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TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is the critically acclaimed bestselling author Julian Barnes. He was diagnosed six years ago with a rare form of blood cancer, but it's not a death sentence. It's treatable, which means he'll be on a chemo drug for the rest of his life. His 80th birthday is Monday. Tuesday is the publication date of his new book, which he says will be his last. It's called "Departure(s)." It's part memoir, part fiction. The memoir sections are about his diagnosis and his reflections on death, why he's agnostic, the power and unreliability of memory, and how his memory has been diminishing with age.

In a way, his new book is a companion to his book "Levels Of Life," which was in part about grief and the death of his wife, Pat Kavanagh, who was also his literary agent. She died in 2008, just 37 days after being diagnosed with a rare, hyperaggressive brain tumor. They'd been married about 30 years. The New York Times review described the book as shattering. Barnes won Britain's highest literary award, the Man Booker Prize, in 2011 for his novel "The Sense Of An Ending." His breakthrough novel, "Flaubert's Parrot," was shortlisted for the prize. Before Barnes was known for his books, he was a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement and a book and TV critic for British publications.

Julian Barnes, welcome back to FRESH AIR. I really like your new book a lot. I found it very meaningful.

JULIAN BARNES: Good. Good. That's a good start.

GROSS: It seems like a momentous couple of days next week, turning 80...

BARNES: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...And having not only your new book, but the book you call your final book published.

BARNES: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: So how are you feeling about all that right now?

BARNES: I'm feeling quite excited. It's been a very strange five months up to now because in August, I got married. In December, I had a serious back operation - first time I've really been seriously put out and given morphine and stuff like that, which is very interesting. And then I get my 80th birthday, and then I get my book publication. I can't remember a period of months when it's been - there's been so much going on. So I'm still well, alive and enjoying myself.

GROSS: I would rather have a book published than back surgery.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: So would I.

GROSS: You OK now?

BARNES: Yes, I'm fine. Yes, yes.

GROSS: And I should mention, you know, that you were diagnosed five years ago, I think it was, with a rare form of blood cancer.

BARNES: Yes, yes. It was - it's nearly six years ago. It was when - just as they were - we were locking down for COVID, first month or two of the year. Yes, it came as a great shock. It's a form of blood cancer which is quite rare. I don't boast about that. It just means it's hard to diagnose.

GROSS: It makes you unique.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: Well, there are about 500 cases a year in Britain of this sort of cancer. So it's - yeah, I feel - well, you can't feel proud of an illness, but I feel it's slightly different. And they pick it up when you have a blood test for something else. And so I had a routine blood test, and then my doctor called me up about two mornings later and says, we haven't had your full results, but I want you to go straight to accident and emergency and tell them you've got a very high potassium reading. So I went off and took various provisions from, you know, chocolate to a cryptic crossword and so on. And it took a while for them to find out exactly what it was. They thought it was something of the nature of leukemia, but it turned out to be, fortunately, not leukemia but a sort of - well, it's not curable. And there's no research into this form of cancer, so I'm stuck with taking chemo every day for the rest of my life.

GROSS: Pills, right?

BARNES: Pills, yes. Yes. One gram a day and then an extra half-gram at weekends just to up the fun. And there's a 5% chance it might mutate into something like leukemia. But it's essentially stable, and they say it doesn't - it probably won't reduce my life expectancy. But who knows?

GROSS: So let's get to your new book. The main character is named Julian Barnes, and he's narrating the book and talks about his own grief through the book. You lost your wife, your first wife, in 2008.

BARNES: Yes. Yes, yes.

GROSS: And she was also your literary agent.

BARNES: She was indeed.

GROSS: And it was, you know, understandably, a horrible experience for you. She died 37 days after she was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain cancer.

BARNES: Yes.

GROSS: So part of the book is about that, but it's a character named Julian Barnes. But it's not necessarily all memoir, that part. And then there's a story - another story within it about how Julian Barnes helps two people get together during their college years. They become a couple, but they break apart. And then about 30 years later, Julian Barnes, at the request of the guy in this couple, helps reunite them. So what's that story doing in what otherwise would have been a memoir?

BARNES: Well, I often write hybrid books, and this is a hybrid. It's not a term that publishers like. They like to have something that says fiction or nonfiction.

GROSS: And nowhere to file it in bookstores.

