POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: The BEST Captain In STARFLEET is NOT Named Kirk or Picard!!!!

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention; to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I WOULD jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

A friend of mine from the school I used to work at posted the meme/photo above several weeks ago and added underneath it:

“Fight me.” -- n.l.n.

As a long-time fan of all of the series, I had to serious consider her argument. The following is my train of thought (edited, boiled down then expanded with references into a coherent essay that will likely irritate as many people as it lifts up!) Onward then!

Captain, father, diplomat, religious figure? 

For three seasons, he held the rank of Captain, and was then promoted to Commander for the last three. In my humble opinion, he blew Kirk (old and new), Picard, Janeway, Archer, and Lorca out of the water -- PLUS, he didn't have a starship to flash around, just a dumpy old space station that broke down every other episode.

Picard was given the top-tech FLAGSHIP of the Federation. Kirk captained the first starship to actually go on an exploratory mission. Lorca’s job was to save the Federation from a devastating war with the Klingon Empire. Archer took the very first starship and led the very first mission out of Human space under the watchful eye of the Vulcans, who stood ready to mop up any mess Archer got into. Janeway, with an amazing ship had to rip disaster out of the mouth of diplomacy as practiced by the Federation and the Cardassian Empire.

Sisko got a ruined space station, intentionally sacked by the departing Cardassian former owners, a deeply suspicious population below who wanted nothing more than to get rid of all these frickin’ aliens and go back to Life As We Knew It…

Oh, and his “liaison” with the Bajoran Transitional Government was one of their most celebrated…terrorists…who saw the Federation as just another version of the Cardassians.

“Here you go, Sisko. Let’s see what you can do with this, hehehehehehe…”

Woops, I forgot: along with an actively hostile civilian government on the world below; and actively hostile military government a few moments away by starship (which neither he nor the Barjoans have access to); there’s also a clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien alien who can detach bits of itself that can take the shape of ANYTHING in order to spy on you.

Jake Sisco’s best FRIEND was altered by his relationship with both Siskos that he chose to become the first Ferengi to enlist in Starfleet Officer (and he eventually became a captain) which of course, ended up ameliorating the ”money-grubbing” nature of the Ferengi so much so that Rom, Quark’s brother became the new Grand Nagus.

Oh, another thing, Sisko was the ONLY one of the set who dared to take the REALLY daring voyage of marriage and family life. Added layer: he was very recently widowed and his son was shocked by the loss of his mother so, just staple "bereaved" on to the other minor things he was dealing with...(Kirk tried the marriage and kid thing VERY briefly and admittedly failed except for the making-a-kid-part (apparently accepting fatherhood for an undisclosed amount of time, then ditching THAT SUCKER like an irritated Orion Slave Girl (though it’s the MEN who are slaves to the women, apparently)).

In addition to the above, his son chose to be a writer while his son’s best FRIEND became a Starfleet Officer (eventually captain) which of course, ended up ameliorating the ”money-grubbing” nature of the Ferengi so much so that Rom, Quark’s brother became the new Grand Nagus; as a religious icon called the Emissary of the Prophets and completely fulfilled the Prophecy by sacrificing his Humanity to them.

When confronted with the clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien alien called The Great Link whose stated intent was to destroy all Solids; and who detached bits of itself, one of which ended up on DS9 calling itself Odo and was able to take the shape of ANYTHING in order to spy on Humans aboard DS9 and became so loyal to them that he very nearly refused to halt a plague given to The Great Link because he’d fallen in love with a Solid. His respect and love for Nerice and Sisko made him reenter The Great Link with the cure for the plague and saved ALL of them, bringing about the end of the Dominion, the downfall of the Cardassian Empire (again), and the integration of a bit of Starfleet into the Prophets of the Wormhole.

Let’s just tote this up. Sisko: saved Bajor, reformed Bajoran terrorist, altered Ferengi social fabric, became religious icon then fulfilled sundry prophecies including Final Prophecy of entire Bajoran civilization, reformed and saved communal alien life form, earned respect of Cardassian Empire, all WITHOUT A STARSHIP and using a dilapidated, booby-trapped, former prison of a space station as a base.

So tell me again, EXACTLY what did Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Archer, and Lorca do for Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Last of all, from a Reality Standpoint, Sisco has been relegated to being an unsung hero of the Federation. Why doesn’t he receive more accolades? How MANY real biases did he topple? At the very least, two. He was the ANTI-absent black father. He was the ANTI-uneducated black male. Despite all of this, not only was Sisko, or more correctly, Avery Brooks pretty much forgotten, he should have in fact, been a major hero in the STAR TREK canon.

But he’s not. People rave all the time about Kirk or Picard. Not ONLY did Sisko/Brooks end up being a fictional INVISIBLE MAN he actually tried to bring this up in the infrequently mentioned DS9 episode, “Far Beyond the Stars”.

Brooks commented, “If we had changed the people's clothes, this story could be about right now. What's insidious about racism is that it is unconscious. Even among these very bright and enlightened characters – a group that includes a woman writer who has to use a man's name to get her work published, and who is married to a brown man with a British accent in 1953 – it's perfectly reasonable to coexist with someone like Pabst. It’s in the culture, it’s the way people think. So that was the approach we took. I never talked about racism. I just showed how these intelligent people think, and it all came out of them.” However, it wasn’t supposed to be entirely about racism. Brooks added, “The people thought it was about racism, well maybe so, maybe not [….] But the fact of the matter in 'Far Beyond the Stars' is that you have a man who essentially was conceiving of something far beyond what people around him had ever imagined, and therefore they thought he was crazy.” This episode was Avery Brooks' personal favorite, “I'd have to say, it was the most important moment for me in the entire seven years…It should have been a two-parter.”

