- For the mirror universe counterpart, see Samuel Clemens (mirror).
- "Young lady, I come from a time when men achieve power and wealth by standing on the backs of the poor, where prejudice and intolerance are commonplace and power is an end unto itself, and you're telling me that isn't how it is anymore?!"
- —Samuel Clemens, 2369[src]
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) was a Human who lived on Earth during the 19th and 20th centuries. Better known as Mark Twain, he was one of the most noted American authors of this time period.
Biography
Samuel Clemens met several members of the crew of the USS Enterprise-D in 1893 when several of them were transported back to that year. Clemens followed them back to the year 2369, where he was given a tour of the Enterprise by Deanna Troi, who convinced him that his pessimism about the future of the human race was unfounded. Clemens returned to 1893 to help Jean-Luc Picard return to the 24th century, and to settle their accounts in the past. When Picard told Clemens that he wished he could have gotten to know him better, Clemens advised him to read his books as they contained everything that he was. (TNG episode: "Time's Arrow")
Clemens was a friend of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. (TNG comic: "Assimilation², Issue 1")
He once said that the coldest winter he ever spent was actually a San Francisco summer. (VAN novel: Harbinger; TNG comic: "Assimilation², Issue 1")
Clemens wrote the time travel novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. (TNG episode: "Time's Arrow")
In 1962, a photo of himself and Captain Picard was found in several personal letters that he bequeathed to the University of California/Berkeley. (ST reference: The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard)
In 2269, Ensign Ub Jackson daydreamed he was Samuel Clemens while waiting to take shore leave on the Amusement Park Planet. In his daydream, Clemens was the pilot of the steamboat Cairo rushing vaccines down the Big Muddy River to Paducah, Kentucky. Clemens reassured his captain, Benjamin Lee, that they would get there in time if the weather held, but just to be safe, he asked Swedish crewman Hansen to measure the river's depth and avoid a sandbank. (TAS - Log Three novelization: Once Upon a Planet)
At a student "meet-and-greet" at Starfleet Academy, Cadet Elizabeth Shelby, upon seeing all the Academy uniforms, found herself reminded of a Twain quotation: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society". (NF novel: Stone and Anvil)
Jake Sisko read several of Clemens' works as a pre-teen. He was especially fond of ', so much so that his father Benjamin called him "Huckleberry". (DS9 novelization: Emissary)
Sisko wondered what Twain's works would read when translated into Bajoran. (DS9 novel: Warchild)
Appendices
Connections
- Samuel Clemens article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.
- Mark Twain article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.