BARNES: No. It's a problem for booksellers as well. And once, a publisher asked me how I would describe my book. And I just said, well, it's Julian Barnes' new book...

GROSS: (Laughter).

BARNES: ...In a rather irritated way, which she...

GROSS: Put it in the Julian Barnes section.

BARNES: (Laughter).

GROSS: You've written, like, 27 books, or 26.

BARNES: Yes, and quite a few of them are actually hybrid, which mix autobiography, fiction, nonfiction, art criticism, whatever's relevant to my thinking about the book. So I've always been quite relaxed about this, but I know that it does annoy some people. And indeed, my - the character, Julian Barnes, is attacked at one point by one of the participants in this love affair and - who he hasn't met for 40 years or so. And she says, I don't like this hybrid stuff you do, you know? I think you should stick to one thing or another. And it was rather enjoyable to have a character rebuking me for the book that I was writing.

GROSS: (Laughter).

BARNES: I sort of enjoyed that. And I get cross with her and I say, well, you may like or not like one of my books, but I want you to know that I know exactly what I'm doing when I'm writing (laughter), which was actually - I overheard another writer use more or less those words, so I sort of pinched them. And a reader has, you know, absolute liberty to like or not like your book and to say, you shouldn't have written it this way. You shouldn't have written that. But usually, the complaints and the corrections to it fall on rather deaf ears with most writers. You know, what you're putting in there is something that you've thought about, you've written a number of times, and you've corrected it and corrected and corrected. So it is what you mean to say.

GROSS: So I want you to read an excerpt. And you mentioned that it's - what you have is a rare form of blood cancer, and I said, that makes you unique. So you actually have a passage related to that that I'd like you to read.

BARNES: Yes, when I thought I had a more serious version of it, I decided to write a little sort of memoir, notes to myself in my notebook. And this is - it only reached about 2 1/2 pages, but these are some of the entries.

GROSS: I should interrupt here and say, you got sick just as the COVID lockdown was starting.

BARNES: Yes, that's correct.

(Reading) This is the start of the ending. I live in the present, but my future is to exist only in the past. The writer, quarantined in his own home, suddenly victim of blood cancer while all around a plague is spreading exponentially. It sounds like a bad or at least derivative novel, and yet there are promising themes. Thus, he is meticulous about self-isolation because he doesn't want to die of coronavirus. He'd much rather die of blood cancer. It's not just the timescale of it, three weeks to a strangulating COVID death, which is very nasty to watch, let alone suffer, according to A&E specialists.

He would rather die of his own disease, thank you very much, not everybody else's. And without yet knowing its ramifications or the nature of its end, he prefers to have blood cancer. Is this snobbery? A little. He doesn't want lung or liver or bum, or whatever, doesn't want bits of him chopped off or out. It feels a more private, personal form of cancer. Whether it'll feel like this as it progresses is anyone's guess, and he will still be a carcass at the end of it, assuming the virus doesn't get him first.

Also, it's not the sort of cancer that I can feel responsible for and therefore guilty about - oh, if only I hadn't smoked, drunk so much, eaten so much ultra-processed food. It's a cancer caused by the body getting old, starting to break down and turn against its own best interests. It's a cancer rooted in the universe's utter indifference. It's random. It has no significance. It's just the universe doing its stuff. Don't insert morality or purpose into its unrolling and denouement.

GROSS: So how much relief does it give you to know that you can't blame yourself for this disease?

BARNES: (Laughter).

GROSS: It wasn't your behavior that brought it on. No one can be finger pointing, like, finger wagging at you, saying, I told you, you should've stopped smoking.

BARNES: (Laughter) Well, I did used to smoke but only very lightly. And I stopped some time ago. And I do still drink, but it's not what causes it at all. So it's a sort of morally neutral feeling, you know? It's just something that happens. It's just, as a phrase I use more than once, it's just the universe doing its stuff, which gives you a certain sort of distance and vision about it.

GROSS: You wrote a memoir about, you know, grief for your wife. In this book, I could say some of it is about grief for your own body.

BARNES: (Laughter) No, I don't really feel grief for my own body. I mean, it's just - it's sort of - it's pointless to feel that. We are these creatures who come into this Earth unbidden, not consulted. And we live a certain amount of time, much longer than our ancestors, which is an upside. But because we live longer, our body begins to break down and the medical costs increase.

