As we come up on the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek, Manu Saudia, author of Trekonomics, has an interesting article on BoingBoing about how according to Gene Roddenberry himself, no author had more influence on The Original Star Trek than Robert Heinlein, and more specifically his juvenile novel Space Cadet. That book, published in 1948, is considered a classic. It is a bildungsroman , retelling the education of young Matt Dodson from Iowa, who joins the Space Patrol and becomes a man. (In an homage from Roddenberry Star Trek's Captain James Tiberius Kirk is also from Iowa.) The Space Patrol is a prototype of Starfleet: it is a multiracial, multinational institution, entrusted with keeping the peace in the solar system. In Space Cadet, Heinlein portrayed a society where racism had been overcome. Not unlike Starfleet, the Space Patrol was supposed to be a force for good. According to Saudia the hierarchical structure and naval ranks of the first Star Trek series (a reflection of Heinlein's Annapolis days), were geared to appeal to Heinlein's readers and demographic, all these starry-eyed kids who, like Roddenberry himself, had read Space Cadet and Have Spacesuit — Will Travel. Nobody cared about your sex or the color of your skin as long as you were willing to sign up for the Space Patrol or the Federal service.
Where it gets a little weird is that Heinlein's Space Patrol controls nuclear warheads in orbit around Earth, and its mission is to nuke any country that has been tempted to go to war with its neighbors. This supranational body in charge of deterrence, enforcing peace and democracy on the home planet by the threat of annihilation, was an extrapolation of what could potentially be achieved if you combined the UN charter with mutually assured destruction. "The fat finger on the nuclear trigger makes it a very doubtful proposition," concludes Saudia. "The Space Patrol, autonomous and unaccountable, is the opposite of the kind democratic and open society championed by Star Trek."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @10:43AM
Make Gene proud. Open the solar system to asteroid mining and abolish money on United Earth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @11:01AM
and abolish money on United Earth
I assure you that even if the governments of the world abolished money, I would not. It's too useful a tool to throw away for ideological idiocy. And I think this is nowhere better demonstrated than in the considerable cognitive dissonance of the "Technocracy" crowd [technocracy.ca], who have a post-scarcity viewpoint. These would-be abolishers of money then go to considerable effort to construct an energy-based currency which is hobbled just enough to qualify in their minds as not being money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @11:35AM
That's not a post scarcity viewpoint, then is it? A post scarcity worldview is like this: you're hungry so you go to a restaurant, and you order, and you eat, and you leave, and the possibility of you paying for your meal never even crosses anyone's mind, because the restaurant doesn't have any expenses and neither do you. The way the Federation covers your meal is through an overwhelming abundance of energy made possible by mining operations gathering raw materials from every lifeless rock in Federation space so every lifeform can eat.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @12:20PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @12:50PM
You can't eat that much food in one day. Your own stomach naturally limits your aspirations of gluttony.
You are a finite being, and you are much smaller than the physical spaces available for you to occupy or the quantities of matter available for you to consume.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @01:12PM
You can't eat that much food in one day.
Who said anything about eating?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @01:25PM
Are you going to finish that? Because if you're not hungry I am. And the situation resolves itself naturally.
Consider the abundance of food and shelter and natural resources available to Native Americans when buffalo roamed the plains in large numbers. The stars and planets are even more numerous to us than the buffalo ever were.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @06:04PM
Are you going to finish that? Because if you're not hungry I am. And the situation resolves itself naturally.
You might have missed the part where I ordered more food than could physically fit in the restaurant and did that a thousand times each meal. You still have to get to the food to eat it. Near trivial denial of service attacks are the hidden problem of the Star Trek money-free world.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Friday June 10 2016, @01:29PM
So you say your stomach is a scarce resource? Well, in post-scarcity there surely will be a solution to that. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @01:49PM
Yeah, it's called having children. More mouths to feed! Fortunately nobody's kid has a mouth the size of a planet.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 10 2016, @01:25PM
That's not what you should have gigged him on. What you should have gigged him on is who's going to work their asses off preparing and serving the food for nothing in return? Yeah, nobody.
And Gravis, don't say robots because if it's robots doing it it's more an automat than a restaurant, now isn't it?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday June 10 2016, @01:30PM
The replicator, of course.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 10 2016, @01:43PM
See above re: automat vs restaurant.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday June 10 2016, @03:54PM
False dichotomy is false. That isn't to say we're headed to a post-scarcity world, I firmly believe in human beings being able to find extravagent uses for energy. But I don't think human labor is a prerequisite for restaurantery.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 11 2016, @12:01AM
You should. The uncanny valley will keep automats from approaching restaurant-level service and comfort any time in the foreseeable future.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @01:46PM
who's going to work their asses off preparing and serving the food for nothing in return?
