On this Thursday night 35 years ago, one man changed mankind.

Not that he knew it at the time. In fact, on the very weekend before that famous night the man was desperately seeking feedback on his creation. Would it live? He pilfered invaluable pilot reels from the studio and flew to the World SF Convention, jammed into the line-up at the last minute.

Reportedly the audience was heckling new TV pilots festively, only increasing the man's anxiety, when it came his turn to show the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before." As credits silenced the room however, a loud voice continued obliviously. Infuriated his screening was being disturbed, the man drew himself up and turned on the loudmouth, "For Christ's sake, would you please be quiet? My show is on up there!"

So happens the chatterbox was Isaac Asimov, who went alongside that convention audience to notice Star Trek in a way never known before or since. And it lived!

Then and since then our trek to the stars has appealed to the best and brightest among us: Sagan, Feynman, Hawking. It should honor anyone to find themselves in such company. Frankly, Star Trek has grown from a ridiculed symptom of affliction to an expected social fluency in the course of a single generation.

I only saw that man once in person, at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati about 25 years ago. He regaled several dozen of us with the usual set of happy yet familiar stories. We gorged ourselves on "The Cage" and unfamiliar bloopers, falling like manna from the tiny projector. By now not only did the creation live, its vitality was unquenchable.

Its growth into every corner of modern media surpassed even the predictions of the man himself. Every incarnation into a new series reassures us that "his Star Trek will go on forever." Actually I predict fans will return to Series I after Series V runs successfully, to lovingly refurbish and refit the creation with computer technology the creation engendered. Imagine a "TOS+" redone with digital ships, or even new episodes with the original crew digitally regenerated.

Though it steers now by different hands, Star Trek will always be the creation of that one special human: Gene Roddenberry. Though the man has crossed his show continues to serve as a modern mythos for his species, extracting and examining the salient details of our moral issues by enhancing them into highly edible entertainment.

"He's not really dead, as long as we remember him." Star Trek Lives!


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