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Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a novel by Richard Bach. It is a simple animal fable about a seagull learning how to become the greatest flyer of all time and a homiletic about self-perfection and self-sacrifice.
In 1970, Richard Bach, a distant relative of composer Johann Sebastian Bach, published Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- a story. It first became a favourite on American university campuses and from this base, the book rapidly gained in popularity. By the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print, Reader's Digest had published a condensed version and the book reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for 38 weeks. It is currently still in print. It has inspired the production of a motion picture (about which the consensus is that the best part of it was Neil Diamond's soundtrack), a ballet, and a popular poster of flying gulls.
The film was made many years before computer generated effects were available. In order to make seagulls act on cue Mark Smith , of Escondido, California built radio-controlled gliders that looked remarkably like real seagulls from a few feet away.