Fame (II): The ever-gracious Lynn at Reflections in d minor said some very nice things while linking to some of the stuff I've posted about Star Trek (Or as Orson Scott Card calls it, Wagon Train Among The Cheap Interplanetary Sets). She posts some of her own ideas about the future of the series and sci-fi in general, and Firefly comes up again.

Card's written a lot about Trek (More than just what's in that little article), and I think he inadvertently came up with the best idea for a Trek series I've ever heard in his book How To Write Science Fiction And Fantasy.

These excerpts are from a section of his book about how to pick a main character. Under a section headed, "Who has the power and freedom to act?" he points out:

The original series creator wanted characters with the power to make decisions, and centered on the captain and executive officer of a military starship. Unfortunately, however, as anyone who knows anything about the military will tell you, the commanders of ships and armies don't have many interesting adventures. They're almost always at headquarters, making the big decisions and sending out the orders to the people who do the physically dangerous work.

In other words, the lives of commanders (and kings) are generally above the most interesting action. The really neat stuff is going to be happening to the people on the cutting edge--frontline troops, scouts, the people who get beamed down to the planet's surface to find out what's going on. It would be insane for the commander of a ship or any of the highest officers to leave their posts and do common reconnaissance. In any real starfleet there would be teams of trained explorers, diplomats, and scientists ready to venture forth at the commander's orders. If Star Trek had been about one such team, the stories would have been inherently more plausible--and there would have been room for tension between the ship's officers and the exploration teams, a rich vein of story possibilities that was virtually untapped.

Instead, Star Trek centered around the characters with the highest prestige who, in a realistic world, would have had the least freedom. But since commanding officers who behaved like commanding officers would make for boring television, the writers simply allowed the characters to go exploring, constantly leaving their duties on the starship as they merrily went about getting kidnapped, lost, beaten up, or whatever the plot of the week required. Any captain of a ship or commander of an army who behaved like Captain Kirk would be stripped of command for life. But the series would not have worked otherwise.

At this point, you might be saying to yourself, "I should be so lucky as to make mistakes like Star Trek--I could use a few bestsellers." But the point I'm making is that Star Trek could not possibly have succeeded if the captain had actually behaved like a captain. Centering the series around a commanding officer was such a bad mistake that the show immediately corrected for it by never, even for one moment, having Kirk behave like a captain.

Aside from the digs at the show, I think the answer the producers are looking for is Star Trek: Away Team. A series about a team of explorers on a ship who are often at odds with their supervisors and each other. Instead of episodic plotlines, the series should grow and progress in a JJ Abrams kind of way, with team members leaving or dying on occasion and greater mysteries being unveiled over the course of the show. Episodes could have the mystery of a CSI or a Cold Case, the political maneuvering of a Law & Order or a West Wing, and the tense action of a 24.

It sounds like a show I'd watch.

Fame (I): I was linked to by Nicholas Whyte in his review of "Gonna Roll The Bones," by Fritz Leiber.

He actually links to my earlier post "Incomprehensible Visions" where I lament the inaccessibility of some of the stories in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, particularly "Riders Of The Purple Wage."

While I stand by what I said that post, I have to wince at that post being connected to "Gonna Roll The Bones." Leiber's story, while still containing all the symbolism and decodability of Farmer's, still works as plain old comprehensible story. The metaphor, rather than obscuring the story, sharpens it, makes it shine.

I read it years ago, in Ben Bova's The Best of the Nebulas. It's about a gambler playing dice with the devil, with a fun mix of sci-fi, fantasy, and tall tale elements. Here's a paragraph, describing Night Town:

At first Night Town seemed dead as the rest of Ironmine, but then he noticed a faint glow, sick as the vampire lights but more feverish, and with it a jumping music, tiny at first as a jazz for jitterbugging ants. He stepped along the springy sidewalk, wistfully remembering the days when the spring was all in his own legs and he'd bound into a fight like a bobcat or Martian sand-spider. God, it had been years now since he had fought a real fight or felt the power. Gradually the midget music got raucous as a bunnyhug for grizzly bears and loud as a polka for elephants, while the glow became a riot of gas flares and flambeaux and corpse-blue mercury tubes and jiggling pink neon ones that all jeered at the stars where the spaceships roved. Next thing, He was facing a three-storey false front flaring everywhere like a devil's rainbow, with a pale blue topping of St. Elmo's fire. There were wide swinging doors in the center of it, spilling light above and below. Above the doorway, golden calcium light scrawled over and over again, with wild curlicues and flourishes, "The Boneyard," while a fiendish red kept printing out "Gambling."

