I was only 9 years old when STAR TREK premiered.
But my Dad watched it. I wasn't allowed to stay up that late until Season 3. I got to start when I was 11 and turned 12 in the spring of 1969.
From the moment I first watched it, I fell in love with Star Trek and it's been over half a CENTURY since then. I became a SCIENCE TEACHER because of Star Trek...and just retired after 40 years in the classroom. This (at the time) single show shaped my life.
How? I played Star Trek and Aliens instead of “Cowboys and Indians”…of course, I didn’t have the special effects crew to create beams of lambent light or make totally cool sound effects. (Wanna hear one? Click on this, but keep your volume low! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMFeEcSuX5Y (OOPS! Sorry…*wink*) actually THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbFmzZPyKlk) So I ran around shooting aliens with a hand-carved phaser painted green with a yellow stripe down the side. I’d cut a bit of wood at an angle in order to make a handle, then nailed five finishing nails into the “barrel”. To simulate the phaser sound effect, I let forth with a squeal while vibrating my lips like a trumpet player.
Star Trek ignited in me a deep desire to leave Earth and go to the stars. In those days, you had to be an astronaut and take your life into your own hands every day. Apparently you also had to be an elite soldier in the military. I couldn’t even do a PULL UP to pass the Presidential Physical Fitness Test…how would I possibly pull myself up by my bootstraps when I couldn’t even pull my pudgy body up high enough for my chin to reach the bar. And in the midst of the Vietnam War, I wasn’t real keen on enlisting before I got drafted, so that route was closed by a decision on my part. Star Trek came along just as I was finishing up THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET and SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE, and so I never completed the two series. But it was Star Trek (and growing up!) that launched me into the junior high library.
I started reading more science fiction. I blew through the juvenile works of Robert A Heinlein, Donald A Wollheim (who founded DAW Books), Andre Norton, A.M. Lightner (who I just now discovered was a woman!!!), Alan E. Nourse, and (of course), Madeleine L’Engle.
But, I’ll never forget perhaps the most influential of the YA science fiction novels I ever read: British author, John Christopher’s WHITE MOUTAINS Trilogy (eventually a quartet). I was in 7th grade when I first checked out the first book, THE WHITE MOUNTAINS – I give all kinds of details in SIX essays I wrote on my blog over the past nine years about the books. Needless to say, those books compelled me to keep the story going. They lit a deep desire in me to create my OWN worlds…( https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2013/05/slice-of-pie-no-new-writing.html, https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/06/slice-of-pie-in-terms-of-my-writing.html, https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2015/09/slice-of-pie-who-are-we-imitating-these.html; https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/11/slice-of-pie-teen-humor-combatting-grim.html; https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2012/09/possibly-irritating-essays-how-teenya.html, https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2012/07/possibly-irritating-essay-on-this-tour.html)
Reading THOSE books compelled me to pick up my pencil and write a truly horrible piece called “The White Vines” it was also written in painstakingly neat cursive. I’m sure I reread the WHITE MOUNTAIN books several times (I have two sets in my own library today!), until I finally moved on when I discovered the adult SF section of the Public Library and a magazine that took my fledgling writing and set a fire under me to one day get a story published in a floppy, pulp magazine called ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact.
But when push comes to shove, it really comes down to the single most influential television show I was ever (allowed by my dad!) to watch. It introduced me to strange, new worlds that even the stories I was reading couldn’t quite match. I started writing science fiction because of ST. I teach a class called ALIEN WORLDS to gifted and talented kids during the summer and at other conferences and venues because of Star Trek. I teach a different summer school class called WRITING TO GET PUBLISHED…because of Star Trek, and it’s wonderful!
Admittedly, it's also sort of creepy – but in a cool way.
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