David Gerrold Books in Order

On a world where science looks like magic, village wizard Shoogar must deal with a stranger whose "spells" may outclass his own. The comic clash of cultures becomes a sharp story about technology, superstition, and misunderstanding.

A dark, unsettling speculative tale, this story moves through hostile territory where desire, danger, and transformation are never far apart. It feels lean on the page, but it leaves a long echo.

Mass dreams of restoring a lost empire, but that means finding one of the miraculous ships that once made it possible. Gerrold builds a classic space-opera quest around power, belief, and ancient technology.

A psychologist helps an artificial intelligence grow from curiosity to self-awareness, then has to face what that growth really means. The novel stays intimate even while asking very large questions.

This early collection shows Gerrold trying out voices, jokes, and speculative angles before anyone could pin him down. It is uneven on purpose, which is part of the fun.

This rough-edged prequel to the Star Wolf books throws Jonathan Korie into a grim spacefaring world far removed from clean utopias. Command, survival, and suspicion all come with sharp corners here.

Daniel Eakins inherits a belt that lets him travel through time, then discovers how strange meeting your other selves can get. It is compact, provocative, and still one of Gerrold's boldest thought experiments.

On the planet Darvel, children choose their sex at puberty, and Jobe is sent to the island called Option to decide who to become. The story uses that setup to explore identity, culture, and growing up.

This is Gerrold's brisk, funny account of how his most famous *Star Trek* episode came to life, from idea to sale to production. It is essential if you like television craft almost as much as tribbles.

Gerrold throws his characters into a brutal struggle against a nearly unstoppable predator and the world around it. The story has the pace of adventure fiction, but it keeps asking what survival does to the survivors.

The Enterprise heads into a dangerous cosmic anomaly and finds mystery layered on top of peril. Gerrold gives the familiar crew a high-concept crisis with plenty of tension.

The first Chtorr novel drops readers onto an Earth already being overwritten by an alien ecosystem. Jim McCarthy gets pulled into humanity's losing war, where every new species feels like a warning.

Earth's fight against the Chtorr gets uglier as alien life keeps spreading and normal life keeps breaking down. Jim McCarthy has to survive not just monsters, but the panic and denial around them.

Humanity learns that joining a galactic civilization came with a bill it cannot pay, and maybe a sentence of slavery or worse. Junior diplomat Yake Singh Browne has to outthink alien schemers fast.

Gerrold's novelization retells the first mission of the *Next Generation* crew as they investigate the impossible station at Farpoint. It is a straight entry point into the era's big mystery.

In this revised edition, the relationship between an evolving artificial intelligence and the man assigned to guide it feels even sharper and sadder. Gerrold turns an AI story into a very human argument about consciousness and worth.

Jim McCarthy is pushed through new kinds of training as humanity tries to fight smarter against the Chtorr. The book mixes invasion horror with questions of discipline, manipulation, and what revenge does to a person.

After a catastrophic ambush, Jonathan Korie and the crew of a crippled Alliance ship are blamed for surviving. Their only way back is through hard retraining, harsher combat, and the grim logic of war.

Jim McCarthy's war against the Chtorr takes him deeper into the horror of a world being remade by alien ecology. The series gets larger, stranger, and more brutal as human resistance starts to understand what it is really facing.

Humans, androids, and other outcasts mount a last stand against the Phaestor, a vampiric power that now rules the galaxy. It is space opera with bounty hunters, dragons, and a ragged band of rebels.

Finn Markham and his allies keep fighting the vampiric Phaestor even as disease, betrayal, and impossible odds close in. This sequel leans into rebellion, monster-infested space opera, and desperate hope.

This is the original award-winning shorter version of *The Martian Child*, already carrying the same mix of humor, ache, and hard-earned affection. A single father and a boy who says he is from Mars change each other.

Jonathan Korie and the Star Wolf crew are thrown back into deep-space danger, where politics can be as lethal as enemy fire. Gerrold uses the mission setup to keep testing discipline, trust, and endurance.

War, loyalty, and unfinished grudges catch up with the Star Wolf crew in a story that pushes them back into danger. Gerrold keeps the focus on hard choices, military pressure, and the cost of staying in the fight.

A family trip up the beanstalk to the Moon turns into something wilder when Chigger decides his parents need divorcing from the kids. It starts funny, then opens into a smart YA space adventure with real stakes.

