To boldly go...

[julesjones]

This morning I booted the computer and smiled at the Google logo for today. They have a nifty little reminder that it's the 36th anniversary of the first time humans walked on the moon.

And now there is a reminder of how very long it is since one of the icons of fictional space exploration first appeared on our tv screens. James Doohan died today, at the age of 85. It's very nearly forty years now, the cast of the original Star Trek are all growing old, and James Doohan is the second to pass through the final frontier that awaits us all. I hope that what he finds on the other side pleases him.

Comments

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I blogged it too - it kind of feels like... my own mortality is being pointed out to me. The icons of my childhood and misspent youth are quietly fading away leaving... I don't know what kind of world...

A.

[julesjones]

By the time I'd finished checking that various news sites agreed that it had happened, and stared at my screen for a bit trying to compose that post, you and at least one other person on my flist had also reacted to it.

I'm not even officially middle-aged yet - but the people who were my heroes are one by one quietly going into the undiscovered country. And of course one of the things about sf fandom is that if you have any active involvement in fandom, sooner or later you are likely to read an obituary in the mainstream press for someone you *knew*, if only slightly. There is more connection than just "I read his books, I watched her films."

And in this case, it's a sad thing to be glad for someone that they have died. I am so glad that he did not suffer the years-long decline that some Alzheimer's patients go through.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm running on an older clock, I'm 28 and I feel middle aged. I feel that my life is halfway done and I've not done much of anything. Perhaps I should go to Europe or something.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I really think it was an awful blot on his life that he fathered a child at a ridiculous age when he had no chance of being a proper father - in fact he got Alzheimers soon after. When some woman gets fertility treatment at 60, people are rightly shocked, yet ancient men wanting to play inappropriate roles seem to pass uncensored.

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

I'd missed this. Just as well I have friends to make sure I get the important news, eh? I never did get used to seeing him in films where he didn't use the scottish accent, though (The Satan Bug).

The man flew in the war. He's long had my respect, quite apart from the huge amount of work he put into documentation and continuity of engineering in the ST universe. Sorry to see him go.

Charlie