Philosophical Objections to Trek Lit
- Thread starter The Laughing Vulcan
- Start date
I think broadcast television rarely has the time to think things through, and the idea of a theistic tyranny such as the Dominion did have its flaws. For one thing, deities are supposed to be infallible and immortal. I think it would have been more effective if there had been a physical disconnect between the Founders and their subjects. Surely witnessing one of your Gods die would shake your faith. Perhaps the story would have been stronger if the Dominion directly contrasted the Bajorans, with the Founders non-corporeal overseers in the same way as the Prophets watched over the Bajorans. But would that have made Odo a fallen angel, or a Messiah figure?
But there is definitely a role for religion in sci fi, otherwise there would never have been a Dune...
But there is definitely a role for religion in sci fi, otherwise there would never have been a Dune...
Only if one defines them that way. The Founders probably wouldn't, allowing them to better cover for the occasional blunder. Many an Earthly religion has cherished the mortality and fallibility of their divine protectors or tormentors. Klingons had fun with the concept of mortal Gods, too...
Then again, which subject of the Founders ever witnessed the death of his or her God? Only the top echelons were in interaction with the Changelings, and had firsthand knowledge that their Gods were physical creatures (and very impressive ones at that). And of the Changelings that died, none did so within the view of any Vorta or Jem'Hadar, although a Vorta did pick up the ashes of the one that perished in "The Ship".
Is there a practical difference? I mean both that the Founders were fine Gods even when corporeal, and that our familiar Messiah figure basically is a fallen angel, in the process of working His way back up.
Timo Saloniemi
There's nothing to discuss on this point. The acknowledgements section is there for the author to thank or recognize whoever or whatever the hell they feel is worthy of being called out, for whatever reason they damn well choose. This isn't up for a vote or debate, and if you're that uncomfortable with encountering a viewpoint which doesn't align with yours, you're free not to buy that book or support that writer. Problem solved.
Christopher said:
The topic was broached; it's fair game, and ties to the original poster's theme of disagreeing with philosophies he encounters within Treklit, and how it ties back to the viewpoints - political or otherwise - of the author.
As Timo said, that isn't necessarily the case. That's how our monotheistic Western culture defines "deity," but different cultures, even on Earth, have defined divinity in a range of different ways. The Greek, Roman, and Norse gods were profoundly fallible. Many animistic or polytheistic cultures have defined animals and people they encountered in their personal lives as divine, but have known them to be entirely mortal (at least in their corporeal avatars).
This cultural difference led to misunderstandings in some cases -- Europeans finding themselves defined as divinities by Native American cultures read things into that definition that weren't actually there, such as the belief that the natives saw them as profoundly superior beings to be obeyed in all things. The native Hawai'ians perceived Captain Cook as an incarnation of a deity, but that didn't keep them from killing him when he diverged from their mythological script.
monotheistic Eastern Cultures too, says the Sikh
But point taken. Most modern religions do on the other hand regard deity as infallible and immortal. In fact, earlier cultures did believe in the same way, with quite often an overriding God image such as the Sun as an immortal and unimpeachable deity. It's for the smaller things like the harvest and weather that they created 'Small Gods', that could be anthropomorphized. I'm guessing anyway.
That's not really the case. They did tend to have a singular cosmic-creator deity or cosmic-embodiment essence above the rest (the Greeks' Ouranos, the Hindus' Brahman, etc.), but this was usually a detached, inchoate figure with little mythology or devotion attached, a fairly abstract idea. So a concept like "infallible" or "unimpeachable" wouldn't really apply, since the inchoate cosmic essence isn't really perceived as making decisions or governing specific events, just generally, somewhat passively existing.
See, the concept of "small" you're using, with the implication of "less important," is itself a culturally biased one, based on our modern, globalized cultural viewpoint. These were societies whose worldview was much more focused on the local, on their own communities and territories and everyday environs. To them, the broader world was an abstraction that was of little relevance to their lives, and so the overarching cosmic deity or creative principle was similarly distant and neutral in their beliefs, with the "lower" tier of deities or spirits being considered far more immediate and important to their lives.
An exception might be the Chinese tian, which we translate as "Heaven," but which is an impersonalized divine force of ethics and justice, kind of like a law of physics that ensures righteousness will ultimately triumph over unrighteousness. So it's not fallible and it's not mortal. But since it isn't perceived as an individual being, I don't think your characterizations would really apply to it either. The Chinese are maybe the one major culture that elevates the overarching cosmic essence above smaller local spirits in importance but doesn't personify it as a deity. As a society, they've tended to be more focused on the secular and the temporal.