Anyone who enjoys cooking, that's who. And what do mean, nothing in return? If you remove the need for anyone to earn money then the people who like to cook can do so secure in the knowledge that they don't have to worry about paying their rent because there's no rent to pay. I know a guy whose restaurant failed because he didn't have enough customers to afford to rent the space, but he was genuinely happy to serve the small number of customers he had while he still could. If he didn't have expenses or rent to pay, he would have served his customers for free.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 10 2016, @04:39PM
Indeed, many people love to cook. I don't write for the money, I have enough for my needs. I just enjoy doing it, unlike many authors.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @04:41PM
Ah, but who will like to unclog your shit stuffed toilet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @10:03PM
Ah, but who will like to unclog your shit stuffed toilet?
Jupiter Ascending?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday June 10 2016, @10:13PM
That's where the robots come in . Or doesn't it count as a "real" restaurant if it doesn't have a human shit-destuffer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @12:45AM
Modern janitorial supply makes the job simple and it's easy work. I've volunteered to clean the toilets at my local church when the regular janitor was out sick. I've volunteered to clean the toilet at my neighborhood convenience store when the staff were too busy. If a job is important enough, someone will do it just because it needs doing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @07:40PM
That's the point of a post-scarcity utopian vision: if you can magically replicate materials and thus eliminate the need for non-creative work, all that's left is creative work, which is psychologically fulfilling because humans have a basic need for creativity. Eric Hoffer writes of this: those who find creative work do not become members of mass movements because they do not feel inferior or insufficient, but rather take pride in their personal excellence.
The trick is the "magically replicating" part. Until we reach that point, someone has to do the drudgery, and that requires a system of reward to motivate the workers. Fungible money is the best system so far devised.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 11 2016, @12:05AM
You have obviously never cooked for a lunch rush. There is no art to it. It's barely controlled chaos that only a masochist would enjoy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @01:33AM
That is a short span of time where you are allowed to eat before you return to work for your boss. Right?
What if there is no boss and everyone eats whenever -they- choose?
N.B. Around here, they found out that if you stagger the times when people report to workplaces, the "rush hour" diminishes.
Some people just can't break out of old ways of thinking.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday June 10 2016, @02:37PM
And Gravis, don't say robots because if it's robots doing it it's more an automat than a restaurant, now isn't it?
So what? Who cares whether we call it an automat or a restaurant?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 11 2016, @12:04AM
I certainly do. The human interaction with the wait staff alone makes it a non-replicable experience.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @02:14AM
It won't be long before androids are indistinguishable from humans.
The physical implementations are already good approximations.
Chizuko photo [ytimg.com]
Chizuko: The video [google.com]
...even androids built to exacting specs. [google.com]
How long till the Turing Test is surmounted?
...or did you leave out the part where you want to get lucky with the waitress?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 11 2016, @02:41AM
I thought it went without saying...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 10 2016, @04:37PM
What you should have gigged him on is who's going to work their asses off preparing and serving the food for nothing in return?
What's wrong with cooking your own food?
And Gravis, don't say robots because if it's robots doing it it's more an automat than a restaurant, now isn't it?
I see no difference between McDonald's or Burger King and an automat. In my stories, there is still money and there are still jobs because nobody wants the crappy stuff you print out at home on your 3D printer.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Touché) by GlennC on Friday June 10 2016, @02:08PM
At some point, I can find that scarce resource, be it physical space, some quantity of matter, or a limitation of the infrastructure and destroy such a post scarcity viewpoint.
I'm sure you can. I'm also sure your parents are very proud of you for that.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @05:47PM
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday June 10 2016, @02:19PM
Ordering food without any intention of eating it sounds like a minor crime (like jaywalking). Ordering food without any intention of eating it and doing that enough to fill an entire building sounds criminal. Want to watch the world burn, eh?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @02:31PM
Filling an entire space station with tribbles will land you years in community service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @04:49PM
Filling an entire space station with tribbles will land you years in community service.
These are the voyages of the Prison Ship: Deferred Adjudication.
It's 5 year probation: To seek out new life and new civilization. To patrol border from where no community servicemen have returned from before.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Friday June 10 2016, @03:02PM
That was my first reaction too. But, since it all came from a replicator, the food can be de-constructed just as easily. And no need to worry about energy cost either, since that's unlimited (or close enough).
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday June 10 2016, @03:07PM
Yeah, that's a great point on the recycle.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @03:11PM
Too bad nobody used the replicator-recycler as a murder weapon. Could have made a mystery episode around it.
And phasers on stun are for date rape. Obviously.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Friday June 10 2016, @09:41PM
The typical recycler would be the replicator itself, so too small to fit a body into.
