"David Gerrold - The Trouble with Tribbles - The birth, sale, and final production of one episode" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

the show. (I found what I thought were a couple of real blunders
too, but I was wrong.)
“The Incredible Salt Vampire” was my first exposure to STAR
TREK—it was also to be my last for several months, a fact
which produced no small amount of annoyance and a high
degree of chafing at Thursday night rehearsals.
We rehearsed Winnie the Pooh for six weeks straight, from
seven to ten every weekday evening. Then we had two weeks
of “tech” rehearsals and dress rehearsals and lighting rehearsals,
and then we had a month of performances on weeknights
and weekends, and then we took the show on tour for two or
three months of weekends to various schools and playgrounds
throughout the Los Angeles area, so naturally we had to have
regular brush-up rehearsals—
What I’m getting at is that I missed the next twenty
episodes. At least.
I knew that STAR TREK existed, but that was about it. My
chances to see the show had been limited, and I had no idea
whether it had developed into a good show or a bad one. What
I did know about STAR TREK were bits and pieces that had come
to me through friends—and that was even more maddening
because their opinions were so subjective.
I mean, it was like being Moses, and being taken to the
top of the mountain—and then not being allowed to look at
the Promised Land, instead having to listen to someone else
describe it in highly emotional terms. To put it mildly, it was
frustrating as hell.
Look, let’s go back to the beginning. The very beginning.
I have been a science fiction fan for as long as I can
remember. I grew up in the Van Nuys, California, Public
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The Trouble With Tribbles

Library, checking out the limit—ten books a week. My
childhood companions were Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac
Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon and Henry Kuttner and C.
M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl and—well, you get the idea.
The first paperback books I ever bought were Earthlight by
Arthur C. Clarke, and an Ace double novel: One Against Eternity
(The Weapon Makers) by A. E. Van Vogt; and The Other Side
of Here by Murray Leinster. And also a Dell collection called
Six Great Short Novels of Science Fiction. I was just starting
junior high school at the time—and it was like the opening of
a whole new world. Suddenly there was Robert Sheckley and
Phillip Jose Farmer and Alfred Bester and William Tenn and
Ray Bradbury and Robert Silverberg and Gordon R. Dickson
and Poul Anderson and Richard Matheson and—
—and then I discovered the magazines. Fantasy and
Science Fiction, Galaxy, If, Worlds of Tomorrow, Astounding
(which later became Analog), and also a couple which are only