David Gerrold

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David Gerrold, born Jerrold David Friedman (January 24, 1944), is an award-winning science fiction author who started his career in 1966 as 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", which has been one of the most enduringly popular episodes of the series.

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[edit] Early works

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) and science fiction novels, of which the most well-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 H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One (1972), the story of an artificial intelligence's relationship with his creators. H.A.R.L.I.E. was nominated for best novel for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. A revised edition, entitled When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One, Release 2.0, was published in 1988, incorporating new insights and reflecting new developments in computer science.

[edit] Star Trek

[edit] 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.

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 wouldn't 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.

The fifth premise, "A Fuzzy Thing Happened to Me", was accepted by Coon and 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.

This was one of two books Gerrold wrote about Star Trek in the early 1970s after the original series had been canceled. He discussed them at various conventions 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'd 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.

[edit] Star Trek: The Next Generation

All of the above noted changes were incorporated into Star Trek: The Next Generation when it debuted in 1987, and proved to be popular with viewers. 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 Roddenberry. He was awarded cash but chose to forego additional credit.

Roddenberry's partisans struck back after his death in 1991, with a lengthy passage in David Alexander's authorized biography, Star Trek Creator, suggesting that Gerrold had plagiarized the Martian-flatcat scene in 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 seventies, 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.

Another point of contention between Gerrold and the Star Trek: The Next Generation executive leadership was Gerrold's writing of 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 gay 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 gay couple, and even then certain people seemed to be worried about airing an episode that made a plea for compassion against those people infected with AIDS. For more information see LGBT characters in the Star Trek universe.

[edit] 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).

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 infamous 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 the original series.

Gerrold also published a novelization of the Star Trek: The Next Generation series premiere "Encounter at Farpoint" (1987) and an original Star Trek novel entitled The Galactic Whirlpool (1980) based on the story outline "Tomorrow Was Yesterday". In 2006, for the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, he co-edited with Robert J. Sawyer an essay collection entitled Boarding the Enterprise.

[edit] 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 is 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.

In an original twist, the invasion is an ecological one. Instead of armies, the unseen aggressors gradually unleash plants and animals from their older, more evolved planet. These outcompete and displace their terrestrial counterparts and Earth becomes more and more Chtorr-like as the "war" progresses.

[edit] 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 republished as Starhunt and tacked into the main continuity as a prequel. The books were based on a concept Gerrold had originally planned for a TV series. 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.

[edit] 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, based on the author's own experiences as a single adoptive parent, with most of the key moments drawn from actual events. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and a movie version is currently in production for release in late 2006.

In 2000, his longtime 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 contains the following books:

  • Jumping Off The Planet (2000)
  • Bouncing Off the Moon (2001)
  • Leaping To The Stars (2002)

In addition, Gerrold has also published the following novels:

[edit] External links

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