Galaxis September 2015 by John Zipperer

great expectations: the new star wars Hijacked hugos? REVIEW: jodorowsky’s dune INge Lehmann’s incredible journey to the center of Earth

Galaxis Number 5

The Worlds of SCIENCE & SCIENCE FICTION

SEPT. 2015 $19.95 TM

special science fiction tv preview

author david gerrold talks mandelbrot art The martian Star Trek: the Next Generation Episode guide Seasons II & III

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Issue #1

Prem i e re i ssue! Michio Kaku interviewed; author David Gerrold on Star Hunt; Mobile Suit Gundam; Lathe of Heaven on TV; space photos; Virgin Galactic; Star Wars in print; Q&As with Mary Doria Russell, Deepak Srivastava, & Michael Medved; news & reviews; & more!

Issue #2

Complete episode guide to the SyFyera Battlestar Galactica! A special report on classic German science fiction; building a real starship; Perry Rhodan starts over; the controversy over spilling Prometheus’ secrets; the world’s first short SF story; a photo guide to Saturn; reviews; & more!

Issue #3

Star Wars wuxia connection! Episode guide to original Battlestar Galactica; author Charles Yu interviewed; Lev Grossman’s The Magicians; search for Earth-like planets; photo visits to CERN & SpaceX; Google tech; fictional trip to Mars; Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome; & more!

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Galaxis September 2015

Issue #4

Special Trek focus! An extended review of Star Trek into Darkness, plus episode guide to first season of ST:TNG; Europa Report; Atremis Eternal; El Cosmonauta; Orson Scott Card boycott; space stamps; Indy Jones update; Ray Kurzweil speaks; Dragon Fire fiction; & more!

Issue #5

Special SF TV preview! David Gerrold interview; scientist Inge Lehmann; remembering Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy; Mandelbrot art; Star Wars VII update; Hugo controversy; Frazetta lives; ST:TNG episode guide seasons II & III; Dragon Fire part II; & more!

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Get caught up on the best new science & SCIENCE fiction magazine!

september 2015 Volume 1 Number 5

The Worlds of SCIENCE & SCIENCE FICTION

FEATURES

Galaxis

14 Leonard Nimoy moves on

Star Trek’s original science officer has passed away

16 HUGO AWARDS dustup 18 saga of a space painting 20 SPECial science-fiction tv preview

fünf

DEPARTMENTS 4 VIEWSCREEN

Return of the little green men

Andy Weir’s The Martian gets the Ridley Scott big-screen treatment, the first space trillionaire, Grace Lee Whitney and Christopher Lee, remembering Krazy Kat, & more

6 LAUNCH Tube

Genre giants return to remake the SF small screen

Remembering the late author

An interview with the Hugo- and Nebula-winning SF author

earth

The Galaxis SF Quiz

27 the best of terry pratchett

28 David gerrold: the martian father

11 Imagery

31 Journey to the center of the

34 Game Set

51 Worldly tHINGS

Real-life scientist Inge Lehmann discovered the core of the truth

35 Star trek: The NExt

generation episode guide: Seasons 2 & 3

The continuation of our guide

52 FICTION: Dragon fire, PART II 58 mandelbrot art

Where math and art meet

J.J. Abrams relaunches the Wars

Mulder’s desk and Flash Gordon’s ship

Self-driving cars are hitting the streets for good

67 compendium

What to see, hear, and do

The Martian, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Bowl of Heaven, Interstellar, & more

What’s in our future?

68 webbed 69 reviewscreen

78 next galaxis

photo: Andreal90

64 the new star wars

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Viewscreen The Return of the Little Green Men

It took a quirky drama from Chris Carter and the young Fox network to make UFOs and conspiracies hot, but they were in the zeitgeist. 4

Galaxis September 2015

UFO photo: George Stock; X-files logo: Fox broadcasting company

f I had heard about The X-Files before I had seen it, I would have been prepared to hate it. Its premise of conspiracies, alien visitors, and monsters invites an expectation of hackwork and low expectations. Luckily, I never saw it coming. I was in Chicago in the early 1990s. A friend of mine worked at one of the major advertising agencies whose skyscrapers line the Chicago River. She invited me over to watch a new TV program; she had been given the premiere episode to review for possible ad placements. So I went over to her apartment, we made dinner, then we settled down to watch the show. It wasn’t The X-Files. I don’t even remember what it was, because after we watched it, we watched a couple other videos she had been given to review, and one of them was The X-Files. We had no idea what to expect—after all, the big event of the night was supposed to be the utterly forgettable first program we viewed—but after The X-Files was over, we looked at each other, each of us finally admitting that that was something pretty great. We wanted more of it. So I became an X-Files fan before the show even premiered on Fox in September 1993. I went on to watch nearly every episode of the series, from the sewer flukeman to Mulder’s porn addiction to screaming at an alien dead body. I was in love with the series. I don’t think it’s overstating it to say that The X-Files represented the rebirth of television drama in the 1990s, just as Norman Lear recreated the sitcom in the 1970s and Star Trek: The Next Generation shook up the syndicated world in the 1980s. Fox television led an insurgent movement of rules-breaking in the 1990s that was even more evident in series such as In Living Color and Roc. The X-Files was the unexpected reinvention of the hour-long drama, a bit more adult in themes than had been allowed in previous decades, and higher in production