And really, who needs a recycler for that, when the transporter system has the option to scatter your particles into local space...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 10 2016, @06:49PM
He's one of those people who would rather everryone including himself starve than one single person "get something they don't deserve." I've dealt with his type before; they're infected with some kind of malignant neo-Calvinist mind-virus that's almost impossible to get rid of. On the upside, these people usually fall by the wayside with time; on the downside, get enough of them together with enough power and they can derail entire nations.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @07:49PM
He's one of those people who would rather everryone including himself starve than one single person "get something they don't deserve." I've dealt with his type before; they're infected with some kind of malignant neo-Calvinist mind-virus that's almost impossible to get rid of. On the upside, these people usually fall by the wayside with time; on the downside, get enough of them together with enough power and they can derail entire nations.
Azuma, all you have to do is show that it works. There's no need to wait a few decades for my death. And funny enough, I've been thinking of you as the neo-Calvinist.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 10 2016, @09:34PM
Sure, just give us another 20 years oftech advancement and the political will to make it happen. Easy-peasy right? Especially that last part. You may as well say to a black man in the 1850s "Hey, dude, just show us that abolition works."
And the only reason you think of me as such (which I will lay even odds on you did not until I used the term) is because you have no argument and you think a tu quoque fallact (not even a real one) is a clever rebuttal.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @09:39PM
You may as well say to a black man in the 1850s "Hey, dude, just show us that abolition works."
If you were aware of your history, you would already know that there already existed at that time a number of examples that abolition worked, such as the British Empire.
And the only reason you think of me as such (which I will lay even odds on you did not until I used the term) is because you have no argument and you think a tu quoque fallact (not even a real one) is a clever rebuttal.
Of course not. A key principle of Calvinism is self-sacrifice and an emphasis on expecting and enduring hardship. Remember way back when when you were bragging about how you put so much of your earnings into charity? That's a classic Calvinist viewpoint.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 10 2016, @09:51PM
...Hallow. I studied apologetics (and counter-apologetics) for the better part of a decade. That is not a "Calvinist principle." The bedrock of Calvinism is TULIP, which more or less says the ONLY way anyone can be saved is if Yahweh makes it possible ("grace") for them to believe juuuuuuust right. Self-sacrifice and helping others are far, far, FAR older than John Calvin's diseased death-cultist ramblings. I would say the combination of charity and endurance goes back at least to the Stoics, if not further back to the Buddhists.
As to your first comment: be that as it may, here in the US there was still resistance (ahem) to the idea. Which makes my point all the harder; even if ti CAN be shown that X Y or Z benefits everyone, there are perverted freaks like you who would rather we all founder than that someone who doesn't "deserve it as much as you" gets something for less or no effort.
I know your argumentation style, Mr. Hallow. It's not fooling me, or anyone else who's watching. Projection, hypocrisy, and ignorance, the unholy trinity of the selfish animal.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @10:25PM
Self-sacrifice and helping others are far, far, FAR older than John Calvin's diseased death-cultist ramblings.
But they are part of John Calvin's "diseased death-cultist ramblings" even if they happen to be parts of other belief systems as well. So I don't agree.
As to your first comment: be that as it may, here in the US there was still resistance (ahem) to the idea. Which makes my point all the harder; even if ti CAN be shown that X Y or Z benefits everyone, there are perverted freaks like you who would rather we all founder than that someone who doesn't "deserve it as much as you" gets something for less or no effort.
So what? Find the technology and political will for a prototype on a scale that can be done. Show it works. Don't merely assume. Resistance will always exist. If your ideas can't survive it, then that's something wrong with the ideas.
I know your argumentation style, Mr. Hallow. It's not fooling me, or anyone else who's watching. Projection, hypocrisy, and ignorance, the unholy trinity of the selfish animal.
Sorry, you sound thoroughly bamboozled to me. I'm not the dealer here.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 11 2016, @06:41AM
Oh yes, because it is SO easy to "find the political will" (i.e., raise the consciousness of AN ENTIRE NATION) when said nation's government AND businesses--and they are increasingly an incestuous Venn diagram--have a vested interest in that not happening. Do you just not see how completely disingenuous you're being? Or do you think I and everyone else reading this are too dumb or too cowed to point it out?
We're all familiar with the phrase "an idea whose time has come." But most of us can't recognize an idea whose time came decades ago, will take decades we don't really have in order to implement, and is being opposed at every turn by most of the major centres of power in this country. By the time the idea's "time comes," it will be far too late, and most of us will die cursing our fate. I, of course, will die cursing people like you, and if allowed will follow you to whatever Hell your evil beliefs and deeds have prepared for you and extract my pound of flesh, or whatever you have that passes for flesh there. Be ye fairly warned.
