A letter from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, to a teenage student with learning difficulties who had recently begun reading science fiction:

“Dear Roger:

I have been told of your exceptional progress in reading during the last year and that you are especially interested in reading and writing science fiction. It was also suggested you might want to know how I feel about books.

First and most important, I consider reading the greatest bargain in the world. A shelf of books is a shelf of many lives and ideas and imaginations which the reader can enjoy whenever he wishes and as often as he wishes. Instead of experiencing just one life, the book-lover can experience hundreds or even thousands of lives. He can live any kind of adventure in the world. Books are his time machine into the past and also into the future. Books are his “transporter” by which he can beam instantly to any part of the universe and explore what he finds there. Books are an instrument by which he can become any person for a while—a man, a woman, a child, a general, a farmer, a detective, a king, a doctor, anyone. Great books are especially valuable because a great book often contains within its covers the wisdom of a man or woman’s whole lifetime. But the true lover of books enjoys all kinds of books, even some nonsense now and then, because enjoying nonsense from others can teach us to also laugh at ourselves. A person who does not learn to laugh at his own problems and weaknesses and foolishness can never be a truly educated or a truly happy person. Also, probably the same thing could be said of a person who does not enjoy learning and growing all his life.

The reason I have written you such a long letter is that we not only share a love of science and science fiction, but we share something else. When I was a child, I was disabled by illness. Although my problem was different from yours, it did keep me from enjoying many things enjoyed by other young people. In a way, this turned out to be fortunate for me, since it turned me toward books. In those days, I used to think that it would have been better to have no physical problem and to have become a great football star or something like that. But now I realize that my love of books gave me much more happiness than anything else could have done.

Please do try your hardest to persevere at reading. You will never regret doing that.

Very sincerely yours,
Gene Roddenberry”