19 August: Gene Roddenberry

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was born on 19 August 1921. Here are 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas. His parents were Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline "Glen" (née Goleman) Roddenberry. His father was a policeman, and the family moved to Los Angeles when Eugene was given a police commission there.
2. At first it seemed as if the young Gene was going to follow his father into police work. He majored in police science at Los Angeles City College, but while he was there he became interested in aeronautical engineering and learned to fly. He served as an Army Air Force pilot during the second world war, earning the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. When the war ended he became a commercial pilot with Pan Am.
3. He had some brushes with death. As a toddler, he might have died in a house Fire if the milkman hadn't raised the alarm. As a pilot, he was involved in two plane crashes, both of which had fatalities. The first was during the war. The B-17 Flying Fortress he was flying had a mechanical failure just after take off. The plane caught fire and two men died. The other was on a commercial flight from Karachi to Istanbul. Rodenberry was a passenger, rather than the pilot, on this one. The plane crashed in the middle of the Syrian desert. Roddenberry suffered two broken ribs but was able to drag injured passengers out of the burning plane.
4. Subsequently, he went back to police work, in the traffic and newspaper divisions the Los Angeles Police Department, while writing scripts for TV shows as a hobby. He was also the speechwriter for LAPD police chief William H. Parker and modeled the character of Spock after him.
5. He wrote a number of TV shows before Star Trek, most of which either weren't picked up or ran for no more than one season. They included several episodes of The West Point Story; Hawaii Passage, set on board a cruise ship, which CBS turned down because Rodenberry wanted to become a producer and have full creative control; Riverboat, set in 1860s Mississippi, which he left when he disagreed with the producers, who didn't want any black people in the show.
6. Just before Star Trek, Roddenberry wrote a military drama called The Lieutenant which ran for just one season. Several of the actors we now know from Star Trek were in it - Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig, James Gregory, Madlyn Rhue, Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols. At first, the Department of Defense co-operated and allowed the series to be filmed at an actual Marine base. However, Roddenberry and the Department often argued about some of the plots. Again racism raised its ugly head. One episode was about two marines, one black, one white, finding out how much they had in common. The Department tried to stop this one from being made but Roddenberry went ahead anyway, and lost the department's support. Fearing controversy, the TV network refused to air it or pay for it, either.
7. While at college, he met Eileen Rexroat, who would become his first wife. They had two daughters, and the marriage lasted 27 years, but he wasn't faithful to her. At one point in the 1960s he was having affairs with both Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett. Gene wanted an open relationship with both of them, but Nichelle Nicholls wasn't having any of it. She ended their affair, not wanting to be "the other woman to the other woman". Eventually, he married Majel in Japan, in a Shinto-Buddhist ceremony. However, he wasn't faithful to her either. In 1975 he began an affair with his executive assistant, Susan Sackett, which lasted until he died.
8. After the original series of Star Trek, Roddenberry turned his attention to cinema, wanting to pen the script for a feature film. He experimented with an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I Robot, and wrote a script for a Tarzan film, but when the budget for that was slashed and it was downgraded to a TV movie, Roddenberry left. He did write and produce a serial killer film called Pretty Maids All in a Row, directed by Roger Vadim and starring Rock Hudson and Angie Dickinson.
9. In 1985, he became the first TV writer to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
10. He died in 1989 of a heart attack. His ashes were taken into space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in October of 1992. This was the first space burial. Since his death, a few things have been named after him - a crater on Mars, and the 4659 Roddenberry Asteroid. He's also given his name to a unit of measurement in physics. A “Roddenberry” is the distance traveled at the speed of light during a “traveler year” which is 70.7% of a normal earth year or .707 of a light year.

My latest books

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

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Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two