The rest of your post is information-free noise. Calvin being (supposedly) a proponent of a given idea does not make him the originator of it; indeed, it is also a logical fallacy to say that a Calvinist is a proponent of any autonomous deed or reason, seeing as how the practical effect of Calvinism is to destroy the idea of free will. And no, no amount of bullshit semantic lawyering by van Til, Bahnsen, Frame, the elder or the younger Sproul, or (Cthulhu help us...) Sye ten Bruggencate or Matt Slick is going to change that fact. Occasionalism destroys the concept of human free choice, in precisely the same way that someone who hires a hitman is still a murderer.
You're backed into a corner and massively outclassed, which is pretty sad considering I have zero formal training in mainstream philosophy. Your "hurr hurr no UR teh del00ded one durrrr" idiocy is a last, desperate gasp to put up a tough facade. Like everything else you do, it fools no one who is used to dealing with your type of argumentation.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 11 2016, @03:10PM
Oh yes, because it is SO easy to "find the political will" (i.e., raise the consciousness of AN ENTIRE NATION) when said nation's government AND businesses--and they are increasingly an incestuous Venn diagram--have a vested interest in that not happening. Do you just not see how completely disingenuous you're being? Or do you think I and everyone else reading this are too dumb or too cowed to point it out?
In other words, you're just interested in making excuses. If your big idea requires the political will of an ENTIRE NATION, then it is too flawed to be put into practice. Prototyping works for societies just like it does for normal engineering. Start small or don't bother starting at all is my opinion on the matter.
But most of us can't recognize an idea whose time came decades ago, will take decades we don't really have in order to implement, and is being opposed at every turn by most of the major centres of power in this country.
I think there's a very good reason for that - the idea doesn't actually exist. Strangely enough, you've yacked about this for a long time and it's still pretty nebulous to me what you think good or bad ideas are.
You're backed into a corner and massively outclassed, which is pretty sad considering I have zero formal training in mainstream philosophy. Your "hurr hurr no UR teh del00ded one durrrr" idiocy is a last, desperate gasp to put up a tough facade. Like everything else you do, it fools no one who is used to dealing with your type of argumentation.
If only you could think as well as you can trash-talk.
Here's what I think on the matter. The thing to beat is vanilla capitalism/market economy combined with democracy and light socialism. This works pretty well. I hear a lot of blather on what people think will result in the best societies. But it is remarkably rare for anyone to try to show that their ideas work better in the real world than what we have now.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday June 12 2016, @04:46AM
Then there's THIS little gem:
Whooooo, boy. Slavery? Segregation? Are you telling me that because abolition and desegregation are too flawed to put into practice? Because they sure as death, taxes, and shitty airline food did not, and still do not, have the political will of the entire nation.
I really wonder what goes on in your head sometimes :(
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @04:24PM
Someone will control the energy, so you've given someone power and where there's power there's greed. Where there's greed there's a desire to have more than everyone else. Asteroid belts will be "owned" as property by powerful corporations and defended with weapons. Where there's weapons, there's war. Someone needs to fight the war, or someone needs to build the machines to fight the war, it goes on and on. Yep, getting rid of money doesn't really change much.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @07:56PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @09:34PM
Good food for thought. Thanks!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @10:48AM
We have enough firepower on this ship to turn that planet into a smoking cinder! Personally, I think that would be a very good thing. Don't tell me you'd object to a little genocide in the name of self-defense?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @07:19PM
General Order 24 [1701news.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Friday June 10 2016, @10:51AM
A comment by the Oatmeal on Mr. Roddenberry: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane [theoatmeal.com]
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @10:52AM
"The fat finger on the nuclear trigger makes it a very doubtful proposition," concludes Saudia. "The Space Patrol, autonomous and unaccountable, is the opposite of the kind democratic and open society championed by Star Trek."
To the contrary, it makes the kind, democratic, and open society possible. I doubt the US would be better in this sense today, if it had lost a brutal, grinding conventional war with the USSR half a century ago.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @11:10AM
Autonomous and unaccountable is Section 31. Compared to the other great powers, the Federation has the most insidious secret intelligence service in the entire Trek galaxy. Eddington outright accused the Feds of being worse than the Borg, and Odo implied Section 31 was worse than the Founders. All evidence suggests that the average Dominion subject has more freedom than the average Federation citizen. The Federation colonizes while the Dominion merely annexes. The Federation imposes hippie idealism on member worlds, while the Dominion only forbids members from raising an interplanetary military force and leaves planetary populations to do as they please otherwise.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @12:27PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @12:56PM
As Q said, and then there are all the other galaxies! The one-upping never ends.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @04:27PM
> To the contrary,
You are doing that thing where you imagine the worst case scenario on the side you dislike and the best case scenario on the side you like.
In all the history of mankind the less accountability for the people with power, the worse the life was for the people without power.
The way it is much more likely to go is that one way or the other the Space Patrol is captured through something like mission creep or too much association with the wealthy and powerful outside the organization or through isolation from the rest of population warping their perspective of what constitutes aggression.
