Up Till Now: The Autobiography

clock; the Evil Spock “Screw York Logic” women’s cap and T-shirt and Evil Spock T-shirt; snow globes; dartboard; limited edition gold stamp, commemorative stamp book; endless thousands of autographed photographs; film cell art including Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk pictured next to the Golden Gate Bridge surrounded by four film cells; sets of movie posters; Enterprise telephones and telephone and address books; silver coins; ties; the Spock decanter; commemorative spoons; pins; matchbooks; plastic rings; dice; numerous different jigsaw puzzlesfrom twenty-five pieces to a thousand pieces; Enterprise earrings; belt buckles; a pocket knife; lunch boxes; a rubber doormat and a mouse pad; photon torpedo candies, numerous key rings and key chains; bookplates and bookmarks; wanted posters; wrapping paper; party invitations; cocktail napkins; dozens of different Halloween costumes “for children of all ages,” latex masks and Spock ears; life-size cardboard stand-ups; a command bridge model; Frisbees; kites; View-Master sets; wrist communicators; sticker sets and sticker books; a disc gun; water pistol; space flashlight; yo-yos; hand-held electronic games; Spock bop-bag; interactive VCR board game; Star Trek the game; Star Trek trivia game; Silly Putty; freezicle kit; Super Phaser Target Game; easy painting sets, coloring books, activity books; marbles; pen and pencil sets and pencil boxes; handheld pinball game, window scenes set, soft poseable figures; Mego play bridge; Klingon Disruptor Figure; Enterprise glider; bread cards; puzzle boards, sticker books; telephone cards from dozens of countries around the world, including the United States, Germany, Chile, Estonia, Holland, and Austria; piggy banks; CD holders and albums; coasters; holograms; velvet paintings; motion-picture props; fan club and convention magazines; kitchen aprons, lighters; bobble-head dolls; a wallet, raincoats and umbrellas; swivel belt-clip phaser holster...
    Star Trek grew to become better known than any television series in history. It was broadcast on network television for only three years, there were only seventy-nine episodes, but for reasons that many wise men have tried for many years to explain, it eventually gained a great and extraordinarily loyal following. Small fan clubs grew into conventions that attracted as many as twenty thousand people, many of them dressed as their favorite characters and villains. It has generated more than two billion dollars in merchandise sales, Google lists 1.3 million sites for Star Trek merchandise, and at any time eBay generally has more than twelve thousand items for sale. And the actors, in particular myself and Leonard Nimoy, became among the most recognized people in the world.
    For example, just before the shah of Iran was deposed in 1979 I was invited by his government to participate in a photography safari,in which we would shoot pictures of a black leopard at night. The shah had set up wilderness preserves to allow animals native to that area to survive and prosper. So we drove several hundred miles outside the capital of Tehran to this beautiful wilderness. We drove along the Caspian Sea where fisherman were using techniques a thousand years old to catch sturgeon. And finally we came to this small village on the seacoast. The area we were in had been part of the Ottoman Empire; for centuries nomadic tribes had swept down from Russia to stop there on their wanderings. The village in which we stopped had possibly been an oasis at one time, but now it consisted of a single street with perhaps three stores and a kabob house. Our guide asked if we wanted to stop for a kabob. Well, of course we did. This was truly outside civilization as I knew it to be and I wanted to experience as much of it as possible. We walked into this restaurant, it was a shed really, it had no more than six uncovered wooden tables and badly worn chairs. There were several men sitting there, one of them a Turkoman, a large man made larger because he was wearing the traditional Turkoman garb: the tall black bear hat, a red jacket with sashes through it, and high black boots. He looked right at me for a moment, then turned and looked toward the back of this small room. There was a small black-and-white television set sitting on top of a cabinet—and that set was showing Star Trek . This Turkoman waved his kabob through the air and declared, as if it were perfectly normal to see me sitting in a kabob house in a village on