But I don't feel - I remember when I was told that I had some form of blood cancer. I was sort of strangely detached. I thought, oh, so that's how they tell you. And also, I felt interested in, you know, all the medical side of it. I love talking to doctors and consultants and nurses as they stick their needles into your arm and take off pints of blood. It's very interesting. Though, of course, it does get, like many things, it does get a bit tedious on the 34th time of them taking a pint of blood out of you.

GROSS: And yet (laughter), you've kind of lived in fear of death your whole life. You've thought about death a lot. You've been afraid of death. And although your blood cancer isn't a death sentence, it's not going to help you live longer either.

BARNES: No, it's definitely not going to do that, I'd say.

GROSS: You know, it will make your body more vulnerable. So it's interesting that you felt detached when you got the diagnosis.

BARNES: Yes.

GROSS: And not fearful.

BARNES: No, I didn't feel fearful, and I didn't feel angry either. I'm not quite sure why. I think I found it interesting, you see, with a human being's, but also perhaps a novelist's, interest. You know, what's the shape and form of this? Who's going to do anything about it? What are they going to do, if anything? Am I a goner or not, and so on? I mean, I've got to know hospitals in (laughter) the last few years quite well. And I don't feel fear going into them. I think, oh, I wonder what this - I wonder how noisy this MRI scan is going to be, and so on. I think it's one way of putting off the fear. But it's also genuine interest, yes.

GROSS: My guest is Julian Barnes. His new book is called "Departure(s)." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LAGE GROUP'S "IOWA TAKEN")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Julian Barnes. His new book, "Departure(s)," is part fiction, part memoir. The memoir portion is about being diagnosed with a rare but treatable blood cancer six years ago. His 80th birthday is Monday. An earlier book, "Levels Of Life," is about grief and the death of his wife of nearly 30 years.

The third sentence of your new book, "Departure(s)," says that your interest tends toward the ghoulish and the extreme. So give us a couple of the examples. And why do you think that you're interested in the ghoulish and the extreme of the body?

BARNES: Oh, just because I'm a sort of sick Brit, I suppose.

GROSS: Sick in what way?

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Physically sick?

BARNES: No. No, no.

GROSS: Or, like, mentally?

BARNES: No, I mean, quite a lot of people are interested in awful things that happen or unexpected things that happen. And I think it's a way of confirming that, you know, as I think the Russians have it, life is not a short walk across an open field. There's always something waiting for you coming out of the hedgerow at you. So, I have a friend who's a consultant radiologist and who sends me clippings from the British Medical Journal, and, as you say, she knows that my interest tends towards the ghoulish and the extreme. And so, you know, for example, it's always men somehow who are doing this stuff, men who decide to grow their toenails to a length of several feet so they're unable to walk. And these - examples like this, they usually have photographs with them so that they're proven.

And then there's one case I particularly remember was a man who'd been fitted with a tracheostomy tube. And when he went to a checkup, the doctors were baffled by sort of yellowish stains around the hole into which the tube was fitted. And it turned out that he was a desperate smoker who couldn't smoke through his mouth anymore. But he discovered if he took out the tube, then the cigarette fitted perfectly into the hole. And all he had to do was to light up and inflate his lungs. You've got to be pretty clever and curious to come up with that way of smoking, it seems to me.

GROSS: When something extreme is happening to your own body or something tending toward the ghoulish, do you find that fascinating, too, or just horrifying?

BARNES: I find it fascinating, really. Yes. I mean, I find it fascinating until I know exactly what it is. And then I might find it horrifying. I was talking to a friend of mine who said, oh, I don't think about death. I'm only 60. I'll think about death when it's nearer the time, and you think, well, death doesn't quite necessarily operate in that fashion. You know, death could be an out-of-control motorbike coming 'round a corner and taking you out. You won't have had much time to think in those 3 seconds before it hits you.

One of my French gurus is the 17th century philosopher, Montaigne. And he said we should think about death on a daily basis. We should make it our familiar. That's the best way of treating it. Not as some awful sort of, you know, ghastly skeleton with a scythe and its hand coming to chop us off. That we should think - he said we should think of death when our horse shies or when tile falls off the roof of a house. We should make it sort of - we should almost domesticate it, tame it in this way, and then we should hope to die while planting out our cabbages. That's a wonderfully sort of wise approach to it all. I haven't got a vegetable garden anymore. I used to have one, and when I planted cabbages, they didn't do very well. That's the only fault I can find with Montaigne's view of death.

