USS Enterprise model used in the original Star Trek series Credit: Shannon Lucas

Many of us will remember the Bush years as the administration under which Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air, an brief dark age when it appeared there would be no Star Trek on the air again for a very long time. Now we have Barack “Hope” Obama as President, and, with his administration, a brand new Star Trek movie, 43 years after the show first aired. The original Star Trek was a grass-roots phenomena, only able to stay on the air for a second and third season because of an unprecedented letter-writing campaign by its fans. The show thrived in syndication, leading to six television series totaling 716 episodes across 30 seasons, 70 million books in print, 40 video games, and this week’s release will mark its 11th feature film.

Nichelle Nichols, NASA Recruiter Credit: NASA

Highly progressive philosophically, Star Trek portrayed a future of world peace for Earth, a united human race venturing amongst the stars. The cast was ethnically diverse, with one of the first major African American characters on an American television series in Chief Communications Officer Uhura, whose name comes from the Swahili word for “freedom,” and who came from the “United States of Africa.¹” Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, was persuaded by Martin Luther King Jr. to stay on the show as a role model for the black community when she considered quiting after the first season.

In addition to Uhura, Star Trek included the first positive portrayal of a Japanese character in helmsman Sulu. In the midst of the Cold War, the show featured the Russian ensign Chekov on the bridge. The Scottish Engineer Scotty and country doctor Leonard McCoy rounded out the cast’s cultural diversity.

The show tackled social issues, like slavery and religious freedom in Bread and Circuses, where the crew encounter a planet similar to ancient Rome, complete with oppressed Christians. The episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, where the Enterprise picks up the last two survivors of a war torn planet, each half black and half white, but their colors on opposite sides of their faces, deals with the insane senselessness of racial discrimination. In numerous episodes, America’s cold war with Russia and the war in Vietnam were alluded to in the Enterprise’s encounters with Klingons and Romulans.

With a firm historical, moral, and intellectual grounding in its storytelling, Star Trek was able to become one of the most culturally influential television shows in history. The fans were able to convince NASA to name the first space shuttle orbiter after the USS Enterprise.

Cast of Star Trek in front of the Space Shuttle Enterprise Credit: NASA

In the episode Who Mourns for Adonais? the crew encounters Apollo, last survivor of a band of space travelers who inspired the Greek gods. This is a theme reflected in numerous Star Trek episodes, as with the Organians in Errand of Mercy, Vaal in The Apple, and the Metrons in Arena. Aliens with godlike powers resembles Michael Shermer’s spin on Clarke’s Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence is indistinguishable from God.”

Star Trek offers the possibility of a similar future to the human race. The show has stood out and remained strong these four decades because of its positive message and vision. With their incredibly advanced technologies and their strong moral character, the crew of the Enterprise are role models for a human race. The documentary Trekkies reveals a fan base comprised of geeks and nerds, but they are also scientists, inventors, and doctors. The USS Enterprise’s name follows a long history of over 26 real-life ships from the HMS Enterprise (1709-1749) to the 1961 Aircraft Carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) to the 1976 Space Shuttle Enterprise and soon the VSS Enterprise Virgin Galactic’s first commercial spacecraft. The course of human history is one of incredible social and technological improvement, we are reaching further into the stars, where we have Star Trek’s visionary outlook to guide us.

“As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Starfleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.”

¹ The original pilot for Star Trek included a woman in the role of second-in-command, but network executives at NBC demanded she be cut from the show. Despite the show’s progressive vision, the mini-skirts and secretarial positions women filled in the show have always been an unfortunate part of its history, and not part of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. Later spin-off shows would put women and other ethnicities in leadership positions.

]]> http://ideonexus.com/2009/05/01/flash-sf-cartesian-creation/feed/ 1 http://ideonexus.com/2009/03/13/flash-fiction-entropy-quest/ http://ideonexus.com/2009/03/13/flash-fiction-entropy-quest/#comments Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:30:04 +0000 ideonexus http://ideonexus.com/?p=3174 Saasnoah hesitated before stepping purposefully into the abyss. Once she had passed the rift nothing was visible except the light from the lab behind her, and, as that slowly sealed, all was darkness.

As far as she could tell, she was still alive. This fact she could once again credit to the mathematicians back at the research center and their years of hard work. This was her fifth such exploration, which meant her fifth team of mathematicians. Each new universe required several lifetimes’ worth of researchers to figure it out. Mathematics could describe, not only Saasnoah’s own Universe, but every other possible Universe as well.

