Great Bird of the Galaxy (glossary term)

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, is often referred to by fans as "The Great Bird of the Galaxy", sometimes shortened to "Great Bird."
In the episode, "The Man Trap," Yeoman Janice Rand brought Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu some food, and Sulu said, "May the Great Bird of the Galaxy bless your planet!" 
 
According to "Star Trek Encyclopedia" 2nd ed., p. 178), the nickname was given to Roddenberry by associate producer Robert Justman and was used in the original series as an inside joke. 
The ultimate origin of the nickname could be the 1942 novella "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" by Robert A. Heinlein, in which a group of evil creatures (Sons of the Bird) believe that the universe was created by the Bird.In her essay "A Citizen of Mondath", published in the British journal Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction in 1973 and reprinted in the 1979 collection The Language of the Night, Ursula K. Le Guin recalls coming across this story in the pulp SF magazines she and her brother read in their teens: "'In the beginning was the Bird.' We really dug that Bird." Star Trek: The Original Series contains other borrowings from Heinlein; the tribbles in David Gerrold's "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode are (perhaps) inspired by the "flat cats" in The Rolling Stones.Ann Wilson, "A preliminary survey of tribbles and Martian flat cats", Spockanalia 5, p. 60. (Entire run of Spockanalia archived at the Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Fanzine Collection and The Fanac Fan History Project, and at the Internet Archive.)
Menagerie 3 (prob. October 1973) features a cover illustration by Franz Josef Schnaubelt portraying Roddenberry as the Great Bird. In the mid- to late 1970s, fans who were annoyed or impatient with Roddenberry for one reason or another sometimes referred to him sarcastically as "Gene Rottenbirdie."
Roddenberry is billed in the book jacket blurb for the Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelisation (Pocket, 1979) as "The Great Bird of the Galaxy".
In the early 1980s, SASTREK in Australia hosted Roddcon, which celebrated Gene Roddenberry's birthday. The Little Bird Awards were trophies presented at this convention to winners of the art display, fiction writing and costume parade.
In a letter to Interstat #88 (1985), Harve Bennett used the phrase, "Great Bird" in a letter to fans: 
An in-joke on a computer screen in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) featured a cartoon drawing of Roddenberry as "The Great Bird of the Galaxy".
Image Publishing (USA) and Boxtree (UK) published the trade paperback book, Great Birds of the Galaxy: Gene Roddenberry and the Creators of Trek, in 1992.
In the licensed Star Trek: New Frontier novels (Pocket Books, 1997- ) by Peter David, a starship crew has an actual encounter with the mythical, phoenix-like "Great Bird".
Image:Greatbirdgraphic.png|Computer screen in-joke of "The Great Bird of the Galaxy" in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Image:Greatbirdbook.png|Cover of Great Birds of the Galaxy: Gene Roddenberry and the Creators of Trek (Boxtree, 1992) by Edward Gross & Mark A. Altman
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Category:Star Trek Fandom Glossary