This is the free, weekly version of Star Trekking, my attempt to share points of interest and random intersections in the final frontier. If you like it, please consider becoming a subscriber. Simply click this button for immediate access to bonus content.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dan Decker for his podcast, Bad Choices & Bourbon. Disclaimer: I did not drink bourbon during the episode. But I sure thought about it.
Listen here: clickity click
We talked about Star Trek, of course, but also James Bond and many other things. Including whisky.
Ross Douthat writes an “occasional newsletter devoted to questions raised by my books.”
In the most recent issue, he discusses extraterrestrial life and “the potential unfathomability of an alien intelligence, the possibility-cum-likelihood that nothing in all our science fictions have prepared us for how an intelligent non-human civilization or culture would present itself to us.”
Frankly, I read it expecting to eventually come to a Star Trek reference, and Douthat did not disappoint.
A civilization where death follows reproduction might have developed complex religious or political customs around that brute fact, or it might have evolved or figured out ways to avoid the the biological necessity of death but still retained a death drive as a common psychological experience — to be managed, resisted or embraced depending on the specifics of the social order. A civilization where the male reproductive desire spiked periodically in ways that threatened death unless he mated might lead to the development of complex rituals … ah, but now I’ve described the Vulcan pon farr on Star Trek.
He goes on to discuss the Borg, as well as numerous other sci-fi depictions of alien life. The whole thing is well worth reading.
Has Star Trek painted a too-humancentric view of alien civilizations? Are we too expectant that aliens will just have funny ears or funky foreheads? When the general public thinks about aliens, do they picture “greys” or Klingons? E.T. or Spock?
The truth is out there.
MEANWHILE…
It’s beach time.
What Trek book are you reading this summer?
Much like Tilly H-G, above, I’m jumping into the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway, except I’m going to do the audio version, with the fabulous Kate Mulgrew reading. Should be fantastic.
It belongs in a museum. Oh wait, it is in a museum.
Have you seen this show yet?
And speaking of fonts.
More confirmation of the ongoing thesis of this newsletter, that Star Trek is everywhere, whether you’re actively looking for it or not.
I think I need to repaint my car…
Dave Baxley kindly let me know that I am not Herbert.
Important question.
Check out this thread.
I, um, still have mine. They’re in the attic, but still…
A Lego Enterprise!
Fascinating.
In an article, Rodriguez described the above experience as an "encounter between Star Trek and Christianity."
To celebrate Star Trek IV returning to the silver screen, here’s a nice song for you.
And that is a truly colorful metaphor.
Simply click this button to help support Star Trekking:
You’ll get immediate access to bonus content when you become a paid subscriber.
Thanks for reading!
Until next time,
LOVE long…and prosper.
Because everyone needs to know what I think - there are at least three different views of what aliens will be like. The optimistic, embodied by Star Trek: aliens will be us plus latex. The pessimistic, as put forward here by Douthat, but really championed in SF by Stanislaw Lem: Aliens will be unfathomable and communication will be impossible. We might not even recognize aliens as beings. And the hybrid, often put forward by Arthur C. Clarke, in places like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End: We won't be able to communicate with Aliens, but our evolved children will. All fun to contemplate.