10 Star Trek Fan Concepts That Became Real
5. James Blish - Spock Must Die!
This novel, written by James Blish, was the first Star Trek novel written for an adult audience. It was published in 1970 and was created with the sole purpose of shocking the readers by killing one of the main characters. Blish and his wife, J.A. Lawrence, decided during production that the unlucky character would be Spock.
This novel precedes Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by twelve years, though the famous sequel also kills off Spock, with both stories ending somewhat definitively. In the film, Spock is of course dead, with only the final shot of his coffin for theorists to focus on. In the novel, Spock is dead, with no reset button pushed.
The novel also served as a sequel to Errand of Mercy, with both the Klingons and the Organians returning. This time, however, the Organians act by imprisoning the Klingon race on their own homeworld for 1000 years, something the main franchise did not bring into the films or series. A follow-up novel had been planned but Blish's death in 1975 ensured that this didn't happen.
A sequel (of sorts) named Spock, Messiah! by Theodore Cogwell and Charles Spano was released in 1976. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock also features Leonard Nimoy coming back to life so, who's to say that these aren't related, either?