Mike Muegel · CC BY 2.0

Gerrold wrote "The Trouble with Tribbles," one of the original Star Trek series' most beloved episodes, while still in his early twenties, and went on to create the Sleestak creatures for Land of the Lost. His novelette The Martian Child won both the Hugo and Nebula awards and was adapted into a 2007 film starring John Cusack, drawing on his own experience adopting his son — a rare case of a science fiction premise built directly out of the writer's own life.