GROSS: But if you take him too much to heart and obsess about death every day instead of, like, thinking about it and thinking about it as a kind of natural part of life, that's not great. Where on the scale were you, 'cause it sounds like you've been pretty somewhere between thoughtful and obsessed with death for a good deal of your life?

BARNES: I've certainly been thoughtful about it. I've certainly been afraid of it. And it's a kind of moot point if you're very familiar with the idea of death and the way it happens. Whether you, therefore, enjoy life more, knowing that it's so passing. I don't know the answer to that.

GROSS: Do you feel like you enjoyed life more because of your...

BARNES: Well, I actually think that people who don't think about death at all enjoy life probably just as much as people who do. So that's a bit of a downside. There there must be some advantage, I think, in realizing and reflecting on the fact that you're not going to be here forever. In my case, I won't be here for 10 or 15 years. Definitely not.

GROSS: My guest is Julian Barnes. His new book is called "Departure(s)." We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL EVANS TRIO'S "WHAT IS THERE TO SAY?")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Julian Barnes. He won Britain's top literary award, the Man Booker Prize, in 2011 for his novel "The Sense Of An Ending." His new book, "Departure(s)," is a hybrid of memoir and fiction. The memoir portion is about getting diagnosed with a rare but treatable form of blood cancer. He shares his reflections on mortality, aging - his 80th birthday is Monday - religion - he's agnostic - and the unreliability of memory. An earlier book, "Levels Of Life," was in part about grieving the death of his first wife.

Just a heads-up here - in the next part of our conversation, we briefly discuss suicide. If you're having thoughts of harming yourself or are having a mental health crisis, help is available by calling or texting 988. That's the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Again, the number to call or text is 988.

You finished writing a book in 2012 about your wife's death. She died 37 days after being diagnosed with a very aggressive brain tumor. You describe her as stoic, even in how she handled illness and the approach of death. Your illness has brought the thought of your own mortality to the forefront. Are there ways that watching her die affected how you're handling your own sense of mortality?

BARNES: Probably. But I don't think of what I've got as in any way comparable to what she had. I've got something which will be with me for the rest of my life, and I may well live a sort of normal span. She had a catastrophic diagnosis and was dead in 37 days. It was like being taken downhill in an avalanche and every day, something got worse. And it was the most - well, it's by a long way the most appalling thing that has happened to me in my life and the most - the blackest. The thing that most deprived you of sort of hope and balance, really. It took me years to get over it. But I don't think I shall mourn my own departure in quite the same way.

GROSS: Did your wife give you any directions or even clues about what you could do to help her, about what she needed from you?

BARNES: No. She didn't give any specific guidance. She was herself as much as possible, right to the very end. I mean, her last complete sentence - when she was brought home from the hospital on a stretcher, and she was put in a bed in the sitting room. And the guys who brought her in sort of rather dumped her on the bed. And I said, was that a bugger? And she said, a bit of a bugger, which was wonderfully precise. You know, not - don't complain. Just say exactly what the situation is. And that was her last sentence, and she died about 48 hours later. I suppose you could say that she showed me how to die with grace and also with a consideration for other people who were coming to see her. She never got cross. She never became tragic or upset. So in some ways, she was - we were well suited because I have that sort of temperament as well.

GROSS: You describe yourself as agnostic. You don't believe in God. Do you ever wish you could believe in a loving, comforting God who was your friend and a heaven where you'd be reunited with your wife of 30 years, and, you know, things would be calm and beautiful?

BARNES: No. I've never thought that. I've never had any religious belief. I think that life is all we have, and there's nothing after it. It's very hard to believe in a calm and loving God when you look at the state of the world. I remember Stephen Fry, the actor, was on a chat show in Ireland when - where religion was in better, healthier shape than it was in England at the time. And the interviewer said, so give me one reason why you don't believe in God. And Stephen Fry answered, child cancer. Which is sort of kind of unanswerable, I think. If he's a loving God, then why does - why do the just do badly? Why do the unjust succeed? Why does - why do innocent people get suddenly killed? It makes no sense, except that the defense from the religious angle is God moves in mysterious ways. We simply don't know. We'll find out later. That's sort of not good enough for me.

