Class: Nonfiction
Reviewed by: Douglas G. Adler
Title: Impressed Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Group Helped Launch Star Trek
Writer: Glen Swanson
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Writer: Schiffer
Date: July 2025
Retail worth: $35.00
ISBN: 978-0764369360
Discover this guide
Star Trek has, surely, been written about greater than some other science fiction franchise. Virtually any side of the world of Star Trek which you can conceive of has been plumbed, analyzed, and dissected many times in books and magazines. The casts of assorted exhibits and films have written a whole bookshelf of works about Star Trek, as have the showrunners, teachers, and plenty of journalists. I personally personal dozens of nonfiction books about Star Trek, and I’m positive I do not need all of them. Nonetheless, one way or the other, in any case these years there are nonetheless new issues to debate relating to Star Trek.
Amongst these works comes Impressed Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Group Helped Launch Star Trek, by Glen Swanson. Swanson begins by giving readers a historical past of the early growth of the landmark eponymous 1966-1969 tv collection. Whereas fascinating, a lot of the fabric on this part of the guide is well-known to followers and has been instructed and retold many occasions earlier than.
The core of the guide facilities on the interplay between the creators of Star Trek and the aerospace group, NASA, and (afterward) museums such because the Nationwide Air and Area Museum. Of observe, the Air and Area Museum at the moment shows the holy-of-holies: the 11-foot filming mannequin of the unique USS Enterprise, which occupies a spot of honor on the principal entrance.
NASA, JPL, the RAND Company, North American, and TRW are however a couple of of the businesses and companies that interacted with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his associates earlier than, throughout, and after the unique collection aired on NBC. There was typically a vigorous dialogue and dynamic interaction backwards and forwards between the present’s creators and these companies as Roddenberry et al strived to make Star Trek an thrilling drama that was scientifically correct. The scientists (who have been typically science fiction followers normally and Star Trek followers particularly) have been desperate to work together with the artistic staff behind the present and presumably contribute to it and its sequels in some small means, whereas the showrunners have been keen to fulfill with scientists to get concepts for future tales, units, props, and situations that have been not less than scientifically believable.
Swanson additionally devotes a good portion of the guide the creation of commercially accessible toy fashions that have been primarily based on the house vessels options on Star Trek. Whereas I discovered this part to be extraordinarily fascinating (as somebody who constructed these very fashions as a toddler), it does diverge considerably from the principle themes of the guide and feels very very like a protracted apart. Different chapters additionally generally drift removed from the principle subject, however accomplish that in a means that feels natural and pure and doesn’t detract from the guide as an entire.
Swanson has written an in depth and fascinating guide for a really area of interest viewers. The guide is prone to be of biggest curiosity to Star Trek followers with ongoing curiosity in regards to the authentic collection and the lives of those that made it. Trendy audiences, or those that grew up watching newer incarnations of Star Trek, might merely not relate to the conditions and occasions of this work as a lot of the key occasions that the guide focuses on occurred over 50 years in the past. In that respect, Swanson’s guide is considerably harking back to writer Marc Cushman’s huge six-volume collection collectively often known as These Are the Voyages that function multi-thousand-page lengthy manufacturing diaries for the unique collection – of intense curiosity to a small variety of individuals, however extremely valued by the target market.
To make certain, Swanson’s guide is not going to be offered in airport bookstores, however is prone to discover a readership amongst diehard followers of the unique Star Trek collection, and I think that’s who he was aiming for all alongside.
© 2025 Douglas G. Adler
