Crispin: Writing For Star Trek
2 min readThe author of several Star Trek books, Ann Crispin found that her knowledge of Star Trek acquired from being a fan of the original series came in handy when it came to writing Trek tie-in stories.
“I was a Star Trek fan from the early days of the show,” Crispin explained. “I’d watched all of the episodes many times. I had read many of the novels and all of the James Blish novelizations. So I knew Star Trek inside and out when I wrote Yesterday’s Son on a whim.”
That familiarity with the Trekverse made her research a little easier too. “I did some research to write the book, mostly about arctic terrain and survival in arctic regions,” she said. “But since I used established settings, mostly I only wrote about what I already knew from watching the show for all those years.”
Why did Crispin want to write a story about Spock? “From the beginning I was fascinated – pardon the pun – by Mr. Spock and Vulcan,” she said. “As a child of the 60’s, the idea that Vulcans were strong, and capable, anything but wimps, yet their entire planet embraced pacifism, really inspired me. Also, Mr. Spock was smart, and I identified with his intelligence, yet (also) his ‘apartness.’ He was a character pulled between worlds… this is a characterization a writer can really sink her teeth into!”
As a fan, having watched the original series, Crispin found All our Yesterdays to have potential for a follow-up story of some sort. “As for Zar [Spock’s son with Zarabeth], it seemed to me when I watched All Our Yesterdays that the episode cried out for a sequel… so I sat down and wrote it.”
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