I couldn’t remember when it happened, but I was very curious to find out; so I did a search on the internet. It’s amazing what a person can find on the internet and the crazy paths those searches take.
The event that I couldn’t remember exactly when it happened was sometime in the first half of the 1970’s while my family was still living in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was attending Wasatch Junior High School where I met a redheaded kid (I don’t recall his name) who was drawing pictures of the Star Trek Medical Display that Dr. McCoy used on the Enterprise. I was intrigued, so he started to tell me all about it. I had never watched Star Trek on TV, but now I was very interested. He told me that it was on channel 4 at 4:00. If I ran home as soon as school was out, I could make it home in time to watch it; so I did. I was hooked! I’ve been a Star Trek and Science Fiction fan ever since.
This same kid asked me if I wanted to attend a Star Trek gathering at the University of Utah with him, his older brother (the “hi, I’m Mike Microphone” guy – another story) and his Mom. He told me that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, would be there. I said I’d love to and so we went.
I don’t recall a lot about the event itself, other than Gene spoke for a bit and we watched a Star Trek blooper film and the original black and white pilot episode.
So now, well over 40 years later, I am not recalling when that actually happened; was I in seventh grade or eighth? I didn’t know. So I did an internet search for Gene Roddenberry and the University of Utah. That search led me to this website: UtahSFHistory.com. It was on this website that I found a copy of a newsletter that some Star Trek fans from Provo, Utah had put together. The newsletter was called, “The Communicator” and someone had scanned in copies of that newsletter and posted pdf versions on the site. The first edition that was listed on the site was actually their second edition: volume 2, number 2 from June, 1974. In it, they describe the event at the U of U that I had attended and was looking for! Cool!
So now I know that the event I attended happened on Tuesday, May 21, 1974; two days before my fifteenth birthday; and just a few months before my family moved to Cedar City, Utah.
As part of my perusal of the History of Utah Science Fiction Fandom website, I followed various links and other related internet searches which finally led me to Amazon.com (I think every internet search will eventually lead a person to Amazon.com) where I found a book entitled, “A Thing Done” by Tinney Sue Heath. The book is set in Florence, Italy in 1215AD. It’s historical fiction that is based on actual events. I purchased the kindle version and started reading it. I loved it! The book is well-written, with great character and plot development. It’s a good story and it was very enjoyable.
Interesting how a Star Trek memory from the 1970’s led me to a story set in Florence, Italy of 1215.
And now that I have finished the book, I thought it would be appropriate to write this little blog post about the book and how I found it. I didn’t keep track of the actual internet search path I had followed to find the book, so I tried (half-heartedly) to re-create it, but to no avail. I thought that I’d rather spend my energy on writing this blog post rather than getting lost in the surf.
