Moltz

In 1973, Harlan Ellison, no slouch in the field of television or the genre of science fiction, pitched his brainchild to 20th Century Fox. The story was about a generational ship made up of individual biospheres containing the last surviving cultures of an Earth catastrophe. It was, through a series of Hollywood screw-ups, made into The Starlost, a low-budget disaster starring Keir Dullea (who played Dave Bowman in 2001 and wisely hid behind a giant mustache for this) that I watched several episodes of as a kid. I remember being both fascinated and bored by it, which was exactly the right reaction.  The show is terrible, but the underlying premise is solid.  It’s a strange mix that results when a straight-up, hard science concept goes off the rails, including a visit from an alien played by Walter Koenig. You can see the resulting atrocity on YouTube, which has allowed me to scratch a 30-plus-year-old itch. Despite the train wreck it became, I’d love to see this done right some day.

I just got the book above, which is the out-of-print 1975 adaptation of Ellison’s original treatment for the pilot and includes a forward by Ellison detailing what went wrong.