10 Star Trek Fan Concepts That Became Real
4. Gordon Eklund - The Starless World
Gordon Eklund's 1978 novel, The Starless World, features James T. Kirk encountering an old classmate out in the depths of space. Thomas Clayton seizes control of the Enterprise as it is en route to explore Klingon activity around the Galactic Core. He also announces that the crew are about to meet his new god.
All of the ingredients for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier are present. First, there is the face from the past. While in the novel, Clayton is an old friend of Kirk's, the movie features Sybok, Spock's long-lost half-brother. Both stories feature the Enterprise having to travel toward the Galactic Core.
Clayton's announcement that they are going to meet his new god is parallel to Sybok's assurance that God exists on the planet of Sha Ka Ree, located in the centre of the Galaxy. Both characters end up discovering something very different from what they had expected. Finally, The Starless World features a Dyson Sphere, fourteen years before the massive, theoretical structure was featured in The Next Generation's sixth season episode, Relics.