GERROLD, David

   Pseudonym of US author and scriptwriter Jerrold David Friedman (1944-), who was raised in Southern California, gaining a BA in theatre arts there. His earliest commercial sales were tv scripts, the first of them a wellknown STAR TREK episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967), which became the subject of one of his two books about the series, The Trouble with Tribbles (1973), which includes the script plus a nonfiction narrative.The other, The World of Star Trek (1973; rev and co-credited to "The Editors of Starlog Magazine" 1984), perceptively analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the show, and recounts its travails in the world of network tv; he also wrote one Star Trek tie, The Galactic Whirlpool * (1980). A contribution to the Star Trek: The Next Generation booksequence, Encounter at Farpoint * (1987), followed after several years; he briefly worked on the tv series STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.DG's first novel, The Flying Sorcerers (1971) with Larry NIVEN, is a lively attempt to give a scientific rationale to a variety of incidents - which to the observers seem like MAGIC - when an explorer is stranded on a primitive planet. His first solo novel, Space Skimmer (1972), deals with a man's search for a vanished GALACTIC EMPIRE and its spaceships, described in the title. Perhaps his best-known work is When Harlie was One (fixup 1972; rev vt When H.A.R.L.I.E. was One (Release 2.0) 1988), which deals with the evolution of artificial INTELLIGENCE in a COMPUTER, discussing many of the problems of life with an air of profundity not wholly justified by the content (the revised version improves the telling, but does not significantly sophisticate DG's rendering of AI). With a Finger in my I (coll 1972) assembles some of his occasionally precious short stories; thetitle story (1972) is a fantasy about solipsism and PERCEPTION showing a strong if slightly undergraduate sense of verbal play. Yesterday's Children (1972; exp 1980; vt Starhunt 1987) is a SPACE OPERA, withconflict between a captain and first officer on a starship. The Man who Folded Himself (1973) deals in jerky, short-sentenced prose with a herowho meets other versions of himself, doubled through TIME PARADOX, and makes love to several of them in an orgy of reciprocal narcissism. Moonstar Odyssey (1977) deals with an extraterrestrial hermaphroditicsociety whose members do not have to settle into one sex until after adolescence. In both books, a superficial obedience to "Californian" concepts of the free lifestyle revert to more traditional readings of human morality.In the 1980s - a decade during which he did extensive work for tv - DG's writings lost some of their freshness, and his dependency on earlier sf models for inspiration became more burdensome. The War Against the Chtorr sequence - A Matter for Men (1983; rev 1989), A Day for Damnation (1984; exp 1989) and A Rage for Revenge (1989), with the firstversions of the first 2 titles assembled as The War Against the Chtorr: Invasion (omni 1984) - mixes countercultural personal empowerment riffs ala HEINLEIN with violent action scenes as the worm-like Chtorr continue to assault Earth, with no end in sight. Other novels, like The Galactic Whirlpool (1980) and Enemy Mine * (1985) with Barry B. LONGYEAR - thenovelization of ENEMY MINE, a film based on a Longyear story - show a rapid-fire competence but are not innovative. Chess with a Dragon (1987) is an amusing but conceptually flimsy juvenile. There is a growing sense that DG might never write the major novel he once seemed capable of - not because he has lost the knack, but because he refuses to.

   JC

   Other works: Battle for the Planet of the Apes * (1973); Deathbeast (1978); Voyage of the Star Wolf (1990).As Editor: Several 1970s anthologies with Stephen GOLDIN (uncredited): Protostars (anth 1971), Generation: An Anthology ofSpeculative Fiction (anth 1972), Science Fiction Emphasis 1 (anth 1974), Alternities (anth 1974) and Ascents of Wonder (anth 1977); Norman Jacobs \& Kerry O'Quinn Present Starlog's Science Fiction Yearbook, Vol 1 (anth 1979) with Dave Truesdale.

   See also: CLONES; CYBERNETICS; FANTASY; GRAVITY; TERRAFORMING.