Legacy of Gene Roddenberry

In 1985, Gene Roddenberry was the first television writer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[2] He was given a Macintosh 128K by Apple Inc. in 1986, which was later upgraded by the company and re-designated as a Macintosh Plus with the production number of M-0001. This started the rumor that Roddenberry had received the first Mac-Plus off the production line.^[3] When the Sci-Fi Channel was launched in the United States eleven months after the death of Roddenberry, the first broadcast was a dedication to two "science fiction pioneers":^[4] Isaac Asimov and Roddenberry. His impact on popular culture in the previous thirty years was said to be eclipsed only by that of Elvis Presley.^[4] Japanese astrophysicist Yoji Kondo proposed naming a crater on Mars after Roddenberry in 1994. This was supported by Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke, and was agreed to by the International Astronomical Union. The Roddenberry crater is located at Martian latitude −49.9 degrees and longitude 4.5 degrees.^[5] He has also had an asteroid named after him, 4659 Roddenberry.^[6]

Roddenberry and Star Trek have been cited as inspiration for other science fiction franchises. While being interviewed for Rod Roddenberry's Trek Nation, Star Wars creator George Lucas said: "Star Trek softened up the entertainment arena so that Star Wars could come along and stand on its shoulders."^[7] J. Michael Straczynski, comic book writer, and creator of the Babylon 5 franchise, said that he had watched a number of 1960s science fiction series, including Star Trek, noting: "I was fortunate enough to see many of those shows on the occasion of their first broadcasts. But it was only much later, with the passage of time and repetition, that I was able to catch them all to truly appreciate what they had accomplished and what they had to say about who we are, and where we are going."^[8] In 2000, the Gene Roddenberry Award was inaugurated at the fifth FantastiCon convention in Los Angeles. It is the highest award handed out by the organization. On its inauguration, it was given to Michael Piller.^[9]

After meeting David Alexander at a Star Trek convention in the early 1970s, the duo collaborated on a biography. This was written over the following two decades, with Alexander conducting between 150 and 200 interviews with Roddenberry and others. In total, some fourteen storage boxes of material were collected by Alexander for the production of the book, the only authorized biography of Roddenberry.^[10] Titled Star Trek Creator, it was published in 1995.^[11] Several other biographies of Roddenberry have also been published, including Joel Engel's Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek and James Van Hise's The Man Who Created Star Trek: Gene Roddenberry.^[12][13] Yvonne Fern's book, Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation, detailed a series of conversations she had with Roddenberry over the last months on his life.^[14]

In October 2002, a plaque was placed at Roddenberry's birthplace in El Paso, Texas. It was paid for from campaign funds by Representative Anthony Cobos, who described El Paso as a "big Trekkie town".^[15] He hoped that the plaque would raise awareness of El Paso in Star Trek fandom and increase tourism.^[15] The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Roddenberry in 2007 alongside Ridley Scott, Ed Emshwiller, and Gene Wolfe in a ceremony hosted by The Next Generation alumnus Wil Wheaton.^[16][17] Roddenberry was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in January 2010, with a tribute by Family Guy creator and Star Trek: Enterprise guest star Seth MacFarlane.^[18][19]

Roddenberry stored a large volume of work on floppy disks during the 1970s and early 1980s. Following his death, there remained several boxes of these disks that were unreadable by the computers of that time as they were formatted to be run on the CP/M operating system as well as custom built computers. Roddenberry owned two of those computers, one of which was sold in an estate sale following his death, and the other was non-operational. DriveSavers were contracted by Rod Roddenberry to restore the information on the disks in 2012, and while a few were compatible with MS-DOS, the majority required the company to reverse engineer the format in order to read the disks. In early 2016, it was announced that the restoration efforts had been successful and between two and three megabytes had been recovered.^[20]