Rene Auberjonois commented, "Brilliant episode. One of the best of the whole series and Avery did a fabulous job of directing it." Michael Dorn said, "It was wonderfully shot." Penny Johnson commented, “This was beautifully handled and beautifully shot. But it still, in the heart, it got me.” J.G. Hertzler commented, “I thought it was one you could have built an entire series from. There was a scene toward the end where he falls apart with the camera right in front of his nose. It was just riveting.” The same scene was also extremely memorable for Nana Visitor. Armin Shimerman thought highly of how the installment serves as a reminder of prejudice, especially racism, the actor commenting, “That's what that episode does terrifically well…it’s perfect science fiction. I think it stretches the imagination of the viewer and breaks down the fourth wall to talk about the real heroes of any TV shows, which are the writers.”

...Benjamin Sisko and Black Panther should have had a face-to-face...*sigh*

Reference: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Far_Beyond_the_Stars_(episode)
Image: https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/78192652.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: FRIGHTENINGLY CLOSE ENCOUNTER…[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – “Past Tense” (two parts) (Season 3)]

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

Today is June 7, 2020. I wrote this review in February of 2019. While it was relevant THEN, it is even more relevant today, as I sit in my comfortable, suburban home in Minneapolis -- the flash point of awakening civil unrest that has swept around the planet. I post this because my deepest hope is that this time, history will change. THIS time, we will embark on a future that might possibly resemble in some way, the future the original series of STAR TREK shows. I did not march; but that does NOT mean I don't care. I need to do what fits my personality. I need to do something that I can do effectively that might lead to systemic changes in our society. Until then, read and if you like STAR TREK, watch these two episodes.

My wife and I just finished watching the two part episode and to say that it scared the bejeezis out of me would be to phrase it mildly.

From Wikipedia: “[In Past Tense (part 1 and 2] The crew of the Defiant is thrown back in time to 2024 on Earth. The United States of America has attempted to solve the problem of homelessness by erecting ‘Sanctuary Districts’ where unemployed and/or mentally ill persons are placed in makeshift ghettos.”

Written in 1994 some time, it includes the use of Internet podcasting (which didn’t really catch on until 2004) as well as the eerily prescient idea of “Sanctuary Districts” (https://americasvoice.org/blog/what-is-a-sanctuary-city/).

Even in the 90s, it was a real suggestion “…an article in the Los Angeles Times described a proposal by the Mayor [Richard J. Riordan (R)] that the homeless people of that city could be moved to fenced-in areas so as to contain them, in an effort to ‘make downtown Los Angeles friendlier to business.’…” to put aside part of downtown Los Angeles as a haven, nice word, a haven for the homeless.’…‘That was what [our fictional] Sanctuary Districts were, places where the homeless could just be so no-one had to see them, and literally there it was in the newspaper. We were a little freaked out.’” (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(episode))

But it never happened, and the episode was written thirty years before the fictional Bell Riots took place in San Francisco’s Sanctuary District A. This social shift is part of the original Star Trek timeline and, as Captain Sisko notes, “It was a watershed event…” in that it precipitated a reevaluation of how society, in particular, American society treats the mentally ill and homeless.

Only that’s  five years from now, and the Bell Riots took place on October 2, 2024. There are already rumblings every which way that have made this far more possible in OUR future than it could have appeared from Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s 1994. Things are very, very different in 2019.

The theme running through this episode is that the Sanctuary Districts were a total surprise to everyone. From the wealthy “Interweb” magnate, Chris Brynner to the mentally ill Grady who was living in the District; and from Vin, the guard and Lee, the social worker – none of them had any idea how the Districts happened. They just…grew. No blame, no “The Republicans…” or “The Democrats…” or “The Unions…”. The Sanctuary Districts just happened.

For me, this is more frightening than if they had been planned by an evil government (take your pick of who you define as evil, every government has been defined as evil by someone in the country at some time…)

I’ve heard it said that the actor who play’s Captain Sisko is a deep thinker. In the episode, because he knows that the future of (at least) the United States hangs in the balance, he yells at Vin, the guard who keeps coming across as a tough guy, disdainful of and in his mind, superior to the “dims” and the “gimmes” of the District.

As I watched it, it appeared that Avery Brooks was doing more than acting; doing more than just “getting into his part”. Holding a shotgun under Vin’s chin, Brooks-Sisko-Bell shouts, “‘You don't know what any of this is about, do you? You work here, you see these people every day, how they live, and you just don't get it!’”

“‘What do you want me to say? That I feel for them? That they got a bad break? What good would it do?’”

“‘It'd be a start! Now, you get back in that room and you shut up!’”

Vin hangs his head. He knows Bell is right. He knows he’s just given up; and he clearly has no idea how he got to be this way.