GROSS: After your wife died, you said that if the grief didn't stop, you would consider taking your life, ending your life. Did you give yourself, like, a border? Like, if you reach that border, that you would try to end your life?

BARNES: I remember very clearly when I thought that I might kill myself. It was a few weeks after my wife had died, and I was walking home. And I looked across at the curb on the other side of the road, and at that moment - I still see that curbstone on a daily basis. And I thought, of course, you can kill yourself. That's permissible. It's not unforgivable in my morality. I'm extremely unhappy. I'm bereft. I'm lost, though I have many friends. And I think I said, or a friend said to me - I can't remember which way around it was - give it two years. I said, OK, I'll give it two years.

But before that two-year period had elapsed, I discovered the reason why I couldn't kill myself. I wasn't allowed to kill myself, and that's because I was the best rememberer of my wife. I knew her and I had celebrated her in all her forms and in all her nature, and I had loved her deeply. And I realized that if I killed myself, then I would, in a way, be killing her too. I'd be killing the best memories of her. They would disappear from the world. And I just wasn't - wouldn't allow myself to do that. And at that point, it just turned on its head, and I knew I would have to live with the grief for quite a long well time. But I didn't think an answer to the grief was killing myself.

GROSS: So your new wife - and you're pretty recently married - how does she feel about you having written so much about your first wife? I'm wondering, like, does she feel in the shadow of that? Does she feel uncomfortable with you talking about how long your grief lasted and all, you know?

BARNES: Well, I can't really speak for her. But she once said to me, when we'd been together for, I don't know, two or three years, she said, I love the way you love Pat. And Pat had been dead for 13 years or something. So she is remarkably open and realistic. It doesn't mean I love her any less. It's just that I think it's right to remember and to write about the dead.

GROSS: My guest is Julian Barnes. His new book is called "Departure(s)." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE WEE TRIO'S "LOLA")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Julian Barnes. His new book, "Departure(s)," is part fiction, part memoir. The memoir portion is about being diagnosed with a rare but treatable blood cancer six years ago. His 80th birthday is Monday.

You've written a lot about memory, including in your new book. And so has one of your favorite authors, Proust. The opening chapter of your new book "Departure(s)" has a lot of neurological disorders, rare ones that distort memory or cause memory to be so good, you can basically watch a whole video of your childhood memory, which can be very intrusive and time-consuming because I don't think there's necessarily a pause button on that video that plays in your mind. How has your memory been most of your life, and how has that figured into your writing?

BARNES: Well, I used to believe, as I think most people do when they're young, that memory was somehow something rather stable. That, you know, it was like you had something happen to you and you wanted to remember it, and so you took it along to, you know, one of those storage units which are along the sides of lots of main roads and outside city centers. And you deposited it there. And then when you needed that memory, you went there. You opened the box, you took it out, and there it was, as pure and as truthful as when you put it in.

I went along with this sort of view of memory for quite a long time until I realized that actually, memory deteriorates, like everything else. And that, in fact, the more times you tell a story, the more times you subtly alter it - the more times you make yourself come out of it a little better or you add a joke, and so on and so forth. So you could say that your best memories, the ones you're fondest of, are your least reliable memories.

GROSS: Because you've taken them out so many times, distorting them in the process.

BARNES: Yes. Yes, that's right. It's sort of - our relationship with the brain is very strange. You know, how do we have a relationship with our brain when everything we need to have that relationship is inside the brain anyway? It's very paradoxical. And, you know, in the book, I go through various sort of metaphors or versions of what it's like to receive memories from the brain. And the one I come up with eventually is it's like spy fiction.

I mean, Freud said that everything was up there, everything that happened to us is up there. So it's a question of what the brain lets us know and lets us see. So I thought of the comparison with spy fiction, with John le Carré. We're like an agent running in the field. And the brain is like the spy center, the control. And the brain only tells us what we need to do our next task. So just as control doesn't let the spy know everything that's happening, only lets the spy know what is useful to him in his spying and doesn't overcomplicate matters, that, I think, is how the brain behaves with us.

