story in
the time frame of
Star Trek: The Original Series, and to
introduce a homosexual couple on the Enterprise. Gerrold went on to
direct the New Voyages episode in 2007.
Gerrold had always wanted to appear onscreen in an episode of
Star Trek, particularly "The Trouble with Tribbles". The
character of Ensign Freeman, who appears in the famous bar scene
with the Klingons, was originally intended by Gerrold to be a
walk-on part for himself, although another actor eventually took
the role. While Gerrold appeared as a crewman extra with other Trek
fandom notables in
Star Trek: The Motion
Picture, he did not get the chance to appear in a Trek
series until
Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine, when he appeared as a security guard in
"
Trials and
Tribble-ations", set during the very same time frame as his
original episode.
Gerrold also published a novelization of the
Star Trek: The
Next Generation series premiere "
Encounter at Farpoint," published in
1987, and an original
Star Trek novel titled
The
Galactic Whirlpool, published in 1980.
The Galactic
Whirlpool was based on the story outline "Tomorrow Was
Yesterday." (It has been suggested that the "Specs" character in
that novel was Gerrold himself.) In 2006, for the 40th anniversary
of
Star Trek, he co-edited, with
Robert J. Sawyer, an essay collection titled
"
Boarding the Enterprise."
Other television work
After his early success with "The Trouble with Tribbles" Gerrold
continued writing television scripts (mostly for science fiction
series such as
Land of the Lost,
Babylon 5,
Sliders, and
The Twilight
Zone).
Early science fiction novels
His science fiction novels, of which the best known are
The Man Who Folded
Himself (1973), about a man whose experiments with a
time machine distorts the details of his
life and reality, and
When
HARLIE Was One (1972), the story of an
artificial intelligence's
relationship with his creators.
When HARLIE Was One was
nominated for best novel for both the
Hugo
Award and the
Nebula Award. A
revised edition, entitled
When HARLIE Was One, Release
2.0, was published in 1988, incorporating new insights and
reflecting new developments in
computer
science.
The War Against the Chtorr
Gerrold is the author of the
War Against the Chtorr series of
books, about an invasion of Earth by mysterious aliens:
A
Matter for Men (1983),
A Day for Damnation (1985),
A Rage for Revenge (1989), and
A Season for
Slaughter (1993). As of 2006, he was still writing the fifth
book (
A Method For Madness), and has contracted to write a
sixth (
A Time For Treason). The ending chapters of the
series have been set aside for the seventh and final book, which
will be
A Case For Courage. As of 2007, he says he is only
four sequences away from completing book five. The first two books
exist in both "original" and "extended" versions.
Gerrold recently took time off to direct "Blood And Fire", a
feature-length episode of
Star Trek: New Voyages. He
rewrote the script, compiled the shooting schedule, and worked for
two weeks of 14 hour days without a break. Under Gerrold's
direction, the production team completed all 95 pages in 12
days.
There was also at one time a Chtorr movie site, and rumours about
the series being made into a movie. The fate of said movie is
unknown.
The alien invasion is an ecological one. Instead of earthlings
Terraforming another planet, the aliens
are "Chtorraforming" Earth. Instead of armies, the unseen
aggressors gradually unleash plants and animals from their older,
more evolved planet (which is indicated as being perhaps a half
billion years older than Earth, and evolved into a higher effective
competitiveness). These outcompete and displace their terrestrial
counterparts and Earth becomes more and more Chtorr-like as the
"war" progresses. With each book, additional layers, features,
creatures, details and characteristics are exposed. The Chtorran
ecology created by Gerrold is so complex there was at one time
rumored to be a "Red Book" in the works - an illustrated field
guide to Chtorran wildlife.
One reason given by Gerrold for the length of time taken between
books 4 and 5 is the need to develop a writing style called "first
person psychotic". Indications are that the central character
attempts to survive by adaptation without being absorbed by the
alien ecology, descends into his own personal version of living
hell, or both.
Star Wolf
Gerrold is also the author of the
Star Wolf series of books,
centered on the star ship
Star Wolf and its crew:
Voyage of the Star Wolf (1990),
The Middle of
Nowhere (1995),
Blood and Fire (2004), and
Yesterday's Children (1972) which is actually an earlier
novel that features the same main character, later significantly
expanded and republished as
Starhunt (1985) -- it occurs
prior to the other novels in the series' main continuity. The
initial germ of
Yesterday's Children was the "framing"
story in his early Star Trek proposal "Tomorrow was Yesterday",
much altered over time. Gerrold had planned to develop this concept
into a TV series, as he writes in an introduction to
Voyage of
the Star Wolf. The Star Wolf series reflects Gerrold's
contention that, due to the distances involved, space battles would
be more like submarine hunts than the dogfights usually
portrayed—in most cases the ships doing battle wouldn't even be
able to see each other.
Other works
He also wrote the non-fiction book
Worlds of Wonder: How to
Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, published in 2001.
The Martian Child is a
semi-autobiographical novel, expanded from a novelette of the same
name, based on the author's own experiences as a single adoptive
parent, with most of the key moments drawn from actual events. The
novelette won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and a movie version
was released in November 2007, with John Cusack playing the
adoptive parent. There is some controversy surrounding this
character, as David Gerrold and his character in the novel are both
gay, but in the movie he is a straight widower.
[44490]
In 2000, his long-time admiration of the works of
Robert A. Heinlein led him to create a new series,
called
The Dingilliad. It follows a
resourceful teenager and his family as they try to begin a new
life. Although not necessarily canon, there are hints that it ties
into the
War Against the
Chtorr universe, with everything from the plagues to the
rumored appearance of a giant purple worm. The trilogy consists of
Jumping Off The Planet (2000),
Bouncing Off the
Moon (2001), and
Leaping to The Stars (2002).
Jumping off the Planet received the 2002 Hal Clement
(Young Adult Award) for Excellence in Children's Science Fiction
Literature
[44491]
In 2005, Gerrold was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of
Technology in Telluride, Colorado.
Bibliography
Series
- A Matter for Men (1983)
- A Day for Damnation (1984)
- A Rage for Revenge (1989)
- A Season for Slaughter (1992)
- A Method for Madness (projected)
- A Time for Treason (projected)
- A Case for Courage (projected)
- Yesterday's Children (aka Starhunt) (1972,
rv.1980)
- Voyage of the Star Wolf (1990)
- The Middle of Nowhere (1995)
- Blood and Fire (2004)
- Jumping Off the Planet (2000)
- Bouncing Off the Moon (2001)
- Leaping to the Stars (2002)
Trackers
- Under the Eye of God (1993)
- A Covenant of Justice (1994)
Star Trek novels
- The Galactic Whirlpool (1980)
- The Trouble With Tribbles (photonovel) (1977)
- Encounter at Farpoint (1987)
Other novels
Collections
- With a Finger in My I (1972)
- Alternate Gerrolds (2005)
- The Involuntary Human (2007)
Anthologies (editor)
- Protostars (1971) (with
Stephen Goldin)
- Generation (1972)
- Science Fiction Emphasis 1 (1974)
- Alternities (1974)
- Ascents of Wonder (1977)
Nonfiction
- The Trouble With Tribbles (1973)
- The World of Star Trek (1973, rv.1984)
- Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction &
Fantasy (2001)
- Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in
The Matrix (2003) (with Glenn
Yeffeth)
- Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles, and the
Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek (2006) (with
Robert J. Sawyer)
See also
External links
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