Tuesday, 14 October 2025

A Time Machine In A Spaceship

I was in a science fiction bookshop that sold no science fiction at least not in the sense that I was looking for. There were no novels by Wells, Heinlein, Anderson etc. The "science fiction" of this bookshop was all media-related:

Star Trek
Star Wars
Doctor Who
Battlestar Galactica
Alien
etc

We might as well be talking about different genres.

In Poul Anderson's "The Year of the Ransom," Manse Everard's timecycle appears in the receiver bay of a black spacecraft orbiting Earth on 15 April 1610. This reminded me of Kirk etc "transporting" on and off the Enterprise in Star Trek: a very rare occasion for something in sf proper to remind me of something in sf media-related. 

I first knew of Star Trek before it came on British TV because I was looking for sf by James Blish and came across his first ST adaptation collection. (See the attached image.) That is one of the few links between the two kinds of "sf."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

I have a vague recollection of Jerry Pournelle doing something similar, writing a Terminator novel or novelizing one of the Terminator movies.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

Pournelle novelized ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES.

Niven adapted a Known Space story as an animated STAR TREK episode.

There are a few such examples.

Paul.