Not to keep dredging this topic back up, but on the subject of Last Full Measure, EVERY SINGLE PERSON POSTING ON THE SUBJECT HAS BEEN WRONG, which has also skewed several of the arguments.
Mike Martin didn't put his thoughts on the Iraq War and Cindy Sheehan in the acknowledgments, which is indeed where you put in a list of people who helped you write the book.
Mike put it in his dedication. There is a huge difference between the dedication and the acknowledgments. The dedication is the person to whom the author is dedicating the book. It is the one and only part of the book where the author is being completely selfish and personal, and authors have the right to dedicate the book to whoever they damn well please, and the notion that such a personal thing should be censored or changed is appalling.
I'm sorry, donners22, but nothing is inappropriate on the dedication page. That's where the author dedicates the book to someone important to him or her. TerriO and I had a cat named Mittens who died shortly after I finished Enemy Territory. A diabetic 18-year-old Maine Coon who died of cancer had precisely zero to do with a Star Trek book about Klingons fighting a war. But Mittens was very important to me, and I dedicated the book to him.
Mike's dedication in Last Full Measure was similarly important to him. It had nothing to do with the book, and it had nothing to do with you.
Mike Martin didn't put his thoughts on the Iraq War and Cindy Sheehan in the acknowledgments, which is indeed where you put in a list of people who helped you write the book.
Mike put it in his dedication. There is a huge difference between the dedication and the acknowledgments. The dedication is the person to whom the author is dedicating the book. It is the one and only part of the book where the author is being completely selfish and personal, and authors have the right to dedicate the book to whoever they damn well please, and the notion that such a personal thing should be censored or changed is appalling.
I'm sorry, donners22, but nothing is inappropriate on the dedication page. That's where the author dedicates the book to someone important to him or her. TerriO and I had a cat named Mittens who died shortly after I finished Enemy Territory. A diabetic 18-year-old Maine Coon who died of cancer had precisely zero to do with a Star Trek book about Klingons fighting a war. But Mittens was very important to me, and I dedicated the book to him.
Mike's dedication in Last Full Measure was similarly important to him. It had nothing to do with the book, and it had nothing to do with you.
^ Not wrong. I simply misremembered.
But, I'll stick by what I said.
(Edited to dial back the venom. Today has been a suck-ass week already, and I'm a bit cranky.)
But, I'll stick by what I said.
(Edited to dial back the venom. Today has been a suck-ass week already, and I'm a bit cranky.)
Ok and getting back to the original subject, my objection is about pretty much every Diane Carey book, whether TOS or TNG or whatever.
She is absolutely obsessed with boating, and in her books, so are the characters. Reading a Diane Carey TOS book is like watching that episode of Xena where she's obsessed with fishing. Kirk is obsessed with boating, not flying a ship. It gets annoying, and it's just in her books that this happens.
She is absolutely obsessed with boating, and in her books, so are the characters. Reading a Diane Carey TOS book is like watching that episode of Xena where she's obsessed with fishing. Kirk is obsessed with boating, not flying a ship. It gets annoying, and it's just in her books that this happens.
^^Okay, but does an objection to a boating emphasis constitute a philosophical objection? I don't think this thread was meant as a general "Stuff you don't like in Trek books" thread, but more specifically about the beliefs and value systems expressed in the books.
Anyway, there is canonical precedent for Kirk having a love of boating and naval heritage. See his invocation of John Masefield's "Sea Fever" in "The Ultimate Computer." More generally, Starfleet's embrace of naval heritage is implicit in its use of naval terminology, and is made more explicit in movies like TWOK, TUC, and GEN. Carey's use of nautical themes in her Trek fiction isn't that great a mismatch with what we've seen onscreen.
Anyway, there is canonical precedent for Kirk having a love of boating and naval heritage. See his invocation of John Masefield's "Sea Fever" in "The Ultimate Computer." More generally, Starfleet's embrace of naval heritage is implicit in its use of naval terminology, and is made more explicit in movies like TWOK, TUC, and GEN. Carey's use of nautical themes in her Trek fiction isn't that great a mismatch with what we've seen onscreen.
Puppies! We eat puppies for breakfast! We save the babies for Lunch! Geez, and you call yourself a librul!
Puppies! We eat puppies for breakfast! We save the babies for Lunch! Geez, and you call yourself a librul!
