That Tribble Guy

It would be hard to overstate the impact of Star Trek’s David Gerrold on my writing career.

If you’re reading this book at all, you’re certainly familiar with the author of “The Trouble with Tribbles”, one of the most popular episodes of the franchise – and you likely know that he is also the author of a slew of great sci-fi novels of the Seventies and Eighties, one of the unsung creators of Trek: NextGen, and you might be aware that he co-created the Saturday morning sci-fi gem Land of the Lost.

If you’re a Starlog veteran, you’ll remember that he had a column in the magazine for the longest time, which became a play-by-play of the development of TNG (in which he played a critical role) until his unjust sacking.

I was in my early teens when I bought David’s The Trouble with Tribbles, a non-fiction book about how TV episodes get written – and how Star Trek episodes get written, in particular. Then there was The World of Star Trek, wherein he took all us loner nerd kids on a tour of the fandom we were too isolated to experience first-hand. I read them and read them again and read them again, along with Stephen Whitfield’s The Making of Star Trek.

These books opened up worlds to me – not just the imagined worlds found in the fiction of Bradbury and Asimov and Heinlein (and Gerrold himself, who had cranked out When HARLIE Was One and The Man Who Folded Himself and the novelization of Battle for the Planet of the Apes). These books brought the science fiction universe out of the imagined and into reality. These books connected me to other kids like me! Understanding how Star Trek happened, and how big the universe of fans really was, wow – that made me feel special. It made me feel empowered. Part of something.

No longer alone.

I still have the copies I dog-eared almost 50 years ago.

The accessible, you-and-me style of The Trouble with Tribbles and The World of Star Trek spoke to me. I felt like David was sitting on the couch in our family room with me, watching a Trek rerun. Already aware that I was destined to be a writer, I was taking subconscious note of this style. I wanted to come across in the friendly-yet-informative way that he did.

Then it all got cranked up several notches when David Gerrold started writing for Starlog.

An aside: Starlog was a fan magazine launched in 1976, dedicated to nerds like me. It was about Trek and Space: 1999 and The Six Million Dollar Man and, in its second year, Star Wars and Close Encounters and on and on and on. [What’s noteworthy here is that I snagged the first issue, and on the back cover was Lindsey Wagner, The Bionic Woman, walking next to a man whose back faced the camera. There was a contest: identify the actor and the episode, and you get a free subscription to Starlog. Twenty-five responses were drawn. Seven got it right: It was Andy Griffith, in the episode “Angel of Mercy”. I got my free subscription.]

David’s column had that same easy, informative tone that I’d come to love in his books. When I got my monthly issue of Starlog, his column would be the first thing I’d read.

It wasn’t all thrills. There came a point at which he went on an ugly rant against William F. Nolan, creator of Logan’s Run, that was condescending and off-putting – and ironic, since the movie inspired a TV series (see “Run, Logan, Run!”, page ***), with Dorothy Fontana as story editor and David himself as a contributing writer. [Though he stripped his name from the episode due to rewrites, tagging it with his pseudonym ”Noah Ward”, the LR episode ”Man Out of Time” is by far one of the best of the short-lived series.]

I stuck with his column, month after month, year after year. I soaked up his style. I checked out everything he mentioned or recommended.

Eventually, when Paramount committed to a Trek sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Gene Roddenberry brought on both David and Dorothy Fontana as key personnel, his Starlog column became a behind-the-scenes tease of the evolving series. If I had been rabid about his column before, at this point I was manic – I couldn’t wait to get the next tidbits about the upcoming show!

David’s connection to NextGen went south, and with it his column. [Many if not most readers know the tale. But for those unfamiliar, Gene Roddenberry – upon being handed the task of recreating Star Trek as The Next Generation – brought David and Dorothy Fontana and Bob Justman and Eddie Milkis, from the original series, back into the fold. For many months, this really worked well, and David even contributed to the creation of the series (the notion of a first officer who did the away missions, rather than the captain himself, was his; and there is reason to believe that he had a lot to do with the creation of Data). But Gene was in poor health, and was abusing meds and alcohol; he brought in a lawyer, Leonard Maizlish, to protect him, and that lawyer manipulated both Gene and the show to secure his own position and power. Gene’s relationships with David and Dorothy Fontana were damaged by Maizlish’s machinations, and in the end, both left the show for cash settlements. History has corrected much of it, but the full story isn’t yet known, to this day.]

By that time, I’d already resolved that I wanted to be the kind of writer David was. Especially in the area of “essay”, at which he excelled (and wherein I suspect he borrowed pages from his pal Harlan Ellison, who might be science fiction’s finest essayist, next to Asimov).

But the story didn’t end there.

As NextGen faded in David’s story, his own ideas re-emerged. The Star Wolf, in particular.

The Star Wolf, a series about interstellar conflict and adventure on a par with Trek, is about a leader-to-be, jacked up in the throes of war, anxious to take his big steps but unprepared. He winds up under the wing of a master warrior who becomes his unsettling mentor, and the story is about how he finds himself.

We can imagine if such a story took place in Trek. Who mentored Jim Kirk? Was it Captain Garrovick of the USS Farragut? If so, what was that like? How did Garrovick shape Kirk into the commander he would become?

David answered those questions in the story of first officer Jon Korie and his own mentor, the Star Wolf, a legendary warrior whose lessons for Jon go down hard. What an amazing story it implies – that the journey of Jim Kirk, from disillusioned Iowa farm boy to quintessential star voyager, must have been something special.

I’m not connected to David’s “War Against the Chorr” stuff – Earth invasion stories, which never grabbed me in principle – but I’m good with all the rest. And I took notes. Wow, did I take notes!

David likes to say that Harlan Ellison – whom he deeply loved – is a writer, while he himself is a storyteller. I get the distinction he’s teasing out; he puts forth words about how Harlan get into the “oatmeal of your soul”, and I take it as Harlan getting into your conscience, while David wants to inspire – and that works for me. Because David’s stuff definitely inspires, while Harlan’s stuff is sometimes deeply depressing.

I started writing like David in the Eighties, and went out of my way to become an essayist – writing first-person opinion stuff, reaching for that easy, informative connection. I drifted into tech writing, and managed to maintain that personal tone I’d crafted by emulating David.

And now, here we are – more than four decades on. Today, I’m friended to David on Facebook, and those of us who follow him closely have shared his experience with his adopted son Sean, and now his early days as a grandparent to Sean’s own son – and enjoyed the best writing of his career... not his fiction, not his non-fiction, but his biographical offerings – his explication of the joys of family, from his poignant and unique perspective.

David – you’ll never read these words, but wow, what a writer you made me! Your ability to be the nerd and the industry all at once, and draw us in – you escorted a generation into fandom! The way you put your thoughts out there to others, inviting theirs – and your fiction, picturesque and inventive – just wow. All of that, I’ve sought to build into my own style, for years and years.

A postscript: I write both a column and bits of fiction for a wonderful gamer periodical, Scientific Barbarian. The editor, Jim Wampler, is a suburb talent in his own right, a cartoonist and painter extraordinaire (and a fan of yours), and recently pushed back on a column of mine, saying the following: “It reads like a Ted Talk transcript of a Scott Robinson lecture! Make it more like a David Gerrold column in Starlog!”

I’ve never, ever gotten a better editor’s note...