A quick history for those who don't know who Edward Gorey is: he was an artist and writer best known for his stark, macabre drawings, often featuring children. Perhaps his best-known work is Gashlycrumb Tinies, the story of twenty-six children (each one representing a letter of the alphabet) who each meet a grisly demise ("R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire," etc).

Gorey passed away in 2000, but what if he had taken a break from depicting the bleak existence of human beings and focused on science fiction? Artist Shaenon K. Garrity imagines it would have gone a little something like this. It turns out Gorey was actually a pretty big Star Trek fan, having caught the series in syndication in the late '70s after a lifetime of not watching television at all. He apparently never saw the famous episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" however, which prompted Garrity to draw his little tribute to both Gorey and the troublesome furrballs.

Garrity does a nice job of emulating Gorey's drawings, though I would have liked a rhyming story better. That's just me being picky, though, because it really is a very clever and funny piece of work. My favorite line is, "Dr. McCoy commented that he was a doctor, and not of some profession unrelated to medicine."

Hey Garrity, how about a Goreyesque version of WKRP in Cincinnati?

[via Boing Boing]