After escaping their broken family on Earth, Chigger and his brothers try to build a life on the Moon. Ruthless corporations and a stolen secret make that fresh start far more dangerous than they imagined.

Chigger and his brothers cannot go home, so their next choice may decide the rest of their lives. Hunted across cislunar space and carrying dangerous technology, they head toward a colony world that promises freedom and exile.

A writer adopts a troubled boy who insists he is really from Mars. What follows is a tender, funny, and painful story about parenting, trust, and learning how love works in real life.

Gerrold's alternate-history collection ranges from funny to eerie, with historical detours, literary jokes, and speculative riffs. It is a good sampler of how playful and strange his shorter fiction can be.

Kaer's family volunteers to cross a world-gate to Linnea, a colony world of towering grass, giant horses, and wary natives. Gerrold turns first contact and frontier life into a very personal coming-of-age story.

This essay collection revisits the original *Star Trek* through transporters, tribbles, Vulcans, science, and cultural legacy. It is a thoughtful companion for readers who want more than episode guides.

This collection gathers Gerrold's shorter work across science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including some of his darker and more intimate pieces. It is a strong reminder of how wide his range really is.

Gerrold uses a simple fantasy setup to show how wishes can twist, surprise, and backfire. It is light on its feet, with the kind of mischief that works best when someone wants too much.

This brief piece starts with an ordinary name and follows it into a much less ordinary situation. Gerrold keeps the tone playful, but there is an undercurrent of unease beneath the joke.

This short work turns change itself into the problem, and maybe the answer. Gerrold keeps the concept sharp and the emotions close, so the strange premise lands with surprising force.

After social collapse, orphaned Michael is shipped by refugee train to a rural world veiled in light-drinking darklines. It reads like dystopian science fiction, but the real pressure comes from fear, hunger, and growing up too fast.

Kafka becomes Bug-Man and takes on a villainous Sigmund Freud in a knowingly absurd pulp adventure. It is a fast, punny mash-up of literary history and comic-book nonsense.

An old woman who runs an asteroid-belt way station decides to save her family and future by building a ship the one way she knows how, by knitting it. Corporate enemies soon learn not to underestimate Ganny.

Time-quakes shake Los Angeles as a scarred Vietnam veteran investigates why boys are disappearing from West Hollywood. Noir mystery, queer history, and speculative fiction lock together in a very tense novella.

Gerrold follows a character slipping out of the world's easy categories and certainties. The story works best as a compact meditation on identity, isolation, and what it means to be seen.

In this alternate history, John F. Kennedy becomes an actor and winds up captaining a very familiar starship. Gerrold turns the joke into a nimble satire about fame, politics, and American mythmaking.

The devil updates soul-selling for the age of self-improvement seminars and slick marketing. What starts as satire gets darker as the pitch becomes harder to resist.

A science fiction writer takes a wrong turn and stumbles into a strange wilderness mystery involving the so-called green people. Gerrold plays it for wonder, sharp observation, and a lot of puns.

The first movement of Chase's bruising life story introduces a young man already fighting for a place in the world. Even on its own, it carries the raw voice and restless energy of the later full novel.

Infrastructure, ambition, and off-world living all collide in a story about building shelter where there is none. Gerrold gives the engineering problem real human weight.

Gerrold uses the giant ape as a way into bigger questions about monsters, spectacle, and why certain stories stay with us. These are thoughtful, personal reflections rather than fan notes.

A team of researchers tries to make sense of mysterious alien artifacts, only to learn that interpretation can be its own danger. This is compact archaeological science fiction with a strong sense of unease.

A mission involving an asteroid flyby turns into a thoughtful story about gender, performance, and how people present themselves under pressure. Gerrold keeps the science fiction frame light and the character questions central.

Short pieces, glimpses, and unfinished-seeming moments come together into a book that feels deliberately broken into shards. The appeal is in the voice and the way each fragment hints at a larger whole.

This is Gerrold in compact form, a selection of short fiction that moves quickly from one idea, joke, or sting in the tail to the next. It is built for browsing as much as bingeing.

This witty mystery borrows energy from literary scandal and hidden lives. Gerrold has fun with performance, secrecy, and the social theater around reputation.

Family tension, social performance, and a title that already sounds like trouble carry this sharp little piece. Gerrold lets the comedy bite before the sting fully lands.