As a postscript to my old post, after pressing through Farmer's story, eventually I made enough sense of it to go back and actually dissect a lot of the first half--but really, if the story requires that much scrutiny to be comprehended, that's just not fun for me. Leiber's story was a lot of fun to read, and a lot of fun to think about.

Just A Heads Up: I'm having pretty frustrating email problems. I think I'm not getting all of my emails and that some of my emails I'm sending might be sending multiple times or not sending at all.

If you emailed me something and I haven't replied, try my gmail address (click email me over the right).

Don't You Mess With Me: While I was watching Here Come The ABCs with my girls, I got wondering if the old Square One TV music videos were online.

The internet, once again, didn't let me down.

One More Thing: Oh, and happy birthday to my brother Ryan. Feliz cumpleanos.

Cheers: To the folks at Disney for putting on a good show.

Okay, I wasn't actually there today. But two of my brothers were, with their wives, and I saw the video.

Okay, most of the video was actually from yesterday, when there weren't so many people there you couldn't blink without your eyelashes brushing up against somebody. But it still looked really fun.

Among the highlights were a talking trashcan that actually follows people around asking them to please put trash inside of him, and some nifty moving floats and parade figures, like a 20 foot tall moving Ursula the sea witch and a really cool looking Rhino. For "hidden mickey" fans and others who like to turn their trip to the park into a treasure hunt, there are 50 mickey sybols hidden throughout the park with a big "50" right in the middle.

Looks like there's a pretty good show going on, and everybody should have a real good time, once enough people go home.

Hobb: I'm trying to read a new author each month. Last month I did my bit on Clifford D. Simak--this month I'm trying out Robin Hobb.

Now I know what you're saying--If I haven't read the Liveship Traders series, how can I claim to be a regular SciFi/Fantasy reader? Don't I read anything?

Yes, but I tend to keep my distance from SciFi/Fantasy series. I stay the heck away from most series that require me to commit for more than one book, with very few exceptions. Consequently, I've never read Robert Jordan, R.A. Salvatore, Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, not even Terry Pratchett. I read some of the short novels in Silverberg's Legends and New Horizons series, but haven't read any books by any of these folks.

So, when I decided to dabble in one this month, I went with Robin Hobb's Ship of Magic. I've not heard a single thing bad about the series from anybody, so despite my slight dislike for nautical fiction, I've gone ahead and picked it up.

I did read The Gypsy, her collaboration with Steven Brust under her real name, Megan Lindholm, and found it a mixed bag. I enjoyed having read it, but I didn't really enjoy reading it, if that makes any sense.

Anyways, review to come, eventually.

Let's Get Political . . . Or Not: You know, there was some political issue I was planning on darting home and writing about either today or yesterday, but now I can't even remember what day it was, let alone what the issue was.

I guess all of you have been spared. If you really had your heart set on hearing me rant, you can read what I said about Supersize Me over on my health and money blog.

I know, I know. I'm about five-and-half years behind when everybody else blogged about that movie, and it's all been said.

I'm also getting around to forming some pretty nifty views on the election!

Card on Trek: OSC article in the LA Times on the end of Enterprise.

And even he brings up Firefly.

I guess I gotta check this show out.

A Con For The Ages: Becky points out there's a Time Traveler's Convention coming up.

Actually, if they get their way, it will be the Time Traveler's convention, due to the convenience that time travel will afford. Any time traveler, from any time, any where, should be able to make it.

Unless there's some kind of temporal black hole around Boston on that day that makes it impossible for time travelers to get there. It's hard to plan for science you don't understand--like, what if somebody who didn't understand radio held a listening party at the bottom of a concrete radiation bunker? It just wouldn't work.

But I really wish these guys all the best, and I hope to be able to attend someday.

What, you want to know when it is? What does it matter?

The way I see it, if it turns out to be worth attending, then it means we'll be able to go whenever we want.