GROSS: Early in your career, you were a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered the definitive English dictionary. So I wonder what you think of the language that we use to describe death, even the word death itself. You even describe how, like, if someone's at a dinner party who has lost a spouse, they're often - they won't use the word death because that's too scary to the other people. They'll say passed, my wife passed.

BARNES: Yes. I hate that. I hate that. It's a way of not using the right word. I always say death. You know, I remember when I first - it's fairly recent. I mean, the last 20 years or so, people have started saying passed. And you say, what? I was very sort of puzzled by it, you know? Passed, your wife has passed. Passed water, passed blood? Passed. Oh, passed over. But then passed over means passed to another condition. But she hasn't. She's just passed to a noncondition. And I don't like the language. I don't like euphemisms. And, you know, if people object to it, tough.

GROSS: While we're talking about language, when you were a lexicographer, I think part of your job was deciding what new words or expressions should be entered into the dictionary. Are there any you can take credit for?

BARNES: (Laughter) Well, I was a very lowly figure on the Oxford Dictionary. It was the new supplement. But I worked on letters between C and G, and my specialties were sports words and dirty words. So...

GROSS: Let's go to the dirty words.

BARNES: No, I won't...

GROSS: (Laughter).

BARNES: I don't want to pollute your airwaves.

GROSS: Oh, come on.

BARNES: Well, OK. Well, I'll tell you...

GROSS: I want to know what the criteria are for (laughter) dirty words.

BARNES: Well, the criteria are if they've been used in print more than a certain amount of times. And you might like to enjoy the - you know, the Oxford Dictionary is a dictionary on historical principles, which means it's illustrated by quotations of the word and its derivatives down the last, you know - well, since the English language came into existence. And the first use, and you can look it up in the dictionary, of the C-word is actually a street name. In the 14th century, which is recorded, it's called grope C dot, dot, dot lane.

GROSS: (Laughter) I like that grope is in there, too.

BARNES: Grope. Yes, yes. And it was obviously a sort of area where the prostitutes gathered, so it acquired that name.

GROSS: Oh, so it was meant to be literal?

BARNES: Yeah, it's a street name. It was a street name, yes, like, you know, Goldsmiths Avenue and that sort of thing, where the goldsmiths - no, it was very useful, probably (laughter).

GROSS: Well, congratulations for getting that into the dictionary.

BARNES: (Laughter).

GROSS: Julian Barnes, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much. And I wish you stable health and long life.

BARNES: Thank you, and I'm glad to have expanded your vocabulary.

GROSS: (Laughter).

Julian Barnes' new book is called "Departure(s)."

After we take a short break, TV critic David Bianculli will review the new series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy." Its stars include Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti. This is FRESH AIR.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Today, Paramount+ introduces yet another series in the Star Trek universe of TV shows. This one is called "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," and its stars include Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.

DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: The newest entry in the Star Trek franchise opens with a graphic logo that says it all. Star Trek 60, it says - an instant reminder that the original NBC show, the one that inspired this new Paramount+ sequel, premiered 60 years ago in 1966. Think of how long ago that was in TV time and in real time, and how much original producer Gene Roddenberry and his successors have given us since. Sure, there's the string of Star Trek sequels, prequels and spinoffs in the movies, as well as on TV. But there's also the now-familiar science stuff shown in the original series and later brought to life by fans turned engineers - giant flat TV screens, flip phone communicators, sophisticated computers you address directly to get information.

But back in September 1966, when "Star Trek" launched, its impact was less impressive. It lasted only three seasons and never ended a season ranked higher than 52nd place. Its final episode was televised in June 1969, one month before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. But in syndication in the 1970s, Star Trek grew a large cult following and began its string of successful series and movies.

Sixty years later, the newest incarnation is called "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," an eight-episode first season premiering with a doubleheader on Paramount+. Viewers without any "Star Trek" expertise or with hazy memories can enjoy the new adventures out of context, but there are echoes and Easter eggs throughout for those who catch them. Previous starship captains, including James T. Kirk, are referenced. A few characters from old series reappear, and even the classic stardate opening is retained. This time, it comes from Holly Hunter who plays Nahla Ake, the captain of the USS Athena, which in time becomes the floating classroom that is part of Starfleet Academy.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: STARFLEET ACADEMY")

HOLLY HUNTER: (As Nahla Ake) Long ago, Starfleet Academy took the finest minds, hearts and spirits of every generation and taught them to be lifelong explorers of space, our final frontier. Then one day, fate handed us an unimaginable loss. And it all went away.

