David Gerrold, original name Jerrold David Friedman (born January 24, 1944), is a science fiction author who started his career in 1967 as a college student by selling an unsolicited script for the television series Star Trek. This script was filmed as "The Trouble with Tribbles", which has been one of the most enduringly popular episodes of the series.

He continued writing television scripts (mostly for science fiction series such as Land of the Lost, Babylon 5, Sliders, and The Twilight Zone) and science fiction novels, of which the most well-known are The Man Who Folded Himself (1973), about a man who uses a time machine and winds up with a very confused life, including an ongoing party where he is all the guests, and When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One (1972), the story of an artificial intelligence's relationship with his creators. H.A.R.L.I.E. was nominated for best novel for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. A revised edition, entitled When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One, Release 2.0, was published in 1988, incorporating new insights and reflecting new developments in computer science.

Gerrold wrote a book about Star Trek (The World of Star Trek), and was hired to help create the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. In particular he can be credited for reshaping the position of "first officer" as the ship's executive officer and commander of "away teams" (to overcome the unrealism of the ship's captain routinely beaming into dangerous situations), as well as many other changes seen in the new series. He parted company with the producers acrimoniously at the beginning of the first season. An episode script he'd written for the series, which included an AIDS metaphor and an incidentally gay couple in the ship's crew, was rejected, and he later reworked it as his novel, Blood and Fire.

He is the author of the War Against the Chtorr series of books, about an invasion of Earth by monstrous aliens: A Matter for Men (1983), A Day for Damnation (1985), A Rage for Revenge (1989), and A Season for Slaughter (1993). As of 2004, he was writing a fifth book (A Method For Madness), and was contracted to write a sixth (A Time For Treason).

He also wrote the non-fiction book Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, published in 2001. A book about how he adopted his son, The Martian Child is lightly fictionalised - the story about the child who claimed to be a Martian was one he heard about someone else, and was not the belief of his son, despite its recurrence in the book.

External links

• David Gerrold's web site
• Chtorr Wars - designed and maintained by Gerrold and friends
• SciFan page