Starfarers had a unique genesis.

A local sf convention had asked me to be on a panel about television science fiction. At first I was tempted to decline, because the panel always has the same structure: Somebody whips out a list of all the tv sf from the past 20 years and reads the titles and everybody agrees how terrible they all were. (Keep in mind that this panel was before some recent pretty good television sf came on.)

And then I thought, What if…