Multiply her five explorations against the thousands of other omninauts adventuring into the multiverse, and you could easily see how mathematics had become the most lucrative career in the galaxy. Possibly the same was true in the entire Universe, if the theorists were correct in surmising all the other galaxies were in their final stages as well. Legend had it that the skies were once full of them, hundreds of billions of years ago, but now there was only the Milky Way, floating alone in a vast expanse of darkness, and soon not even that.

“The field is holding,” Saasnoah reported. The bubble of her home Universe had successfully penetrated this otherverse. There were case studies of omninauts whose fields had failed them. The result was… difficult to comprehend, trying to understand what the physical laws of alien universe had done to a once living peer. She wondered what her copies back at the lab would think of observing themselves so transmogrified.

Best to keep her other selves from finding out. Saasnoah deployed the probes, extending tendrils of the field out in all directions. In fact, thanks to the other dimensions of this particular universe, each one of her feelers was traveling in multiple directions at once and traveling at several times her home Universe’s speed of light, taking measurements, determining the dimensions of this universe, and searching for any sign that it wasn’t completely depleted.

It was nearly one-hundred million years before she had her definitive answer: this universe was uniformly cold, near absolute zero. The only entropy here was the entropy she had brought with her.

The rift back to her own universe reopened, and she gladly returned. It was much brighter here than the cold, dead universe she had explored, but less bright than she remembered it.

Now that BSG appears to be going with hard-science explanations for all the mysticism and supernatural occurrences in its final episodes (still tons of unanswered questions), I can really endorse it. A lot of people complained about the cyclons taking human form, but if they hadn’t, then we would have never gotten this wonderful speech by the cyclon Number One/John Cavil:

Number One

In all your travels, have you ever seen a star super-nova? No. Well I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the universe. Other stars, other planets, and, eventually, other life… a supernova. Creation itself. I was there, I wanted to see it, and be part of the moment.

And you know how I percieved one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull. With eyes designed to percieve only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air.

I don’t want to be human! I want to see gamma rays. I want to hear x-rays. I want to smell dark matter.

Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly because I have to–I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me.

I’m a machine, and I could know much more. I could experience so much more, but I’m trapped in ths absurd body. And why? Because my [creator(s)] thought that God wanted it that way.

Five episodes to go until all is revealed. It’s been a mind-blowing ride.

: )

The half million dead. Sure. They and their families wouldn’t appreciate my joy at the night sky. In fact, most of the world’s 10 billion people tend to remember the brown blanket of smog covering the planet, glowing in the city lights, quite fondly. These clear night skies make them feel exposed, and those twinkling pinpoints of light overhead seem ominous.

From which of those billions of points did the invaders come? Will they come back? Are they watching us now? Why did they attack in the first place? It’s the not knowing that unnerves people the most.

So they turned off the lights. If the aliens can’t see us, then they can’t hit us. But people got scared of the dark. So they huddled together in the cities. Safety in numbers, and all that stuff.

All those people, pushed together like that, it made them smarter. Cities present a smaller surface area, but all those buildings are awfully conspicuous. So they “greened” the buildings, planted gardens on the rooftops and encouraged vines to grow down the sides. They still look conspicuous to me from my window, but the satellite photos make New Hong Kong look like a mountain range.

Then some other smarties pointed out that the city was no longer a heat well, absorbing all the Sun’s light and radiating it back as thermal energy, but we were emitting a suspicious amount of heat in the wintertime. That thermal heat was visible in the infrared, so we had to insulate. The city government flies overhead regularly now, filming in infrared to spot the buildings that are leaking heat the invaders might see.

Then there’s all the interest in space again. New satellites are going up every week, but they aren’t watching the weather or broadcasting television, they’re looking outward. We’re back to the Moon, and we’re really really gonna put a person on Mars this time. We have to; we’re just sitting ducks here.

Environmental stability, reaching out to the stars again, world peace… All for the price of 0.00005 percent of the human population. I know it’s controversial to say so, practically blasphemy, but I can’t help but wonder if the invaders weren’t just trying to shake us out of our apathy. Doing what they did for our own good.

Check it out here.

]]> http://ideonexus.com/2008/11/28/a-moment-of-uninspiring-clarity-up-at-365tomorrows/feed/ 0 http://ideonexus.com/2008/11/21/sf-flash-fiction-the-watcher/ http://ideonexus.com/2008/11/21/sf-flash-fiction-the-watcher/#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:00:36 +0000 ideonexus http://ideonexus.com/?p=2349 Some people read the news on their lunch break, but I know the news is just the first draft of history, and my job is the final draft. I’ve read every single Marvel Comic book ever printed over three centuries worth of coffee breaks. You might think that a frivolous way to spend one’s free time, but I get enough real life in my regular work that I’m allowed this bit of escapism. People who understand invariably ask me who my favorite superhero is, and I answer, “The Watcher.”

