David Gerrold's Galactic Whirlpools

The Galactic Whirlpool

David Gerrold’s story “The Galactic Whirlpool” began as a pitch for the original Star Trek series, but was considered too expensive to film. He retooled the premise into a Dell novel, “Yesterday’s Children,” as an effective study of human nature at wartime aboard a destroyer. Later, when Bantam asked for a story, Gerrold got to tell his original tale in the novel “The Galactic Whirlpool.”

When I interviewed Gerrold about the novel in 1984, I mentioned that, even though it was unique and refreshing, “The Galactic Whirlpool” felt like a standard Star Trek story. “Yeah, it was. ‘Whirlpool’ is not an average, standard Star Trek book. It is the standard.” Gerrold’s story presented the original Star Trek vision, perfect characterizations, rare character development, and mounds of insight, all hidden within that format, a mix which wasn’t seen often in those early novels. “Any time you see me doing something that looks ‘standard,’ it’s not. There’s something else going on, and I’m going to assume that you’re smart enough to notice that I’m using the format to say something else.”

The premise: While searching for an elusive Klingon warship, Spock discovered Wanderer, a multi-generation starship launched from Earth in the 20th century and inhabited by its descendants. Wanderer’s discovery was analogous to finding the lost colony of Roanoke, Virginia. Once Kirk decided to initiate contact, Gerrold focused on the methods of that contact, the problems it created and Chekov’s discovery that the ship was on a collision course—which meant that various problems with the ship and its people had to be solved, and solved fast.

Gerrold used the novel as a vehicle to demonstrate new ways of handling command and the use of landing parties, addressing concerns he’d raised in his nonfiction book, “The World of Star Trek.” Gerrold kept Kirk and his senior officers on the ship, so as to respond to the possible threat of the Klingons, while a professional contact team visited Wanderer. We see how Kirk made decisions with a deliberate patience and compassion as he reflected upon his middle name, Tiberius, the name of a Roman who never had an ounce of compassion. (That Tiberius was Kirk’s middle name was Gerrold’s idea, first appearing in his TAS story “Bem.”) Kirk’s success in choosing compassion over instinct made Kirk a perfect symbol of the 23rd-century ideal man.

The underlying themes of Gerrold’s novel were compassion and Roddenberry’s optimism of matured humanity. The clash between the Enterprise and Wanderer acted on this level, too. The Enterprise was made up of 23rd century men and women, yet Wanderer was its antithesis, superstitious and immature representatives of our own century. They drifted around, unaware of what’s going on around them, and are fragmented, like our own society, compared to the Federation’s starship, which represented a cause, directed its own course, determined its own fate, and had a united crew. Wanderer had many captains; Enterprise had only one. It was the successful contact of these contrasting crews which promised that our own society still had hope.

Gerrold said, “The whole point [of using the Klingons] was that Kirk would be searching for the ship, which is why—you know, if you find something in deep space you have to be searching for something—they find this object, which is where the real story is.

Yesterday’s Children

“There was a punch-line with the Klingon ship at the end. Kirk says, ‘Well, whatever happened to that Klingon ship we were chasing?’ and ‘Gee, I dunno,’ ‘Well, I could use a break! Let’s go to space station K-7.’ [“The Trouble With Tribbles”] answers the question of the Klingon ship. At the end of the book ... nobody says, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we stepped in and solved these peoples’ battles! Who can step in and solve our problem with the Klingons?’ I was being so subtle, nobody caught it.”

Eight years earlier, Gerrold had used the original pitch of “The Galactic Whirlpool” as the basis for “Yesterday’s Children,” but that novel bore little resemblance to the later one. Here, Jon Korie, first officer of the USS Roger Burlingham, pursued an enemy bogie and hoped to make his first kill. Korie’s obsession alienated him from the crew and even the ship’s doctor, who was the only man Korie could talk to. Captain Brandt was an old and unservicable hulk, just like his ship, which had been rebuilt so much that the components don’t work right together. The emotional impact of Gerrold's novel began as he described the crew’s reaction to Korie’s Ahab complex and his strict drills to make them battle-ready.

Aside from some great dialogue, what impressed me most in the earlier novel was Gerrold’s powerful pacing. I was catapulted right through to the climax, so caught up in Korie’s fury that the ending was totally unexpected. Quite a difference from the Star Trek novel, which made its points with logic and subtlety.