BIANCULLI: Starfleet Academy is in a rebuilding phase. The first episode has the retired captain, Nahla. She's half human and more than 400 years old, becoming chancellor of the academy with the Athena as its university in space. The faculty members allow for some familiar faces from previous Star Trek series, including Tig Notaro from "Discovery" and Robert Picardo from "Voyager."

But the focus is just as much on the students, which allows relative unknowns like Sandro Rosta and Bella Shepard to not only reach for the stars, but try to become them. Another young standout is Kerrice Brooks, who plays SAM. She's a sentient hologram, the first of her kind. She finds a particular delight when describing herself to Robert Picardo's The Doctor, a holographic physician, who, like Captain Nahla, has been around for centuries.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: STARFLEET ACADEMY")

KERRICE BROOKS: (As SAM) I enjoy normal teenage things like hanging with friend groups, studying and reasonable acts of rebellion. Well, you know, occasional acts of rebellion. OK, there probably won't be any rebellion.

ROBERT PICARDO: (As The Doctor) May I ask...

BROOKS: (As SAM) Yeah.

PICARDO: (As The Doctor) ...How long have you existed?

BROOKS: (As SAM) You may. Thank you. I was programmed to feel 17, but I've only existed a little over four months on Cask.

PICARDO: (As The Doctor) And Cask is a colony of holograms?

BROOKS: (As SAM) We prefer photonics. Doctor, I can't help noticing you seem more mature than expected.

PICARDO: (As The Doctor) I prefer distinguished, professorial, ruggedly sophisticated. About 500 years ago, I added an aging program to my matrix to put Organics at ease.

BROOKS: (As SAM) Of course.

BIANCULLI: Paramount+ has made six of the first season's eight episodes available to critics, and they're a strong addition to the cannon. Creator Gaia Violo and showrunner Noga Landau have worked with their staff of writers, directors and production designers to give "Starfleet Academy" a modern, youthful sheen. The sets are brighter, the dialogue is sharper, with more expletives than expected from the elders as well as the kids, and the character development is strong across the board. Paul Giamatti has a standout recurring role as Braka, an evil mercenary. And when he and Holly Hunter share the screen, it's as much fun as any Star Trek in the series. In the premiere episode, Braka appears on the bridge of the U.S.S. Athena after attacking the ship, and he and the captain go at it immediately.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: STARFLEET ACADEMY")

HUNTER: (As Nahla Ake) Did you come for the cadet? 'Cause you can't have him.

PAUL GIAMATTI: (As Nus Braka) Absolutely not. I'm a business man. I came for your warp drive.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Then you're a [expletive] businessman, 'cause it's too big for your ship.

GIAMATTI: (As Nus Braka) Very true. But sold off piece by piece, it's worth my time. So I'm going to need you to clear all personnel, including security, from engineering. And then, since our transport is working just fine, I'll pop over with a team and break down your drive. Then we'll beam it off the ship and - poof - flutter away.

HUNTER: (As Nahla Ake) I need 10 minutes to clear my people out of engineering and override the biometric locks.

GIAMATTI: (As Nus Braka) Oh, when you lie to me, Captain, I'll admit, it's hot.

HUNTER: (As Nahla Ake) Otherwise, the minute your team touches our controls, anti-tampering protocols will activate. You guys will have to take it apart bolt by stem seal. You could just rip it up. But your buyers aren't going to pay top dollar for broken components, are they?

BIANCULLI: Passion for the original Star Trek series was kept alive by reruns as it reached new younger viewers. With access via streaming, especially on Paramount+, the same is true today of all the sequels. And now, 60 years on, "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" has the chance to build an audience of its own. In our fractured TV universe, the odds may be slightly against that, but remember, the original Star Trek series never finished in the top 50.

GROSS: David Bianculli is FRESH AIR's TV critic. He reviewed the new Paramount+ series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy."

If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, like this week's interviews with actress Jodie Foster or New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins talking about Marco Rubio or bestselling novelist Liz Moore, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.

FRESH AIR's executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Susan Nyakundi and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF TOMMASO-RAVA QUARTET'S "L'AVVENTURA")

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