Lee confesses to Dr. Bashir that, “‘…[I] processed a woman with a warrant on her for abandoning her child because she couldn’t take care of him and left him with a family she worked for. [I] felt sorry for her and didn’t log her into the system which would have alerted the police, instead [I let] her disappear into the Sanctuary. [My] supervisor almost fired [me] when the incident was revealed. [I don’t] know what happened to the woman but [I] think about her all the time.’ Bashir explains that it's not her fault the way things are.” But she clearly has given up on the system.

If you haven’t watched this episode in a while, take the time to do so.

Then do something. I guess it really doesn’t matter WHAT you do. As

Congress, no matter the stripe, isn’t interested in doing anything for the “unwashed masses”; nothing substantial that is purely beneficial for the majority of Americans and has nothing to do with personal profit or gain; that’s all about making life better for most of us. Like lowering health care costs and forcing pharmaceutical companies to just charge us 20% over cost for all drugs of any kind – from aspirin to Glybera (“…first approved in October 2012 for familial lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD), a rare genetic disorder that disrupts the normal breakdown of fats in the body…[the] drug was never approved in the US, but would have cost more than $1.2 million per year. It will not be marketed any further in Europe by drug maker uniQure as it has become evident that it will be a commercial failure.” https://www.health24.com/Medical/Meds-and-you/News/7-of-the-most-expensive-treatments-in-the-world-20180129)

As Brooks-Sisko-Bell notes, “It'd be a start!”     

Image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FDS9_TerokNor&psig=AOvVaw11s7oOxk31foZjFEQP_CyG&ust=1704898275135000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBIQjRxqFwoTCNitoJnH0IMDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Why STAR TREK Can No Longer Inspire the Future

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland in August 2019 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior, his wife, and children would have never watched STAR TREK in today’s world.

That’s because ALL TREK is now hidden behind a pay wall and no longer broadcast (note the first five letters, they’re significant here.) On BROADcast TV, anyone, anywhere – whether walking down a street and seeing a TV in a window, an airport, a bus station, even on a cell phone – can catch an episode.

Add the fact that NO TEENAGER WILL EVER BOTHER TO WATCH STAR TREK, because the “newest” series is targeted at the old men (and a Caucasian old white guy) who used to watch Star Trek, can afford to pay for CBS All Access (which primarily runs old TV shows…), and have lots of time on their hands. In addition, most teens have enough angst in their lives – watching an elderly man whine and regret his stupid decisions…where exactly is anyone “boldly going”?

Roddenberry’s dream of  a “‘Wagon Train to the Stars’…Roddenberry wanted to tell more sophisticated stories, using futuristic situations as analogies for current problems on Earth and showing how they could be rectified through humanism and optimism,” has totally died.

In Star Trek: Discovery, the Federation is embroiled in a some sort of, admittedly Modern, attitude of hands-off, the rest of the world can just go its own way. We have our OWN bipolar society to deal with...our own entitlements and privileges to protect. So I suppose its a reflection of reality in the way ST:TOS was...it's just it doesn't offer any solutions, or even serious reflection.

The “new” Star Trek, instead of “boldly going” has the stated purposed of being “…the beginning of a wider expansion of the Star Trek franchise by CBS and Kurtzman, leading to multiple other series being produced…” has become exactly what the society that produced it is -- self-centered, petty, and unable to do anything because there's no one around to inspire it any more. Partisan politics make assumptions that "the RIGHT party speaks for America", when in fact...well, you watch the news. The "new" TREK is exactly what we have -- and doesn't bother to look at what we might be...

It makes me feel old when the mission of Star Trek has morphed from “‘Wagon Train to the Stars’ [THAT series original premise: The series chronicles the adventures of a wagon train as it makes its way…across the Mid-Western plains and the Rocky Mountains…and the trials and tribulations of the series regulars who conducted the train…GR [wanted to] tell more sophisticated stories, using futuristic situations as analogies for current problems on Earth and showing how they could be rectified…” to self-flagellation and non-morality lessons, reassuring itself that the future is bleak and there's nothing anyone can do about it, so you might as well just get more TV in your life...

In other words, Star Trek was about MOVEMENT. I do not impugn Stewart’s desire to do something totally different in ST:P, he doesn’t want to disappear into a role he can’t escape from. BUT…the intent had been for ST to move into the future BOLDLY, not reflect on opportunities lost. Certainly not to lock out underrepresented populations!

Star Trek introduced “…interracial casting…the first American live-action series to do this…an African woman, a Scotsman, an Asian man [who WAS gay and later movies moved the image forward]…an alien [a half-breed…hat-tip to American-Korean babies?]…[and] a Russian…giving women jobs of respect…Black actresses at that time on television were almost always cast as servants…Whoopi Goldberg recalled that the first time she saw Uhura, she excitedly told her mother: "Mama, there's a black woman on television and she ain't no maid!’ In an interview, Nichelle Nichols…was told there was a big fan who wanted to meet her…Dr. Martin Luther King…said, ‘I am your greatest fan.’…Star Trek was the only show that [they] would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series.]…he said, ‘You can’t. You're part of history.’”

As well: “King explained that her character signified a future of greater racial harmony and cooperation. King told Nichols, ‘You are our image of where we're going, you're 300 years from now, and that means that's where we are and it takes place now. Keep doing what you're doing, you are our inspiration.’…‘he said, “Don't you understand for the first time we're seen as we should be seen. You don't have a black role. You have an equal role.”’”