Essentially the Space Patrol concept is one of unstable equilibrium, its like a boulder balanced on top of a mountain peak. All it takes is one thing to knock that boulder a little bit off center and the results will be catastrophic.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 10 2016, @07:59PM
You are doing that thing where you imagine the worst case scenario on the side you dislike and the best case scenario on the side you like. In all the history of mankind the less accountability for the people with power, the worse the life was for the people without power.
The obvious rebuttal was that the USSR wasn't more accountable than the US at any time.
Essentially the Space Patrol concept is one of unstable equilibrium, its like a boulder balanced on top of a mountain peak. All it takes is one thing to knock that boulder a little bit off center and the results will be catastrophic.
What's unstable about it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @02:33AM
> The obvious rebuttal was that the USSR wasn't more accountable than the US at any time.
Nothing obvious about it. Srsly. Thats not a rebuttal, its a confirmation.
The USSR was significantly less accountable than the US and that's a big part of why life sucked for the average citizen there.
> What's unstable about it?
The part you snipped - all it takes is one of innumerable ways for it to be captured and now its off mission with no mechanism to get back on mission.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by cedarhillbilly on Friday June 10 2016, @11:38AM
Of course Heinlein's model was Doc Smith's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Smith [wikipedia.org] Galactic Patrol....especially as envisioned by Virgil Samms in First Lensman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Lensman [wikipedia.org] What's interesting is that the Galactic Patrol begins as a police force. Heinlein reshaped that vision to a voyage of discovery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @11:52AM
The Patrol never stops being a jackbooted police force, usurps galactic politics, and establishes a military dictatorship in the Second Galaxy. And no planet ever leaves Civilization, not even when the people scream, "Down With The Patrol! Give Us Back Our Freedom!" It's all very Vorlon of those Arisians to impose their form of order just to manipulate the Lensmen into defeating the shadowy Eddorians for them.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 10 2016, @02:29PM
It's all very Vorlon of those Anerisians to impose their form of order
FTFY [wikia.com] ;-)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @12:14PM
Entirely unlike Heinlein and Roddenberry, Smith's Galactic Patrol was very very racist and very very sexist. Every human Lensman was an Aryan and an outspoken white supremacist. Even the Black Lensmen were white men, and the Red Lensman was the only human woman ever to wear a Lens. Female Lensmen didn't become commonplace until after humanity evolved into the Children.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday June 10 2016, @01:27PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 10 2016, @01:30PM
Disagree. Wyoming Knott was fleshed out just fine for a secondary character in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @02:02PM
Funny, Mike Resnick doesn't write feminine characters. Sure his novels have female characters, but they tend to be militant feminists, and in any case they act exactly like men. There's even a memorable necrophiliac who happens to be female and who satisfies her fetish by being a taxidermist.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday June 10 2016, @04:24PM
Well, you have to remember that when they were writing, SF was a nerd thing (and the word hadn't yet been coined, it was from Dr Suess' 1952 If I Ran the Zoo) and nerds were all young males then. I haven't read much Smith, although I have one of his novels posted on my web site, but I disagree with you about Heinlein. The story that comes to mind is Jerry Was a Man, with a woman protagonist who seemed pretty damned well written to me.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday June 10 2016, @05:49PM
Entirely unlike Heinlein and Roddenberry, Smith's Galactic Patrol was very very racist and very very sexist.
To be fair, Smith's stories were written a couple of very significant decades before Heinlein's popular work: e.g. Smith's Galactic Patrol serialised in 1938 vs. Heinlein's Space Cadet published in 1948 (most much later). Basically, much of Smith's popular work is pre-WWII, Heinlein's post-WWII.
I'd give Smith credit for showing the ability to change:
In the Skylark books from the 1920s/30s, the women were firmly along to scream, get rescued, make the sandwiches and run up a pair of wedding dresses when the need arose. Good guys were blonde (although green skin was permitted) and bad guys were dark and swarthy. Humanoids were good, and bug-eyed-monsters were legitimate targets for genocide, planet-o-cide or, eventually, "nova bomb their entire galaxy, its the only way to be sure".
The "original" Lensman books actually featured stronger (if not convincing) female characters who got involved in the action a bit. Children Of The Lens might even pass the Bechdale test (especially if you count Nadrek as non-a-man). Meanwhile, some of the bug-eyed-monsters get to be good guys.
In the prequel "First Lensmen", written sometime later, and the humans don't think twice about sending a couple of women off to Arisia to get lenses and are surprised when they are rejected (having been given an explanation that sounds to modern ears like a load of post-feminist codswallop - although we know the real reason is that it would muss up the Arisians eugenics progrtam). Also, although I agree that we never encounter a black face in Smith's work, during First Lensmen, our all-American-heroes do Learn An Important Lesson about cultural stereotypes when trying to recruit non-humanoid lensmen.