Whenever something big was going to happen in the Marvel Universe, the Watcher would appear, this giant alien bald guy in robes. He didn’t do anything; he was only there to watch. There were a few single-shot issues given to the Watcher, but you can probably understand that there wasn’t much demand for stories about a guy who stands stoically and observes great events in time, never getting involved.

I admire the Watcher, his resolve, as I spend my days at the chronoscope, sifting through the moments of history. My job is generating digital archives of historical events, and it took decades of training to get certified to use it. There are ways to hack the chronoscope or use it clumsily enough, that one might disturb history, and so we few professionals process requests from academic institutions, historians, and scholars for digital facsimiles of time periods and events.

Most of this is very rewarding, the moments of discovery, evolution, revolution, and improving quality of life all the way up to our own times. I love researching these best of times, and, for the most part, it is the most constructive periods that historians are interested in.

But sometimes not, and I haven’t slept for days for what I saw recently. I sat through the reign of Caligula, the Spanish Inquisition, and Adolf Hitler with clinical detachment, but this chance incident, not even part of my assignment, has wrecked me.

I know why I followed her story out of the village, because she looked like my daughter. I didn’t know where it would go, or how quickly it would end at the hands of those bandits. I watched the body vanish, decaying into the field without anyone ever finding it until I happened upon it 3,000 years later looking through a portal in time.

Masochistically, I watched it over and over in horror. Hoping that somehow through the Heissenberg principle, the photons from my observations might somehow alter the outcome. Such a senseless loss, committed by a few thugs who would die without leaving any measurable consequence on the world on a girl who hardly anyone would notice was gone.

Really, if you think about it, the Watcher was affecting the outcome of events. By the mere act of showing up, he signaled to the superheroes that big things were about to happen. The heroes knew they were being watched. If those bandits only knew I was watching them, recording their actions for future generations, their great grandchildren to the hundredth power to witness, they might have shown mercy and dignity. How we behave when we think no one’s watching, that’s our true character.

I could change that moment in ancient history, just that one moment so that she could live. But I mustn’t think like that. It’s a momentary shock, and time will help me overcome it. Until then, I’ll lay awake at night, and pray for the strength of the Watcher.

“I’m well thanks,” the soft-spoken gentleman was as unenthusiastic as ever today.

“I was just following up with you to see if you had the opportunity to review those listings I forwarded last night?” Vyonray managed to sound chirpy despite having just arrived at work and not having her morning coffee. It was important to catch Mr. Chasbak before his family’s bedtime.

“I did thanks,” Chasbak’s painful cordiality was typical of people who had so little real-life social interactions. “I’m afraid they aren’t quite meeting the specifications I laid out at our initial meeting.”

Vyonray gritted her teeth involuntarily, but remained polite, “I realize that and I’m sorry, it’s just very difficult to find a two-bedroom house these days. Are you certain a three-bedroom wouldn’t better suit your needs? It’s cheaper and this way each of your children could have their own space–”

“My children all ready have plenty of space. We just need somewhere to park our bodies in Meatspace–I mean…” Chasbak stuttered for a moment, trying to find the right word. “I’m sorry, we just don’t want all that room. It’s a burden.”

“I understand Mr. Chasbak,” Vyonray lied. “I’ll keep looking. I’m certain a two-bedroom home under 900 square feet will turn up eventually.”

“Solar-powered…” Chasbak reminded her. “The more energy-independent the better. I make a lot of money and want the best for my family.”

“I understand Mr. Chasbak, and I really do have your best interests in mind. I’ll let you know once the right home comes on the market. You have a great day now. Thanks. Bye,” Vyonray hung up and pursed her lips sourly.

“Any luck?” Araana smiled, setting a fresh cup of coffee on Vyonray’s desk.

“Virtuals,” Vyonray practically spat in reply, and Araana shook her head in sullen understanding.

Vyonray sighed back into her chair to sip at the steaming mug and stare at the photos of mansions covering the far wall. All of them were priced like they were two-bedroom townhouses, and all of them were rotting away in real life while the world had moved online.

“In a chatroom.”

“May I ask what kind of chatroom?”