The new, navel-gazing, cash-cow TREK is no longer going anywhere, and the only thing it’s doing is boldly raking in cash and excluding the people it should be inspiring…

FOR A RESPONSE TO MY ESSAY, ERIC DONTIGNEY HAS SOME SHARP COMMENTARY! (Read it here: https://ericdontigney.com/blog/the-once-and-future-star-trek/)

                                                            

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_influence_of_Star_Trek, https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/star_trek.html, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31876/12-star-trek-gadgets-now-exist, https://qz.com/766831/star-trek-real-life-technology/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_Train, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vde-Gi-XaqY/maxresdefault.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: STAR TREK and Alzheimer’s Disease

Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed hidden from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents in 2015. Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from most of the people I know even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had Alzheimer’s…” But there was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads. Or horror stories. Lots of those. Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this part of my blog…

On another blog I keep, I complained that while science fiction dealt with all kinds of disabilities, few I’d run across dealt with dementia, or Alzheimer’s in specific. I found some, as I reviewed here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/06/possibly-irritating-essay-no-futures.html

I was shocked then as my wife and I were re-watching the last season of STAR TREK: Deep Space Nine. Broadcast at the close of the 20^th Century, when we were just beginning to feel the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s (Dad was diagnosed in 2014 and died in 2019 of complications stemming from Alzheimer’s.)

Alzheimer’s was identified 120 years ago and since then has moved from an obscure condition including “…memory loss, paranoia, and psychological changes. Dr. Alzheimer noted in the autopsy that there was shrinkage in and around nerve cells in her brain.”

At the turn of the century, Alzheimer’s and other dementias didn’t even make the “Top Ten” list of global causes of death. Nineteen years later, it has skyrocketed to the sixth most common cause of death among humans, though in 2017, it was the FOURTH most common cause of death on Earth. In 2019, it was the 6^th most common cause of death in the US, topped by heart disease at #1.

So, you’d think it would engender quite a bit more fiction than it does; and in the field of speculative fiction, you’d think it would be a gold mine of story ideas.

It’s not.

In fact, just like in the real world, it seems like no one wants to talk about it at all. Of course, I did – twenty years ago in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact. The June 2000 issue carried my story “A Pig Tale” in which a researcher illicitly used a drug designed to treat Alzheimer’s to “rewrite” her father’s memory, erasing his suicide attempt. You can read it here: http://theworkandworksheetsofguystewart.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-pig-tale-june-2000-analog-science.html

At any rate, in the ST:DS9 episode, “Once More Unto the Breach”, a Klingon with dementia – and a glorious reputation from the past – wants to die in glory. Commander Worf, an old friend of his, arranges a place for him on a dangerous mission. “Klingon Kor is growing old and senile, and asks Worf for one last chance to die in battle. Worf uses his sway to get him on a ship, and though he initially he is humiliated, he eventually gets his warrior's death.”

While the cause of his loss of memory is laid on “senility”, it’s more than that. Just watch the episode – Kor is not only forgetting things, he’s paranoid as well as reliving the past as if it’s the present. It’s this aspect of his Alzheimer’s that nearly kills everyone.

Dad’s retreat into the past never endangered anyone’s lives, though his denial that he was starting to get confused when driving – and a harrowing turn across five lanes of traffic – might easily have killed people besides himself. That retreat caused constant problems for us and led to embarrassing revelations of his past. This manifested itself several times for me when he became convinced that my mom had left him because of imagined (recalled?) marital indiscretions. That happened far more often than I wanted to count.

How WOULD a disease like Alzheimer’s manifests itself in sapient beings other than Human? How might they be treated? Would a cure for one be a cure for another? What if other sapient civilizations practiced “senicide”? STAR TREK: The Next Generation dealt with this issue in the episode “Half A Life” in which a man in his “prime” is culturally required to end his life. The troubled Lwaxana Troi tries to convince him to live; an offer he eventually and regretfully refuses.

I’m always on the look out for stories that deal with senescence, Alzheimer’s, and dementia. If you know of any others, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll continue my search to cross post here and on my regular blog!

Resource: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Once_More_Unto_the_Breach_(episode), https://www.alzheimers.net/history-of-alzheimers/, https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/star-trek-deep-space-nine-930878/item/once-more-breach-star-trek-926160, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senicide

Image:  https://static.tvmaze.com/uploads/images/large_landscape/188/470693.jpg

Slice of PIE…Maybe…: Alzheimer’s, STAR TREK, and Reconciliation

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

I’m a sucker for a movie or book that’s all about reconciliation – The Jane Austen movies are about reconciliation of broken relationships (They’re romances, too, but that’s beside the point). STAR TREK: Wrath of Khan is about reconciliation between Kirk and his son David. Dad introduced me to STAR TREK in the late 60s, and watching the shows with him, and eventually my wife and kids, was a foundational event that led me to me pursuing my writing.

Even the goofy Lego Movie has a father-son reconciliation at the end (Oddly, there are NO images of them hugging at the end...sad, that.)

The first movie mom and dad brought us to see was the original MARY POPPINS. We saw it at the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale, the city Mom grew up in. At the very end, Mr. Banks reconciles with his kids, dumping the “bank life” for flying a kite with Jane and Michael.

I’ve been reflecting lately about WHY reconciliation movies and books are so important to me. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a sort of odd duck in the family. Dad played football and basketball (in the day when players who were 6’1” were tall, he was STILL short!). My brothers and sister played sports all through high school and beyond. Even mom was a member of the Robbinsdale Girl’s Athletic Club – tennis, badminton, and even fencing.