Then in The Imperial Stars - even the first bit actually written by smith - the heroes are an almost-equal brother/sister team.
So, yeah, you can't defend the books in a modern context - but they're nothing out of the ordinary for (mostly) pre-WWII pulp fiction and Smith showed definite signs of evolution as society changed. There are newer works with far worse depictions of women (E.g. Ringworld - great book including two female characters: one who's psychic luck has drawn her there so she can meet her perfect man, the other one is a former ship's prostitute. Just sayin')
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 10 2016, @04:17PM
E.E. "Doc" Smith, Triplanetary [mcgrewbooks.com]
Probably the most heralded ST:OS was Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever [wikipedia.org]. Ellison's script was reworked by several other writers, and Ellison disowned it.
Quite a few well known SF authors wrote Star Trek scripts, but according to The Heinlein Society [heinleinsociety.org] he never wrote any. The closest was David Gerrold's The Trouble with Tribbles. Paramount producers saw a similarity between Tribbles and Martian flatcats, so asked for Heinlein's permission to use it. In return, Heinlein only asked for a copy of the script.
Me, after the tantrum Ellison threw, I wanted to see the original Ellison script for City.
I can find no Star Trek episode that was written by any of the "big three": Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, although all helped the series in some way (e.g., Asimov and Clarke were consulted for Sar Trek V)
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1) by Slartibartfast on Friday June 10 2016, @12:19PM
Heinlein actually had two cautionary tails vis-a-vis power causing corruption: a short story I don't recall, where a single officer prevents a coup by locking himself in with the bombs (and therefore signing his own death warrant due to radiation), and the book Between Planets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @01:26PM
I actually read that short story within the last few weeks, but don't have the book it was published in handy (at work now).
It was quite good.
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Friday June 10 2016, @01:47PM
The Long Watch.
Lieutenant John Ezra Dahlquist, one of the four heroes of the Patrol.
It isn't just locking himself in. He opens the bombs and smashes the 'mirror finished cores' with a hammer.
At one point he is smoking a cigarette and making the Geiger counter go off by blowing smoke at it.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday June 10 2016, @06:33PM
a short story I don't recall, where a single officer prevents a coup by locking himself in with the bombs
That'd be The Long Watch [wikipedia.org] and is in several Heinlein anthologies.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday June 10 2016, @12:21PM
(Disclaimer: Mostly trolling for cheap laughs... mostly...)
Star Trek wasn't a democracy. Each member had equal representation regardless of it's number of citizens. It was a republic. Oh, and it wasn't open. They had secrets and political coverups everywhere. Plenty of nepotism and corruption too in both government, academia and the fleet.
In Earth, the fact they had no free enterprise or currency meant the people in power were elected based on public recognition of their accomplishments. That's to say, artists, entertainers and war heroes. Maybe the odd celebrity scientists or two... In the end, everything was so tied down to nepotism and town-hall politics that people were lining up to swear fidelity to the fleet just to get away from whatever backwater shit-hole they came from since a fascist meritocracy is still better then a 1:1000000000 representation ratio "democracy" that's being run by the "concerned citizens" types.
Oh, and it wasn't a meritocracy pursuing progress. They hid disruptive technologies while banning everything from genetic engineering to terra-forming that would jeopardize the status-quo political structures. All their enemies represented different aspects of technological progress they've banned out of corruption.
I think Klingon was a democracy. I bet that's why the war started in the first place. They wouldn't join those horrible Federation scums.
(end of troll)
compiling...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @01:02PM
The Klingon Empire is clearly a feudal oligarchy. The only direct democracy is the Borg Collective.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @01:54PM
Depending on the period. They changed from a empire (Emperor), to oligarchy (High Council), to a militaristic representative democracy (Non-noble great houses).
More importantly, Klingon wasn't feudal. There were no fiefs being distributed to the vassals. Everyone was allowed, encouraged and expected to join the wars so there was little distinction between the bellatores and labores. There wasn't forced conscription. There wasn't anything remotely similar to Three Estates doctrine since everyone always saw themselves as warriors. Agriculture was picking up worms from the ground and eating them if you couldn't find anything to hunt. Craftsmanship was a pass-time to do between wars. A combatant was free to challenge his superior to single-combat and take his place in the ranks so even being noble simply meant you had a head start, but it wasn't much of a guarantee. There was no mounted warfare and the star-ships were constructed and maintained by the government rather then the nobles so the lords didn't derive their power from a military monopoly...
