Starburst – “‘The Impossible Has Happened’ is as much a history of the Star Trek franchise as it is of the man who created it a well researched and unbiased analysis told through the eyes of a self confessed fan that allows the reader to make up their own mind as to how history will remember the undeniably inspirational creator of a series that has spanned five decades.” SF Crowsnest – “Overall, Parkin’s biography is a good amalgamation of sources on Roddenberry and performs admirably in perforating the myths around the man while celebrating his creative imagination.” Josh Marsfelder’s long and thoughtful review of the book for Eruditorum then did an astonishingly good job of summing up my argument.

I looked at that and thought “well, hang on, the network ran the show for three years, and if they didn’t like it and no one was watching, why would they do that?” The answer to that leads to some interesting insights into Star Trek, but also the way TV drama was made in the sixties.” There’s a mythical history of Star Trek, where Roddenberry was a voice in the wilderness and the network didn’t like the show and no one watched it at first. “Reading about him, it felt a little like I was getting fragments of the story, and there were a few things that didn’t quite add up. I was interviewed about the project by Apex, and there I spell out why I think my book differs from the other biographies of Roddenberry, and what I saw as the reason for writing it: Shatner said the line again when he appeared in the Where No Fan Has Gone Before episode of Futurama. It wasn’t the first episode shown, but it was the first one starring William Shatner that was made – those are the first words spoken by Captain Kirk (after ‘Captain’s Log’ and the stardate).

The title comes from Where No Man Has Gone Before, the so-called ‘second pilot’ for Star Trek.

A paperback edition (with a few minor corrections and clarifications) was published in 2017. In 2016, my unauthorised biography of Gene Roddenberry was published in hardback.

Gene roddenberry biography book