I didn’t do sports. I read. I wrote. I played guitar. I went to a very religious college and then went touring in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin and eventually West Africa with two different church bands. I went to Moorhead State University and worked most of my summers at Bible camps.

I wasn’t home a lot because, frankly, I didn’t feel like I belonged.

Then I got older and wiser, got married, then Josh and Mary were born, and then Alzheimer’s touched our lives. After Mom passed, it just seemed to get worse, but I started to spend more time with Dad. Oddly, I started to feel closer to him as we did more and more things together – like watching NASCAR racing, going to restaurants after doctor or dentist visits, or going to The Lookout just because. Our lives began to wind together like they never had when I was younger. We would talk, sometimes just sit together, or go to an event at SilverCreek and enjoy ourselves. In the end, I felt reconciled – I felt like Dad was part of my life again and that I was part of his. Maybe that’s why the movies like Sing, and Back To The Future – and even FINDING NEMO meant so much to me. They were always about reconciliation; about joining BACK together after a time of separation. And I cried at those movies when I first saw them; and a few days ago, I cried when I realized that me and Dad had reconciled…               

Image: https://66.media.tumblr.com/978ec6405dc64d4a8ec98381fadfbb7b/tumblr_naz7eoI5n71tch951o8_400.jpg, https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/6a/36/5f6a36cd34703eb8bf0d1e4d59660965.jpg, http://cinemagogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1393260444000-Ferrell-lego-3.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: “Where No One Has Gone Before!” Part 2

Using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in August 2016 (to which I was invited and had a friend pay my membership! [Thanks, Paul!] but was unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #2153. The link is provided below…

50 Years of Star Trek Part 2 (Part 1 is here: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/10/possibly-irritating-essay-where-no-one.html ): How has Star Trek changed and developed as a franchise. Everything from writing styles, special effects, characters, ethics, social norms, toys, and more will be considered. Dave Creek, Randy Henderson (M), Ms. Melinda Snodgrass, David Gerrold, Shanna Swendson

Dave Creek – an ANALOG regular

Randy Henderson (M) – an experienced fantasy author

Ms. Melinda Snodgrass – REALLY??? She wrote several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation while serving as the series' story editor during its second and third seasons!

David Gerrold – REALLY??? This is the name I remember immediately after Gene Rodenberry’s when it comes to script-writing. Not DC Fontana or any of the others. THIS one!

Shanna Swendson – an experienced fantasy writer

So, the panel was possibly dominated by comments from the most relevant comments from Gerrold and Snodgrass, but I’ve no doubt that in the others chimed in.

Onward, then. The subject: “How has Star Trek changed and developed as a franchise? Everything from writing styles, special effects, characters, ethics, social norms, toys, and more will be considered.”

OK – so I decided to do more on characters because my wife and I just finished re-watching STAR TREK: GENERATIONS.

When ST:TOS debuted a half century ago, no matter what people say about its “groundbreaking” look, the fact is that there was a young, studly white guy in charge, surrounded by sexy women in miniskirts; a doctor who was easily lifted from classic American Westerns; a Scottish engineer (of course, only the Scots can be good engineers); and a format that was as familiar as, well…WAGON TRAIN, only like, a “WAGON TRAIN to the stars”.

They acted as if problems like racism, sexism, violence, rape, and greed could be solved in 50 minutes (TOS) and continued to impose on us the idea that all it would take is to learn that “We Are Not Alone” in the universe, and we’d be all hunky-dory.

The fact that a Russian (who “accidentally” looked like one of the Beatles), a “Chinese” helmsman who did as he was told, a black woman who was in essence, a telephone operator, and Satan Incarnate (who ALSO did as he was told by the Power of White Males – were incidental).

Wow…

When ST:TNG was reborn a zillion  years later, a white guy was STILL heading stuff up and everyone – the black guys, the chicks (a doctor and a cheerleader), an artificial Human, the children, and the rest of the crew – did as they were told. Oh, this time the white guy was OLD…sorta and more closely matched…the show’s creator’s age. The young white male was tightly leashed and kowtowed to the Big, Old, Skinny, White Guy.

Shatteringly different…

Then came ST:DS9. I loved this series. Hailed because COMMANDER Sisko (note, he was not a captain) was IN CHARGE!!!! The question I had was “In charge of what?” A beat-up wreck of a place that was NOT a ship, but an extremely out-of-the-way shopping mall with a bunch of crazy, religious, recently-freed slaves on the planet below – did anyone else find that ironic?

Altogether unprecedented…

ST:Voyager had the Katharine Hepburn look-alike, Captain Janeway. Hailed as the first profoundly visible female captain, what is the first thing that happens to this crew led by a woman, with a “native American” first officer, a black second-in-command and engineer, a “Chinese” navigator, and a surly, rebellious young white dude sitting front-and-center? They got lost.

Leaping into the unknown…

Last of all, ST:Enterprise. The white guys are back in charge all over the place, only an Asian woman answers the phone now, a sexy Satan hovers over the white guy’s shoulder (and is generally ignored), a young black guy tries vainly to “Make It Good” neatly tucked under the wing of the captain, and the Big, Fat, Old White Guy is now the doctor with headgear – whom EVERYONE listens to.