(Score: 1) by Ken on Friday June 10 2016, @08:59PM
All fiction has to be something we humans can identify with. If it isn't, we would ignore it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday June 10 2016, @10:00PM
If the political structures were just the background for an action fiction for kids, it would have been fine. But when the U.S. military teaches Starship Troopers to young cadets, Atlas Shrugged is quoted in senators' speeches and 1984 is mentioned in every single surveillance discussion, you realize there's a problem. You look at popular works the likes of Star Trek, new Star Wars, Tolkien and Dune with concern and suspicion; Knowing somewhere out there, there's a young "secular" youth watching and reading and making conclusions in a manner indistinguishable from a fundamentalist reading of the bible.
That's about when you start trolling Trekkies over taking this week's sermon of Picard a tad too seriously...
compiling...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Friday June 10 2016, @12:23PM
"The Space Patrol, autonomous and unaccountable, is the opposite of the kind democratic and open society championed by Star Trek."
That actually sounds exactly like the Federation, and in particular even individual Federation ships, which are always given the autonomy to decide to destroy or save whole planets without even calling home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @05:44PM
I was more of a TNG person, was there some episode where they made a world destroying choice without contacting starfleet? Because at least in TNG they were always calling home to check in and get instructions on how to proceed in sticky situations.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday June 10 2016, @12:30PM
shortly after WWII everyone thought The Atom would be a great force for good. There was quite a lot of serious discussion about turning nuclear weapons over to international control. I expect the blockade of berlin, as well as the berlin airlift put a stop to that.
Freeman Dyson discusses this a little bit in Disturbing the Universe.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @05:36PM
This is beyond informative. Thank you MDC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @12:52PM
Heinlein's juvenile books were awesome, but his adult books were disgusting. In pretty much all his adult books, everyone was sleeping with everyone, their mother, sister, father. It didn't matter. GROSS. Now will come the fanboys actually trying to defend that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Friday June 10 2016, @01:29PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @02:40PM
The Man Who Folded Himself. Because autoerotic gender bending time travel orgies are so much easier for bisexuals.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 10 2016, @04:41PM
Title, please?
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @06:54PM
All You Zombies
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday June 10 2016, @07:17PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @10:34PM
You're totally entitled to your opinion, but I thought TEfL was a brilliant allegory. To me, it was an evidence of my own prejudice, pushing me beyond what I considered moral, but using logic all the way. I would say Stranger in a Strange Land was the same idea, but with religion as the tool used. Since I'm not particularly religious, I was not offended and thus my prejudice was not unveiled. When I read TEfL I was upset by the ending, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was my moral code that concluded it was wrong. Anyone who reads it at face value would of course take it badly. As for the quality of the writing, I think TEfL's biggest flaw was that the women tended to be flat with a lack of reason to love Mr. Long. But that is a longer digression...
- JCD
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday June 13 2016, @02:25PM
So was Frederik Pohl. I loved his early stuff so when I saw his last book in the library I checked it out... and was very disappointed.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @02:57PM
It was like the 60's , sex everywhere, and no AIDS or Zitka
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @03:04PM
But......without GRIDS it just wasn't gay enough......man.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday June 10 2016, @05:51PM
I like to think that he was taking extreme positions simply to combat the extreme puritanism that infected the US from early on, and to open people's minds about gender identity. I agree with you that his ideas of sexual freedom were too extreme, and they ignore the fact that the vast majority of humans are monogamous creatures. Yes people cheat, but how many times does the cheater actually leave their spouse and family? It is very biological, and trying to change that based on hippie ideologies won't work. I'm all for "free love", but you can love people without getting intimate and you have to respect the feelings of your partners. A lot of the hippie movement was corrupted by people using it as an excuse to just go out and party.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @02:40AM
There are entire cultures that disagree with you.
Africa is full of polygamy.
There have been at least 53 polyandrous societies [theatlantic.com] outside the well-known polyandry of the tibet/nepal//north-india region. These societies are some of the most egalitarian known to man even.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @05:00PM
The Space Patrol is a prototype of Starfleet: it is a multiracial, multinational institution, entrusted with keeping the peace in the solar system.
Here's the thing that always bugged me. In all these great futuristic sci-fi shows they celebrate earth's multiculturalism. The leftists idolize this and praise open borders and seek relaxed immigration laws. However, it was our strong nationalism and geographic separation that created such diversity in the first place. The destruction of borders and extreme multiculturalism will not yield a variety of unique cultures but a singular cultural morass which appropriates bits from all other cultures. And yet "cultural appropriation" is a grave sin according to staunch leftists.
If we are to have the beautiful futures depicted in shows like The Expanse, Babylon 5, Star Trek, etc. then it will be right wing thinking that provides this: Strong nationalism and being proud of our cultural heritage (unless you're white, then you have no culture and should be ashamed of everything forever).
