Science Fiction novelist and screenwriter David Gerrold is the 2022 winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award. The award is bestowed for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. The award recognizes Gerrold’s body of work, including his emphasis on young adult space travel novels. Hella (2020) is his most recent YA novel about space colonization.
Gerrold is famous even amongst the less literature-inclined, for having written the classic Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles, which aired in the original series’ second season.
David Gerrold also wrote three non-fiction books about the making of Star Trek, Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles, and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, with Robert Sawyer, The World of Star Trek,and The Trouble With Tribbles, the Story Behind Behind Star Trek’ Most Popular Episode, as well as two Star Trek novelizations, The Galactic Whirlpool, and Encounter at Farpoint,
David Gerrold, Scriptwriter
Though uncredited, David Gerrold is the creator of thelive action Saturday morning Land of the Lost children’s adventure series as produced by Sid & Marty Croftt. He also wrote scripts for Logan’s Run, Sliders, Tales from the Darkside, Twiliight Zone, The Real Ghostbusters, Babylon 5, and Star Trek: the Animated Series.
Gerrold’s novelette The Martian Child, based on his own experiences raising his adopted son, won both the Hugo and the Nebula. It was made into the 2007 motion picture by the same name, starring John Cusack.
The Heinlein Award
David Gerrold has written or co-written 32 science fiction novels so far, edited five anthologies, and published five collections of his own stories. Almost all of Gerriold’s science fiction assumes humanity will survive into the future and that we will explore space. Mr. Heinlein hoped that would be our destiny. It is for this emphasis on the hope for our species that helped earn Mr. Gerrold this prestigious award.
The award will be officially granted this spring in Massachusetts. It will be granted to Mr. Gerrold May 27, 2022 at Balticon 56 in Baltimore, Massachusetts.
Gerrold’s other awards include the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, the Homer Award, the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado, and the 2002 Hal Clement (Young Adult Award) for Excellence in Children’s Science Fiction Literature.
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Susan Macdonald is the author of the children’s book “R is for Renaissance Faire”, as well as 26 short stories, mostly fantasy in “Alternative Truths”, “Swords and Sorceress #30”, Swords &Sorceries Vols. 1, 2, & 5, “Cat Tails” “Under Western Stars”, and “Knee-High Drummond and the Durango Kid”. Her articles have appeared on SCIFI.radio’s web site, in The Inquisitr, and in The Millington Star. She enjoys Renaissance Faires (see book above), science fiction conventions, Highland Games, and Native American pow-wows.
Congratulations to David Gerrold! What perhaps impresses me the most about his writing is that some of his work seems completely different from some other of his work, but it’s still done very well. Looking at his television scripts alone, I find it hard to imagine that the same person who wrote Star Trek’s “The Trouble with Tribbles” also wrote Babylon 5’s “Believers.”