The X-Files represented the rebirth of television drama in the 1990s, just as Norman Lear recreated the sitcom in the 1970s. values than had been feasible during network television’s rocky adaptation to the era of cable television and video cassettes. The X-Files was a delightful showcase for the acting talents of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny. Whether doing close-in, claustrophobic personal drama or comedy, the two leads made the characters strong and vulnerable and a joy to watch. The show was also a showcase for writers, and its scripters can still be found in the leading ranks of genre television writers more than 13 years after The X-Files went off the air. So this spring, the news that Fox would produce a six-episode mini-revival of The X-Files, featuring original leads Duchovny and Anderson and using many of the original writers and producers, was cause to be welcomed here around the Galaxis offices (see our science-fiction television preview starting on page 20). Creator Chris Carter likes to surprise and mystify, so before the episodes are actually aired (first, probably seen by today’s advertising executives contemplating where they should place their TV ads), we can only guess what he will do. Will the series be those strong stand-alone episodes or the complicated but highly produced mythology episodes? Besides pulling up my chair to the TV and enjoying the show, I’ll be interested in the new series because I want to see how it interacts with today’s volatile politics. One reason I would have been prepared not to like The X-Files if I had heard descriptions before watching it is that it is about conspiracies, about government and other forces combining to carry out atroSeptember 2015 Volume 1, Number 5 www.weimar.ws Thanks this issue to: 20th Century Fox, The Commonwealth Club of California, David Gerrold, Google, Lucasfilm, Michelle Meow, George Lucas, NASA, Paramount, and Kin Tso. ON THE COVER: This fall, a number of big genre names will return to the small screen with new or revamped offerings, ranging from an X-Files

cious activities at the expense of the rest of us. As fiction, it made for great and spooky drama. Unfortunately, conspiracy-laden theories were in the national zeitgeist in the 1990s, as they are now, and they had real consequences. Conspiracies come in all shapes and sizes, and they are believed by people all across the political spectrum. At their worst, they lead to justifications for murdering innocent people. Remember the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building in 1995? That was carried out by someone who thought he had the right to kill people because he thought the U.S. government had become an unstoppable behemoth. Such language fills the speeches and comments of quite a few political candidates in this country even today; they are playing with fire, because some people really believe it. At their best, conspiracy theories—well, there is no “best” to conspiracy theories. There just is no upside to being duped or to helping to dupe others to live in ignorance, to pick out scapegoats instead of finding real solutions to our problems. Some people grab onto conspiracy theories because they simply can’t handle the complexity of real life, they don’t understand how things work, and they feel helpless about what’s happening in the world or in their own lives. They generally lack the ability to discern truth from what they read or to judge the trustworthiness of information they come across. There are plenty of people who are more than willing to take advantage of this gullibility and get these people

Galaxis miniseries to the long-awaited Foundation. Will this be the best SF-TV season ever? Galaxis is published by John Zipperer. This is issue Volume One, Number Five. Except for photos by third-party photographers, all content is copyright © 2015 John Zipperer, except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction of any part is

to blame someone, to vote for a candidate, to watch a channel, to refuse to pay taxes, to refuse to vaccinate children against deadly diseases, to give up their money to support the fight against the imaginary villains. Don’t think this is only on the political right. On the left, there are people who are so incensed about police brutality or economic inequality that they read every incidence of crime or economic reporting as supporting their view that the world is controlled by wealthy people with unlimited powers to get what they want—every war is fought because of billionaires, every trade bill is an attack on working people, and every bit of defense funding legislation is a giveaway to wealthy contractors. Now, in 2015, conspiracy theories are if anything a bigger part of our national discussion than they were two decades ago when The X-Files was hot and fanatics were killing people in Oklahoma. This is not a good thing. We have presidential candidates who with a straight face push claims that the legally elected president of the United States doesn’t have a U.S. birth certificate, and when his birth certificate is produced, they claim it was all faked. Others think the U.S. government was behind the horrific 9/11 attacks; the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newton, Connecticut; and —in perhaps the kookiest conspiracy theory of them all—is controlled by shape-shifting reptiles. The X-Files is dangerous television. It is adult television. It is to be enjoyed, but an IQ test is a requirement. John Zipperer/Editor & Publisher