*sigh*

This doesn’t lessen my love for the series, and in fact some of the things I disparage above WERE unusual in broadcast television (and movies). But I think that Trekkers, Trekkies, and the SF community has a bit of myopia when it comes to viewing its favorite TV series with claims that it was wow, shatteringly different, altogether unprecedented, and leaping into the unknown.

It was a TV series that during its five hundred and twenty-three hours of entertainment, occasionally had something profound to say. That’s hardly anything to sniff at!

Resources: https://www.quora.com/Exactly-how-long-would-a-complete-Star-Trek-franchise-marathon-take-all-movies-and-television-episodes

Program Book: https://midamericon2.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MACII-PP-Interior-Final-HiRes.pdf

Image:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Emblem.svg/2000px-Emblem.svg.png

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: “Where No One Has Gone Before!” Part 1

Using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in August 2016 (to which I was invited and had a friend pay my membership! [Thanks, Paul!] but was unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #2153. The link is provided below…

50 Years of Star Trek Part 1: How has Star Trek changed and developed as a franchise. Everything from writing styles, special effects, characters, ethics, social norms, toys, and more will be considered. Dave Creek, Randy Henderson (M), Ms. Melinda Snodgrass, David Gerrold, Shanna Swendson

Dave Creek – an ANALOG regular

Randy Henderson (M) – an experienced fantasy author

Ms. Melinda Snodgrass – REALLY??? She wrote several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation while serving as the series' story editor during its second and third seasons!

David Gerrold – REALLY??? This is the name I remember immediately after Gene Rodenberry’s when it comes to script-writing. Not DC Fontana or any of the others. THIS one!

Shanna Swendson – an experienced fantasy writer

So, the panel was possibly dominated by comments from the most relevant comments from Gerrold and Snodgrass, but I’ve no doubt that in the others chimed in.

Onward, then. The subject: “How has Star Trek changed and developed as a franchise? Everything from writing styles, special effects, characters, ethics, social norms, toys, and more will be considered.”

I don’t know that you could possibly have any discussion regarding the special effects…the difference between painting phaser beams on celluloid and tipping the camera for returned phaser fire and filming glitter dropping through water and Computer Generated Images boggles the mind and is more an historical curiosity than anything else. I won’t bother with that.

As for writing styles, TOS used “real” science fiction writers several times. Later series less so – Harlan Ellison (famously and legendarily!); Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, Peter S. Beagle, Robert Bloch, Norman Spinrad, JeromeBixby, Diane Duane, David Bishoff, Nick Sagan (both author and son of astronomer Carl Sagan), Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and even Larry Niven. The novels – that’s a different story. According to Amazon, there are some 3000 paperback STAR TREK books from authors both famous and unknown, like Vonda N. McIntyre, Alan Dean Foster, James Blish, Joe Haldeman, Jack C. Haldeman II, James Gunn, Pamela Sargent, Keith R. DeCandido and Greg Cox – to someone named Tony Isabella who co-wrote one book.

These are wildly different, ranging from the weak to the fantastic.

The characters…well, those are endlessly debatable, appealing to different people at different times. Most universally loathed was Wesley Crusher (as far as I can tell); most universally adored (again as far as I can tell) would be Q and Jean-Luc Picard. I still think they should have a movie where Q is the villain/hero.

Ethics, social norms, and toys…whew. There’s a lot here. I suppose that’s why they needed different parts to cover them. I’ll vent on ethics and social norms next time. As far as “toys” go, I will only mention here that I made countless TOS phasers out of wood and I have the sound-effects page in one of favorites files. I still thrill to the sound of TOS photon torpedoes launching!

(This entry took me two hours to write because I got totally lost in the websites finding the information above – looking at the writer lists for all the show episodes…)

Resources: http://www.thewrap.com/all-39-star-trek-main-characters-ranked-from-spock-to-wesley-photos/54/

Program Book: https://midamericon2.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MACII-PP-Interior-Final-HiRes.pdf

Slice of PIE: How CHS Is Like DS9

How much is Deep Space Nine like my high school?

We both have a Commander – ours is called a Principal. DS9 actually HAD a school, and Sisko’s son, Jake was a student there. In his spare time, Jake also became friends with a Ferengi named Nog and there were several episodes involving the school, as well as one of its teachers, Keiko O’Brien, wife of the Chief Engineer, Miles O’Brien. The school was integral to several story lines.

So in what other ways is my school like DS9?

Perhaps the next most obvious way is the diversity of the school and how students and staff interact. This is, like on the show, where most of the drama comes from. Cross-cultural understanding, or rather MISunderstanding, drives half of the conflicts we see in the office. The other half is interpersonal engagement that has nothing to do with cultures and everything to do with the stubbornness of the Human condition.

Examples, you ask?

Hmmm, examples are always helpful in lending evidence to a thesis or, as in this case, answering a question.

An example from my “student counseling”, then.

The leader of the Hispanic Culture group, a counselor at the school, abruptly left the school when he husband got a much better job in another state. As the counselor hired to temporarily fill her position, I was de facto, the leader of the Hispanic Culture group. I started my tenure by meeting with the group the first time and, holding out my arms, said, “I am obviously an old white guy. I know nothing of Hispanic, Latino, or Mexican culture. Teach me.”

Apparently that was exactly what I was supposed to say. The KIDS took ME under their wings and proceeded to educate me. It was a fascinating and glorious time!

