In William Shatner‘s new memoir, “William Shatner … and You,” the “Star Trek” actor, 95, reflects on his seven-decade career by focusing on his fans, with anecdotes from former co-stars, collaborators and celebrities like Ben Stiller, Josh Groban, “Weird” Al Yankovic, Jeri Ryan, Michelle Hurd, Marina Sirtis, Seth MacFarlane, Hank Azaria, Nick Carter, Jason Alexander and Tom Bergeron, explaining how his work impacted them.
In this exclusive excerpt, Shatner interviews Amazon founder Jeff Bezos about how the science fiction he loved as a kid — namely, “Star Trek” — ultimately inspired him to launch his Blue Origin aerospace company, which, in 2021, launched Shatner into space at 90 years old.
An Unexpected Trekker who literally took me from pretend space-adventurer to real one is, of course, Jeff Bezos.
I will forever be grateful for the opportunity he gave me on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in 2021. I documented that incredible, emotionally devastating experience in my previous book, “Boldly Go.” I expected the excitement of adventure, but instead, looking down on our small, fragile planet, I was overcome by the realization that all life was down there — contained in that thin blue layer beneath me — while outside was a vast and indifferent blackness, where I saw only death and nothingness. Upon my return, I was unable to speak without crying, and I spent two weeks in unexplained sorrow as I grieved for our planet, and the damage human activity continues to wreak upon it.
I also detailed in “Boldly Go” Jeff’s grand plan for one day launching Earth’s polluting industries into outer space to try to allow us to repair the environmental damage we’ve done and continue to do, and I hope for the sake of Earth and everyone living here now and into the future that his mission is achievable. What I did not know until I spoke to Jeff for this book was how he wound up in the space business in the first place, and how Star Trek kick-started his very real journey to the stars.
To say he is a Trekker would be underselling Jeff’s love of “Star Trek.” He named his dog Kamala after the Famke Janssen character in the “TNG” episode “The Perfect Mate.” He has the studio model of the movie-era USS Enterprise in the lobby of Blue Origin’s headquarters in Seattle. He named his management company Zephram LLC after Zephram Cochrane, inventor of the warp drive. In this arena, his bona fides cannot be disputed.
Jeff discovered “Star Trek” in 1974. He was in the fourth grade, around ten years old, and living in a suburb of Houston. His best friends were Dean and Kyle, and every day after school, they would race home to watch the show in reruns.
“The idea that there could be this shining future was so appealing,” he told me.
Jeff and his friends were so enamored by “Star Trek” that they role-played it in their backyard, grabbing lawn chairs and setting them up like the bridge of the Enterprise, then acting out whatever adventures their minds could conjure.
“The three of us would round up other friends and younger siblings and assign them the lesser roles,” he said. “The two roles that got fought over the most were Kirk and Spock. I often played Kirk, and I often played Spock. From there, we’d work our way down. Someone would even play the computer!”
The idea of having a conversation with a computer enthralled Jeff, and years later, he set about creating one: Amazon’s Alexa and Echo devices are patterned on that very same “Star Trek” computer he grew up watching.
So fierce was Jeff’s devotion to “Star Trek” and the make-believe stories he and his friends would play that he even built paper cut-out communicators and tricorders — which he still has to this day and keeps among his most prized possessions. Somehow, he decided that “Star Trek” wasn’t just a vision of the future; it could be the future, and he wanted to do anything he could to make it happen.
Jeff was five years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, and he remembers vividly watching it on a small black-and-white television. He did not understand the enormous technical achievement at the time, but he understood the excitement of the adults around him. Something profound had occurred.
“Literally from that day,” he told me, “I’ve been obsessed with space, space travel, rockets, propulsion, all the engineering that goes with it.”
He read every science fiction book he could get his hands on and wondered what it would take to one day travel in space like they did on his favorite TV show.
“I have an old high school girlfriend,” he added, “who is completely sure that I started Amazon just to have the financial resources to build Blue Origin.”
She may be right. In his high school newspaper, an article quoted a young Jeff as saying he wanted to build a space travel company by the time he was 16. He didn’t quite make it happen that quickly, but today, Blue Origin has taken nearly 100 people above the Kármán Line to gaze at the beautiful Blue Marble below. One of Jeff’s goals with Blue Origin is to help humanity on its journey to the Star Trek future.
“All those things are linked,” Jeff told me. “The ten-year-old boy playing with his friends and making paper tricorders, reading all this science fiction, seeing Neil Armstrong step onto the Moon. Somehow, those things all came together and made Blue Origin.”
There are people in this book whose connection to different parts of my work surprised me because it led them into medicine, music, law, engineering, education, public service, or simply through an especially difficult stretch of life. Jeff’s story contains perhaps the most literal transformation of imagination into reality. He watched a future on television, then devoted part of his life to making pieces of it possible.
There are many legitimate debates to be had about what the future should look like, who should build it, and whom it should serve. But before anything can be built, someone must imagine that it might exist.
As a child, Jeff Bezos and his friends arranged chairs outside and pretended they were sitting on the bridge of the Enterprise. Years later, Jeff built a rocket, and he took Captain Kirk along for the ride.
What is next is only bound by imagination.
“William Shatner … And You” is currently available for sale on williamshatnerandyou.com and via Amazon.
William Shatner and Joshua Brandon.
Leave a Reply