Editor & Publisher John Zipperer jzipperer@gmail.com

Art Director & Design John Zipperer Printing: Issuu.com & MagCloud

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LaunchTube News & views for today & tomorrow

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Star Trek nears 50th We are nearly one year away from the 50th anniversary of the airing of the very first Star Trek episode, and devoted and casual fans alike are sure to see a large number of events, publications, and more to celebrate the momentous year. Original series star William Shatner told a convention audience that his idea for an appropriate tribute to the long-lasting franchise would be a special program that delves into the themes of the show—such as the way it handled matters of race—instead of yet

another rehashing of the show’s success. John scalzi signs $3.4 million deal Best-selling science-fiction author John Scalzi made a splash earlier this year when he inked a $3.4 million deal with Tor for 13 books to be written over the next decade. “Tor and I have decided to be long-term significant partners with each other,” Scalzi wrote on his blog, whatever.scalzi.com.“One of the very good things having a long-term relationship affords is the ability to plan, strategize and build on previous works and

Matt Damon Is The Martian, and Andy Weir Is the Hero

mars image: NikoLang ; Scott photo: gage foundation cover: panther; Foundation andskidmore; damon photo: nicolas genin from foundation Paris, France Empire cover: Bantam books; second

e’ve come a long way since TV’s My Favorite Martian. Instead of a goofy sitcom about a Martian man who travels to Earth, in today’s popular entertainment we are treated to real Martians. Who just happen to be Earthmen. In the wake of the surprise success of Andy Weir’s novel The Martian, legendary genre director Ridley Scott picked up rights to direct the movie based on the book. The film is slated to be released this fall starring Matt Damon as lead character Mark Watney. (See The Martian review, page 69.) At press time, the first trailer video of the film had been released, showing quick intercuts of Damon/Watney in key moments early in the story. SF/science website i09.com headlined its article “Sorry, Interstellar, We Just Saw Some of The Martian and It’s Way Better.” The Martian focuses on astronaut Watney, one of a small crew of earthlings who makes a trip to Mars in the Ares 3 mission, the third manned mission to the red planet, for the purpose of manning a temporary, two-month camp there, conducting experiments, and

returning home in a multi-year voyage. But a large dust storm arrives, forcing the crew to escape back to their orbiting ship. However, Watney is thought to have been killed and is left behind. He is now stuck on a lifeless planet, with no food beyond what was planned to feed the Ares crew, and his communications system is broken so he can’t signal his colleagues in orbit to let them know he’s alive. They head back home to Earth, and Watney realizes he has to survive on Mars. There’s one thing Watney has in his favor: He’s a botanist. That would seem to be irrelevant on a world devoid of life, but with his background he is able to figure out how to grow food, create fertilizer, fix equipment, and calculate the calories he needs to stay alive until the next possible point of rescue. The Martian is clearly the creation of a science-loving mind. According to the production company, Watney’s efforts to stay alive and figure out ways to make the available technology work even when it’s broken “are entirely believable and science-based, thanks in large part to Weir’s relentless research and fascination with NASA, orbital mechanics, relativistic physics, astronomy, and the history of manned spaceflight. If we started planning a manned mission to Mars tomorrow, it would look a lot like what’s depicted in these pages. Weir even calculated the various orbital paths involved in the story to make the physics of space travel as accurate as possible, which required him to write his own software.” “I’m a lifelong space nerd. I’ve always been a fan of manned and unmanned space flight,” Weir told the Humans to Mars Summit. He added that he came up with the story when he was thinking about how a manned mis-