Then came Cinco de Mayo.

A couple of the kids in the group hung a Mexican flag in the foyer of the building. An administrator told them to take it down. They got very upset. Who did they come to in order to solve the problem? I’ll give you ten guesses.

Got it in one, I’ll bet.

Let me educate you, then. Do you know the significance of Cinco de Mayo? It is emphatically NOT Mexican Independence Day (that’s September 16). It began…well, it began with the American Civil War, led to the French support of the Confederacy by Napoleon III, and sprang into the invasion of Mexico, which was to be the toehold of an expansionist French Empire. England and Spain had both sent small forces to collect taxes from the Mexican government, Napoleon sent an invasion force of over 5000 or his best soldiers. When they attacked, Napoleon was busy deciding who he would send to be Emperor of his new land. Once that was decided, he would fully back the South against the North...The Mexican defeat of the superior French forces took place on May 5, 1862.

I deescalated the situation by agreeing to drape the Mexican flag over my door…which was vetoed by another counselor as “not appropriate”. So I thumbtacked the flag NEXT to my office door. The parties were appeased and a crisis averted.

So, you have two major world powers (the US and Mexico) contending over a minor place (my school and students) in order to gain precedence over each other and join in a civil war to get rid of a THIRD major power (The District).

DS9 orbited the small, relatively weak world of Bajor. Recovering from an occupation by a Quadrant Power (the Cardassian Empire), it had become a fulcrum from which the Federation…

Hmmm. Let’s back up: It began with the Bajoran revolt against Cardassia, led by the Bajoran underground which was supported by the Federation Council, which led to the Cardassian withdrawal and the Federation takeover. The Founders of the Dominion, another superpower from the other side of the wormhole, sent an invasion force of their best soldiers – the Jem’Hadar. When they attacked, the Founders were busy deciding who they would send to be Emperor of their new land. Once that was decided, they would fully back the Cardassians against the Federation…

See? My high school is just like DS9.

The upshot here is that I should be mining the exploits of the teachers and staff there and using the incidents and conflicts to extend my reach as a writer. Which I will now do, because when I began this article, I thought the comparison was minor – and I now realize that there are a heckuvalot more parallels than I expected. In fact, I have an idea bubbling around in my thick head and I think I need to write it down before I forget it!

Anyone else see parallels?

Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xSXzP9lB9GA/maxresdefault.jpg

Slice of PIE: STOP OVERWRITING!!!!

The classic example of overwriting is this travesty...er, paragraph... “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” — Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul CLIFFORD (1830)

 

These words have inspired generations of writers since its publication to AVOID such writing like the plague.

And yet people still write like this. On purpose. Without knowing that millions of other writers will mock them and make comments like, “I should enter this in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, “Where ‘WWW’ means ‘Wretched Writers Welcome’”!

What is overwriting – besides the obvious resulting fifty-eight word sentence...

Excuse me? You don’t see anything wrong with the paragraph above and see difference between it and the first sentence of Charles Dickens’ classic literary novel, A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859)? The line that is oft-quoted but almost never completed – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” (see the COMPLETE, one hundred and twenty-eight word sentence here: http://www.memorablequotations.com/Cities.htm)? No difference to you?

*sigh*

I would love to use some examples of unpublished works I’ve read recently in my volunteer position as slush reader for STUPEFYING STORIES. There are some real humdingers I’ve read there, let me tell you! But not only would that be unethical, putting them up on my blog would constitute publishing them – and would give them the same, slightly less elevated status as Bulwer-Lytton’s and Dickens’ work. So I’ll dissect my own work.

While editors have never, in my experience come right out and said, “OVERWRITING!”, they have employed several euphemistic phrases I’ve quoted below:

“I actually found the language you used to be rather dense and information-heavy, which didn't make for particularly easy reading. I would suggest revisiting it with a thought to simplifying it a little for more ease of comprehension.”

“Almost impossible for me to get around the massive amount of information in this piece. It seems like you were attempting to squeeze a novel into a short story.”

“some sentences were difficult to parse (e.g., on p. 18, "Human bodies would flare into the atmosphere and burn up so that the many would put troops down on Weedworld.")...The preponderance of alien names made for some confusing passages, though, and we find our readers prefer things a bit more straightforward -- smoother, with less chance of getting jarred out of the story…”

“Story exceeds our 8k maximum word count”

So what does overwriting mean?

In my experience, it means using more words than are necessary to say something in the story – more than that, though, it means not using the RIGHT words to say something.

Let’s go to poetry – I know, what does poetry have to do with writing stories? I deal with this question the first day of every Writing To Get Published summer school session I teach. In fact, I deal with it on a personal level as well. But when I look at the definition of POETRY, these definitions reflect what I usually get from kids as well as my own perception of it: “Poetry in the Bible has been well defined as ‘the measured language of emotion.’ Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question of man's relation to God. Guilt, condemnation, punishment, pardon, redemption, repentance are the awful themes of this heaven-born poetry.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/poetry?s=t)

“When I used to ask students what a poem is, I would get answers like ‘a painting in words,’ or ‘a medium for self-expression,’ or ‘a song that rhymes and displays beauty.’... ‘One might argue that the page is just a metaphor for all that can’t be put on it, and that a poem is merely a substitution, for better or for worse, for a lived feeling or event.’” (http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/what-is-a-poem/281835/)

When I overwrite, I am trying to say something profound. I’m ALWAYS trying to say something profound. My most recently published story looked at the morality of using organic monkey brains instead of computer chips in disposable work satellites. (“612 See, 612 Do”, http://www.perihelionsf.com/1407/anomalies.htm) Sometimes I do a better job of it. My wife says that short stories are my forte, and maybe that’s true because I work so hard at saying what I’m trying to say with as few carefully chosen words as possible.