“It was…” Mr. Langbacher twiddled his thumbs uncomfortably and sniffed loudly. “It was a dating… It was a chatroom for meeting single women overseas.”

The detective scribbled the words ‘Mail Order Bride‘ on his notepad and nodded thoughtfully, “And she came to visit you?”

“Yes,” Mr. Langbacher nodded. “About a week after we started talking.”

“A week?” the detective raised an eyebrow. “She was able to obtain a visa in a week?”

“I–ummmm…” Langbacher frowned at this. “She didn’t say anything about a visa. We we’re just so happy to…” he sobbed once, “I don’t understand why…

The detective frowned and pushed back from his desk at this, “I understand that getting stood up at the altar is a crushing experience, but you are also the victim of a felony–”

“My life savings–”

“–and my job is to bring the perpetrators to justice. So any information you can give me about Ms. Antaran would be helpful. Do you have any idea how she came to possess your bank account numbers?”

“She…” Langbacher shrugged slightly, “It was part of our marriage plans. She gave me the information for her accounts.”

The detective nodded, looking at the absurd figure listed on Ms. Diante Antaran’s overseas bank account statement, “Mr. Langbacher, did you ever see Ms. Antaran eat?”

“I–I’m sorry?”

“Eat. Did you ever see her actually swallow food.”

“I… We…” Langbacher squinted his eyes, remembering. “We went to several dinners… I remember her playing with her food, but the plate was always full when the wait staff came to clear the table.”

The Detective squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to appear thoughtful. In fact, he was being thoughtful. He was trying to find a thoughtful way to explain to Led Langbacher what an incredible dunce he was.

“Mr. Langbacher, I’m afraid you’ve been the victim of a pretty common scam. Ms. Antaran, the woman you hoped to marry, never existed. She was an AI, probably one of those fourth-gen Real Dolls with hacked chatbot software. In fact, I am certain the robot is certainly being disassembled in a warehouse as we speak.” The detective sighed heavily, “These crimes are very difficult to solve.”

“But… you mean…” Mr. Langbacher’s eyes were welling up with tears. “Lacy wasn’t really daughter to the late treasurer of Freedonia?”

The detective grimaced and slouched in his chair.

There were no schools here to donate Tawney’s body to science. There wasn’t enough fuel to blast the old man into orbit, per his second request, and she couldn’t spare even a little fuel to cremate him, lest she freeze to death before the presently tardy supply craft arrived. The only microbes on the planet were the ones they had brought with them, so Tawney would probably mummify in the moistureless environment. The Offworld Program did not say life would be easy here, but they didn’t say it would be suicide either.

Now Jwandry was staring hard at the nearby rocks, wondering if she was seeing things on this lifeless world, but after a moment she caught another glimpse of it, a fluttering, fuzzy tentacle. Unmistakably, it was one of them. But this was a Terran world, and the illusians only colonized planets with four times the gravity and denser atmospheres, better to convey the vibrations or changes or whatever it was they sensed in the molecules surrounding them. Scientists hypothesized the illusians understood their universe by sampling the molecules around them, like humans with taste and smell, only far more advanced.

On a planet that now had a population of one, what was it doing right here? Jwandry watched as it wiggled and writhed around the rock pile, tendrils radiating out in all directions, feeling over everything. There was no sign of its ship anywhere, which were believed to run on dark energy. She noticed the glint of metal and pattern of electronics mixed within its jumbling tangle of appendages, a spacesuit, and Jwandry realized this wasn’t a colonist, it was an astronaut.

She wondered what she should do. It had to know she was in the area, for why else would it land here? Should she do something to announce her presence to it? Jwandry took a few hesitant steps toward it, momentarily forgetting her dead husband under the nearby blanket, and the illusian seemed to direct its movement in her direction.

When they were within a few feet of each other, Jwandry sat down cross-legged, resigned to whatever would happen next. The illusian wriggled up close to her, and she watched as tendrils within tendrils unraveled with mystifying motion, until a crystal object emerged and was placed before her.

“For me?” she picked it up carefully. It was a geometric shape of incredible complexity. With shapes inside it, interwoven so they appeared to dance with one another as she turned it over in her hand. It was a gift of goodwill, a recognition on the illusian’s part that it knew how human senses understood their world. This illusian wasn’t an astronaut, it was an ambassador.

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything for…” Jwandry trailed off and looked over her shoulder, to the figure under the blanket rippling gently in the breeze beside the shallow grave and smiled for the first time in weeks.

Perhaps Tawney’s body would make it to space after all.