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Friday June 10 2016, @05:29PM
Cultural appropriation, aka the spread of culture, is something no "leftist" should have problems with. Ultra-right wing children (Americans) who lack the self awareness to recognize their own racism and never learned enough critical thinking to evaluate the differences between the label they take on and what they actually believe might try to call themselves leftists or progressives while believing that racist shit tho.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @06:48PM
Cultural appropriation has never been an issue for liberals as far as I know. Forced cultural adoption is a different story, no one should be forced to conform just to make someone else more comfortable. Nationalism will not get us anywhere nice because it precludes the idea of working together. At its best nationalism can be a force for good when the populace has the right mindset, at its worst you get genocide.
You apparently now have some inkling of what it has been like for all minorities in the US. Persecution by the few has left you feeling like being white is something to be ashamed of, my couch psychology says it is because you don't realize all the horrible shit that was perpetrated by western civilization so you can't come to terms with why some people are angry at "white people". I recommend A People's History of the United States, that will give you perspective and hopefully you can come to terms with the fact that people are legitimately angry but you don't have to take it personally. Rise above, don't develop counter-racism. If someone treats you poorly when you have done nothing wrong, realize they are prejudiced in some manner and its fine to just ignore them. But first listen carefully, its possible you were offensive without realizing it and if you don't figure that out then you'll keep having such encounters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @07:22PM
People may be legitimately angry. But they have no right to blame me.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @07:35PM
In Star Trek, B5, and the rest, national differences were simply replaced by species-differences. The Klingons are all the same. The Romulans are all the same. The Borg are all the same. The Vulcans have one culture. All Andorian ale is simply "Andorian": imagine if there were just one "Terran Beer." Each planet has one and only one culture. This gets a bit more obvious in Star Trek, where each planet has one and only one environment: the ice world of Hoth, the desert of Tatooine, etc. It's nothing more than regionalism/nationalism/racism mapped onto a scale where planets represent the region/nation/race.
Fighting the Klingons or the Borg or the Romulans was the same thing as fighting the Muslims or the blacks or the Chinese, the faceless undifferentiated hordes whose sole characteristic was that they were different from "us."
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday June 10 2016, @09:15PM
In Star Trek, B5, and the rest, national differences were simply replaced by species-differences. The Klingons are all the same. The Romulans are all the same. The Borg are all the same. The Vulcans have one culture. All Andorian ale is simply "Andorian"...
Think to yourself it was just a show and you should really just relax.
Star Trek TOS was a show of the sixties, and its characterizations and plots were intended to portray the social, cultural and economic issues of those tumultuous times. Of course they did not attempt to fully portray the diversity of the races encountered, that would have been too complex for 50 minutes of television. Each situation encountered was an attempt to portray something of a current issue or simply a facet of humanity. TNG, since the concept of the series was a bit more mature by then, was allowed to delve a bit more deeply into the various races encountered, but underneath it was the same.
I've been rewatching TOS lately, seeing it again for the first time in decades I find myself more impressed with the quality and depth than I expected. There are of course some obvious flaws, most of them can be attributed to the fact that it was never imagined the series would become a universe of its own, the rest to an understandable inability to know in advance the directions technology would take.
I will say this, if they ever do create a "Starfleet" they can show episodes of TOS as recruitment films for hot blooded young males. They really had a lot of beautiful women in that series, way more than I remembered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10 2016, @07:54PM
This is on point. I'm reminded about the episode of Southpark with the goobacks. In the future everyone is the same, there is only one race and one language. Greatest fear indeed.
But Humans are Humans, and they will always find a way to split into different groups. Becoming ever more isolated from each-other and meeting only in echo chambers. So while they all may be one color and speak the same language, soon they will develop two dialects and what follows will be a war by one side to exterminate the other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @02:45AM
> However, it was our strong nationalism and geographic separation that created such diversity in the first place.
1% the former and 99% the later.
All of those cultural distinctions arose during the time when the vast majority of people were born, procreated and died within a 10 mile radius.
In situations like that nationalism was a concept few could even comprehend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 13 2016, @04:40PM
Sure, the Great Bird had a wonderful cult of personality going, and it is easy to think (because it was the narrative) that Star Trek = Roddenberry. Trek certainly would not have existed without him.
But in reality, Roddenberry had control of only the first two seasons of TOS, TAS, ST:TMP, and the first season of TNG. Which if you don't follow Trek abbreviations, is a minority of what Star Trek has become.
While Space Cadet was a wonderful book and indeed elements of it were incorporated into Trek - along with borrowing liberally from many different sci-fi novels - Trek didn't become huge or popular until most of Roddenberry's vision was swept away.
Turns out that intellectual stories and morality plays usually do not make good drama. So we get the racism/xenoism back into the series that Uhura and early Picard said didn't exist, we get bug-eyed Remans instead of the pure-myth of Romulans being Vulcan offshoots, and we get a Captain Kirk that is not only a romancer but who can't seem to control his gonads at all and a Spock who has the hots for Uhura. We get exceptions, too, but they're as few and far between as the lack of lens flares in Abrams' vision.