I eat kittens for breakfast. Puppies are too high in cholesterol and fat.
...or read acknowledgments!
Seriously, I've read a few books that were badly written but the only Trek books that I disagreed with the philosophy in were the Carey books-I find it hard to believe(despite the attempted coup in Paradise Lost) that the leaders of Starfleet are that militaristic in nature. I grant you that some are more soldier than statesman but still, I think building dreadnoughts(and convincing enough subordinates that it's a good thing so you can get it built) is a little far-fetched in The Great Bird's Galaxy. Not sure if I double posted - if so, sorry.
I don't normally find myself objecting to anything in Trek books. The rare occasions I do, I just omit the icky bits from my personal canon. 
I think the point that needs to be clarified here is that while some posters have a very specific definition of what they think is appropriate content in the front matter of a book, their definition is different from the standards used in the publishing industry at large. While the posters have every right to disagree with those standards, they should still acknowledge that the standards are there. Pocket Books did nothing wrong, i.e., did not violate generally accepted practices in the industry, by publishing that dedication as submitted by the author. Acting as though it's as clear as day that Pocket Books doesn't know what dedications or acknowledgments are seems a bit disingenuous to me.
As an editor I am extremely reluctant to make any changes in these most personal sections of front matter, even if I disagree philosophically with the content. Granted, if one of my authors attempted to praise Hitler, I would have a talk with him about just what the hell he was thinking. But it's just a plain fact in the publishing industry that authors are given wide latitude in what they say up front in a book. Acting like "everyone knows you can't put that in dedications/acknowledgments" is simply out of sync with the reality of the industry.
Well, ok. I was trying to be nice. Diane's books are warped, right-wing biased Republican propaganda. She twists the characters and events to give a pro-right wing view of the universe, and they are in no way balanced. Her books give the impression of being written by an NRA card-carrying nutjob, certainly not someone who is looking to the future.
^^^
Actually, Carey's philosophy isn't so much Republican as it is militant Libertarian with some neo-con thrown in for good measure. And to be fair, this kind of worldview actually serves her pretty well in scenarios where her characters are forging their way through new frontiers, such as her novel Final Frontier (not to be confused with the film of the same name) and her Challenger novels, which are all among her better works.
However, when she tries to apply that same philosophy to TNG, it's much less successful. It might have worked better with DS9, but oddly she never contributed anything under that banner.
While I certainly don't agree with Carey's politics, it doesn't mean I can't enjoy her work. A few of her novels have been brilliant; others just leave me feeling disconnected and confused. The only time I became genuinely angry while reading her work was the short story "World of Strangers" in Enterprise Logs, but I'm guessing that's precisely the reaction she would expect from a reader like me. Besides, that wasn't even a Star Trek story in any way, shape or form, and its inclusion in the anthology still puzzles me to this day.
Actually, Carey's philosophy isn't so much Republican as it is militant Libertarian with some neo-con thrown in for good measure. And to be fair, this kind of worldview actually serves her pretty well in scenarios where her characters are forging their way through new frontiers, such as her novel Final Frontier (not to be confused with the film of the same name) and her Challenger novels, which are all among her better works.
However, when she tries to apply that same philosophy to TNG, it's much less successful. It might have worked better with DS9, but oddly she never contributed anything under that banner.
While I certainly don't agree with Carey's politics, it doesn't mean I can't enjoy her work. A few of her novels have been brilliant; others just leave me feeling disconnected and confused. The only time I became genuinely angry while reading her work was the short story "World of Strangers" in Enterprise Logs, but I'm guessing that's precisely the reaction she would expect from a reader like me. Besides, that wasn't even a Star Trek story in any way, shape or form, and its inclusion in the anthology still puzzles me to this day.
Actually, she has: Call to Arms... and ...Sacrifice of Angels, the novelizations of the series' big opening sixth season arc (plus season five finale), published along with two TNG books under the rubric of "The Dominion War". I found the novelizations bizarre and distasteful, for skipping over a number of key scenes and adding a lot of new content that cast events in a very different light (such as Ross being an inept martinet being deceived into following Sisko's plan for the war). If that was a reflection of her politics at work in the fiction, then I don't think it worked any better than in TNG fiction... but then, I've disliked to outright hated everything I've read by Carey (except First Strike), so I'm hardly an unbiased witness.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
^ Not to mention Station Rage and the novelizations of "The Search", "Way of the Warrior", and "What You Leave Behind".
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