It will be of no surprise to those few people who know me well enough that Star Trek has been a great motivator (and joy) in my life and that I owe special debt of gratitude to Mr. Spock for showing me the way forward and guiding me into a life of Science. This morning the first Leonard Nimoy autobiography arrived on my doorstep – “I am not Spock” – I have just finished it in one sitting. Now that is a first, I have finished many books in one go but there were usually breaks during the day. Not this time – a really great piece of work, gripping stuff! I now eagerly await the arrival of “I am Spock” the second autobiographical piece by Leonard Nimoy – I hope it is even half as good as his first effort.
If you ever get a chance to see the 8-minute BBC1 “Inside Out” piece that Chris Packham did on the New Forest Observatory you will see Chris asking me if I had been motivated in my Deep-Sky imaging by the Apollo space programme. My answer was that although I sat up all evening like many people did watching those first Moon landings my main motivation was not in fact the Apollo space programme, but Star Trek 🙂
