Star Wolf (David Gerrold)

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The Star Wolf series of novels by David Gerrold is centered on the star ship Star Wolf and its crew. The Star Wolf is a "Liberty Ship," officially designated the LS-1187. Plagued by misfortune throughout the series, without any confirmed kills to its credit, it was denied a name by Command.

[edit] Books

  • Voyage of the Star Wolf (1990) (ISBN 1-932100-07-5)
  • The Middle of Nowhere (1995) (ISBN 1-932100-10-5)
  • Blood and Fire (2004) (ISBN 1-932100-11-3) which is a rewrite of a planned Star Trek: The Next Generation script featuring gay characters and an AIDS metaphor. The novel contains several slams against the Star Trek franchise, such as stating how another starship nicknamed "Big E" (the US Navy's unofficial nickname for the Enterprise) was too valuable in terms of propaganda to risk on the front lines, and a dead crewmember named "M. Okuda."
  • Yesterday's Children (1972) (ISBN 0-88411-193-8) which is actually an earlier novel that features the same main character republished as Starhunt and tacked into the main continuity as a prequel.

The books were based on a concept Gerrold had originally planned for a TV series. The Star Wolf series reflects Gerrold's contention that, due to the distances involved, space battles would be more like submarine hunts than the dogfights usually portrayed—in most cases the ships doing battle wouldn't even be able to see each other. Gerrold referred to the concept as "World War II in space," and intended it as a stylistic opposite of Star Trek (particularly its "Next Generation" incarnation) by setting the main characters on a small, dingy spacecraft that had little respect in the fleet rather than on the flagship. His inability to sell the concept as a television project led to the book series.

He has considered writing a book about his attempts to sell "Star Wolf" that would include the original outline, series bible and episode scripts, but to date no such volume has been published.