When I first saw the great 1956 movie Captain Horatio Hornblower, starring Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo, sometime in the 1980s, I was thrilled and excited.
I'd heard that supposedly Gene Roddenberry had described the Kirk character as a 23rd-century Hornblower. I'd read C Northcote Parkinson's Hornblower books (which are TERRIFIC by the way).
Now here was the Hornblower character come to life, as it were, on film.
So when Kirk destroyed the Enterprise in STIII, I couldn't help but see the resemblance to Hornblower's actions in Ship of the Line, where he sinks his doomed ship in the mouth of a bay, thereby blocking the French fleet from entering or getting out.
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Anyway, here are my meditations on a Kirk/Hornblower comparison, with the literary conceit that the article is a Starfleet Academy student's paper comparing the (real) Kirk with the (fictional) Hornblower.
So this article made it into 1990's Best of Trek #15.
By the way friends, please comment if you wish!
These are the wrist radios I made, copying the idea from STTMP. Also, the Perscan belt buckle.
If you read the novel of STTMP, supposedly by Gene Roddenberry, then you know about the Perscan device. It's basically a continuous health, location, etc scanning device. It monitors your body functions, records them, and communicates them to the nearest medical service location.
Or, as Dr McCoy might call it, "A damned invasion of privacy."
Here are the come-ons for the afore-mentioned punch-out Star Trek Action Fleet.
If you bought a six-count package of Twix (or maybe other Mars candies), this starburst ad directed you to the ordering directions on back.
I don't know exactly when I sent off for the thing, but notice that the envelope is postmarked for February 1981, after the promotion's end.
Also notice that the label was hand-typed. Also, that the package is addressed to "Matt alfred," who was not born until 1983! I sure don't know why I used the already-chosen name of our not-yet-conceived firstborn, but there it is.
This is the insert that told you to follow the directions printed on the individual die-cut sheets.
Have Fun and Learn about Outer Space
In 1988 my next article was published in a Best of Trek paperback.
This time I even got a rear cover blurb for my article.
Note the disclaimer in the editor's introduction about how you should always collect for fun and not for money.
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This is more likely a disclaimer, so that some reader couldn't claim that we promised him that his such-and-such was worth big bucks.
Remember, all this searching and finding was done in the days before the internet, when you had to actually do things yourself!
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copyright © by Mark Alfred