And THAT is what overwriting doesn’t do – a writer just…vomits on to a page without giving proper weight to each word. I rarely notice when I’m overwriting; I usually think I’m being profound. But like comparing Bulwer-Lytton to Dickens, the first simply vomited on the page. It’s apparent to me he was just writing.

In Dickens though, the author clearly considered every word and while we don’t remember the entire first sentence, it left a deep enough impact on literature to be repeatedly quoted – even in a Star Trek movie.

Image: http://blog.fishbowlinventory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Star-Trek-2-Spock-gives-Kirk-A-Tale-of-Two-Cities.jpg

Slice of PIE: Assisted Suicide in Speculative Fiction

This is a difficult subject to discuss as it evokes uncomfortable thoughts in me...

So I’ll start with Star Trek.

One of the most memorable episodes in The Next Generation also starred a favorite actor of mine, David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester The Third of M*A*S*H fame). In “Half A Life”, he played the scientist Dr. Timicin. In the episode, Deanna Troi’s mother, Lwaxana, falls in love with him – and is stunned when she discovers “…that, approaching the age of 60, Timicin is, upon returning to his planet, to undergo the ‘Resolution’, ritual suicide.” The story progresses and in the BEST of Star Trek, calmly, clearly, and evenly presents both side of the argument: “Each ends up finding the other's point of view cruel: Lwaxana because she sees it as arbitrary murder in an uncertain universe when death can come both well before and well after the designated age, Timicin because she is denying people control of their fate and the opportunity to end life with dignity.”

The movie “Soylent Green” mentions assisted suicide when the main character, Roth discovers what Soylent Green is made out of… “Roth seeks assisted suicide at a government clinic called ‘Home’.” (The aged friend Solomon ‘Sol’ Roth (played by Edward G. Robinson) of the main character, New York City Police Department detective Frank Thorn (played by Charlton Heston))

Alexander Zaitchik, in Salon.com did an article on 7/29/13 on this very subject and reviewed several old speculative pieces toward the end of the article – though nothing new or even close to “mainstream” science fiction (GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1726); BRAVE NEW WORLD (1931); MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! (1966)/”Soylent Green” (1973); THE CHILDREN OF MEN (1992); William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s movie “Logan’s Run.” (1976). The article was actually more interested in trumpeting the cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming than in assisted suicide…

At any rate, you can see that the subject doesn’t appear to be currently engaging the speculative fiction community. I bring it up here because it surfaced for an instant in discussions at DIVERSICON 2013, where I and a friend spent two days. My primary interest was hearing author Jack McDevitt whose work I fell in love with several years ago after reading ANCIENT SHORES (1996). The conclusion of the discussion was somewhat prescriptive: if intelligence is short-lived, then ritual and assisted suicide should be unacceptable. If life is long, it should be acceptable. If life has reached extreme length, it should be encouraged.

The catching point seems to be the definition of “long”. In his 1981 ANALOG short story, “Petals of Rose”, three civilizations meet to solve the problem of instantaneous communication. The work is sponsored by the Lazarines, alien beings whose life expectancy is millennial; Humans whose life expectancy is roughly 200 years; and the Rosans, whose entire life is lived in two Human weeks. While the issue of assisted suicide never comes up – unless you credit a Human-Lazarine war that Humans will lose as suicide – though it easily begs the question.

My own personal thoughts are complex and while Zaitchik implies that anyone who votes conservative right must disagree with his correct liberal left viewpoint, as a conservative rightist, I have nowhere near the assurance he seems to think I should have. My brother-in-law suffered for years from AIDS (hemophiliac, lived 30 years past the diagnosis and helped science realize that survival from full-blown, University of Minnesota diagnosed AIDS was possible and not the certain death penalty it once was); my wife as well as several friends and in-laws have suffered from cancer, some of them terribly at the end. I am completely unsure about what it means for me personally nor what I think the government should do, or allow…

In an article in Britain’s Spiked! Online magazine, author Kevin Yuill, points out, “...how many of the 70 per cent who support a change in the law would exercise the ‘right’ to die, if it were legal? In the US states of Oregon and Washington, where assisted suicide is legal, less than two per cent of those who qualify for it go through with it. Not even the most prominent campaigners for a right to die choose to exercise it, opting instead to hang on to what little life is left. This explains the wide disparity of opinions on legalisation between the general public, who are generally supportive, and those who have some experience of death – like those in the hospice movement, doctors and other medical professionals – of whom a majority are against a change in the law.”

Maybe it’s something that NEEDS to be explored in science fiction. Maybe I could be one of the people to do it...

Resources: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(episode) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green, http://www.salon.com/2013/07/29/global_warming_lsd_euthanasia_bring_on_the_death_panels/ , http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/hayley_cropper_and_the_fiction_of_assisted_suicide/14536#.U4sYp2dOXIV

Image: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/63982000/jpg/_63982966_euthanasia_image.jpg