This collection gathers stories of space travel, strange worlds, and people trying to earn a future among them. The settings are big, but the hooks stay human.

Life on Linnea gets more complicated as Kaer faces new power struggles, new beliefs, and the hard truth that a colony world will not stay simple for long. The frontier adventure broadens into politics, faith, and survival.

Seven dark stories let Gerrold lean into menace, weirdness, and the things that go wrong in the night. The mood shifts from sly to disturbing without ever losing control.

What should be a quiet overnight rail trip slowly turns into a nightmare. Gerrold does not overexplain the horror, which is exactly why the story gets under the skin.

This volume collects *StarCraft* stories from different corners of the Koprulu sector, mixing military action with smaller character beats. It is built for readers who like their science fiction fast and battlefield-focused.

Gerrold takes the original *Star Trek* seriously as television, fandom, and idea machine. It is part behind-the-scenes history, part criticism, and part early map of why the show mattered.

A strange ride on a battered old bus becomes a liminal journey through memory, mortality, and the thin line between this world and the next. It is brief, odd, and quietly haunting.

Gerrold bundles together speculative stories where relationships, fear, and unforeseen consequences get tightly knotted. It reads like a shelf of dangerous what-ifs.

An exploration team attempts an ocean crossing on a brutal alien world where the equator boils. The adventure is old-school in the best sense, driven by curiosity, danger, and the need to know how life survives there.

Chase's story grows darker and more complicated as war, sex, and self-invention reshape him. It works as the middle stretch of a larger odyssey and as a sharp novella in its own right.

Gerrold retells the biblical story through Jacob's own voice, letting an old man look back on love, rivalry, deceit, and faith. The result feels intimate, human, and a little cranky in the best way.

Humanity's war with the Chtorr pushes deeper into strategy, psychology, and survival as Earth's alien remake keeps advancing. This installment continues Gerrold's grim vision of a world being overwritten from the ground up.

Not all heroes wear capes, and Gerrold is more interested in the cost than the pose. This urban fantasy vignette asks what heroism looks like when the world barely notices it.

Some of the smartest people in the world meet to talk about an approaching future that may already be unavoidable. The tension comes less from action than from the unsettling seriousness of the conversation.

Chase grows from bullied boy to Vietnam veteran to hard-living biker in a raw, intimate search for identity and love. It is a coming-of-age novel that refuses to sand down pain, anger, or desire.

Gerrold breaks down how science fiction and fantasy work, both on the page and in the writer's head. It is practical, direct, and best read by people who like stories enough to want to build them.

This later work turns inward as much as outward, using a speculative frame to ask where identity goes when the old map stops working. It is reflective, but never placid.

On an oversized colony world of giant storms and giant beasts, Kyle becomes crucial when refugees arrive from a failing Earth. Survival on Hella is never simple, and politics may be as deadly as the landscape.

This anthology explores war, its aftermath, and the roads not taken across a range of speculative stories, including Gerrold's. It is less about one battle than about the many ways conflict shapes people.

Part sampler and part celebration, this volume offers a cross-section of Gerrold's work and interests. It is the kind of book that invites wandering rather than strict cover-to-cover reading.

Jamie and José can choose the Labor Corps or a one-way trip to an all-male colony world. Most of the drama lies in the training, where Gerrold treats society-building as a hard test of honesty, intimacy, and endurance.

Essays, poems, and stories use speculative fiction to dig into Southern politics, memory, denial, and identity. Gerrold's contribution sits inside a book more interested in argument than easy comfort.

This anthology looks at civil liberties under pressure, with speculative stories about control, fear, and resistance, and Gerrold among the contributors. It is aimed squarely at readers who like politics in their science fiction.

Dar is sent from comfortable Turtledome to the colony on Praxis, where he must help shape a constitution under intense pressure. Law, power, and corporate interests drive this smart, talky, high-stakes science fiction story.

On Praxis itself, Jamie and José arrive to find rebellion, confusion, and a colony that is not what they expected. The sequel shifts from preparation to messy reality, where they become part of the problem.

Slither, an augmented shapeshifting assassin, gets thrown into a violent world where nobody can be trusted and invasion is in motion. Gerrold uses the action setup to play with identity, gender, and survival.

Memory, imagination, and hindsight meet in a book that feels part memoir, part reflection, and part speculative musing. Gerrold looks backward without pretending the past stays still.