Paul P. Mealing

Check out my book, ELVENE. Available as e-book and as paperback (print on demand, POD). Also this promotional Q&A on-line.

Saturday, 28 February 2015

Leonard Nimoy (aka Spock): 1931 - 2015

I first watched Star Trek when I was 16 or 17 on black and white TV. It was innovative and evoked many of the ideals of the 1960s that people from different races and backgrounds could form a team that would explore the universe. Spock is one of the great Sci-Fi icons. I particularly liked his appearance in J.J Abrams' Star Trek movie from 2009, where Spock meets a younger version of himself through a time warp, as can only happen in Sci-Fi.

From a philosophical perspective, Star Trek projected a positive, utopian scenario of human nature - envisioning a future where humans would overcome their tendency towards conflict. But it also envisioned a belief, recently expounded by Brian Cox in the final episode of his series, The Human Universe, that humans have a destiny to go beyond their Earth-bound existence.

There is a scene in Abrams' movie that is reminiscent of a scene in my novel, Elvene, where Spock is holed up in an ice cave. Such coincidences in storytelling are not uncommon, like finding the thread of a tune in a piece of music transferred into another work, though, in this case, quite unintentional, as Elvene was written many years before Abrams' Star Trek.

The newslink below to CBSNews is a very touching tribute.

Leonard Nimoy's final tweet.

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