sion could be done with current technology, and how the participants would deal with things if various components broke down. Weir, a software engineer for more than two decades, calls himself “a huge fan of NASA” who tried to portray how people would actually behave in a situation such as this. You might not be able to use the book as a manual if you are stranded on Mars, but readers can feel assured that it is more scientifically grounded than Red Planet or John Carter. The Martian is an inspiration to independent writers. Weir originally self-published the book in 2011; Crown Publishing then bought the rights and released it in 2014. The book’s fan base grew and grew, and eventually Hollywood took notice. Film rights to Weir’s novel were auctioned to writer-producer Simon Kinberg, whose work includes Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Sherlock Holmes, and X-Men: First Class. Weir told the summit that “as for my part in the movie, my job primarily was to cash the check. I did that. I did that admirably well.” He said he reviewed the screenplay and made suggestions, and that he is very happy with it. “If it increased interest in science fiction, that would be great,” said Weir. “I’d love it if it increased interest in Mars exploration, and maybe if there’s enough public interest in it, various nations might allocate more money to it—that’d be great.” Besides Damon, The Martian stars Jessica Chastain as Commander Melissa Lewis, Kristen Wiig as Annie Montrose, Jeff Daniels as Teddy Sanders, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Venkat Kapoor. Filming got underway in November 2014 in Budapest, Hungary, far from the outer reaches of space. Additional filming took place in the Middle East. The film, directed by Scott, has a screenplay by Drew Goddard, who has written for Alias and Lost, as well as the 2008 feature Cloverfield and 2013’s Brad Pitt horror film World War Z. The film is due to be released October 2, 2015, in both 3D and 2D.

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some young adult books, and some stand-alone novels. That’s no moon, that’s a space station The eyesight of earthlings continues to improve. Not only are our satellites finding Earth-sized planets in habitable zones around other stars, now NASA’s Kepler

PAINTING: Denise Watt, NASA

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strengths. Or to put it another way, we know we’re stuck with each other until 2026 at least. Better find a way to make it work for both of us.“ Scalzi says he’s got his next 13 books already sketched out in synopsis form, which will include new additions to the Old Man’s War series, “a new epic space opera series” (he’s reading our minds),

Earth’s First Space Trillionaire

illionaires were once a rare breed of person, symbolizing the greatest attainment of financial success available. Today, there are literally millions of millionaires in the world— an estimated 12 million, in fact. Billionaires then became the perceived ultimate winners in the economic field, and there are now more than 1,600 of them. So what is next? Someday—rampant inflation aside—there will be first one and then many trillionaires, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks he knows where they’ll first be minted: outer space. “The first trillionaire there will ever be is the person who exploits the natural resources on asteroids,” Tyson told CNBC in a recent interview. He noted that asteroids are made of valuable chemicals and rare metals that are hard to find on Earth but abound in space. In 2013, NASA noted that asteroids were potentially a “vast new source of scarce material” that would be a boon to Earthside life if the financial and technological hurdles could be overcome. “Asteroids are lumps of metals, rock and

Galaxis September September2015 2015 Galaxis

dust, sometimes laced with ices and tar, which are the cosmic ‘leftovers’ from the solar system’s formation about 4.5 billion years ago,” the space agency reported. “There are hundreds of thousands of them, ranging in size from a few yards to hundreds of miles across. Small asteroids are much more numerous than large ones, but even a little, house-sized asteroid should contain metals possibly worth millions of dollars. Also, there is no need to invade another country or subvert its government to get mining rights. There’s just the challenge of getting to and working in space. “There’s this vast universe of limitless energy and limitless resources,” said Tyson. “I look at wars fought over access to resources. That could be a thing of the past, once space becomes our backyard.” Unfortunately, of course, the United States has largely washed its hands of manned space travel and exploration, relying on drones for its own work and standing by and watching other countries like China and India make big plans for moving into space. In his conversation with CNBC, Tyson did not agree that private business had taken over the space exploration field. “That’s the headline, but space exploration by any rational definition, is, ‘Here’s a place we’ve never been before—let’s go.’ Typically, when you do that,

that’s really expensive. If you’ve never been there before, there are dangers you haven’t quantified yet. And if you’re a business person, what’s the first thing you’re going to ask? ‘What’s my return on investment?’ That’s a pretty fast conversation with venture capitalists, if you’re going to tell them, ‘Give me money to do what nobody’s ever done before in space.’ It’s a five-minute meeting; they’re out the door minutes later.” Therefore, he added, generally “governments do that first. The first Europeans to the New World were not the Dutch East India Trading Company; it was Columbus, paid by Spain. He had some investors as well, but it was a national initiative. Once he drew the maps and knew where the trade winds are, where the friendlies and the hostiles were, then commercial enterprises could come in because you’ve quantified the risks.” That is not stopping private enterprise. A company called Planetary Resources has placed its Arkyd-3R probe aboard the International Space Station and designed it to test an asteroid mining technology. In totally unrelated news: We are proud to announce the formation of Galaxis Asteroid Exploration and Exploitation Enterprises. Now seeking investors. Email us. Do it soon—competitors are coming.

spacecraft has evidence of what is believed to be the first asteroids seen around stars. Meanwhile, a NASA supercomputer is working on something called the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler project. Moons located outside our own solar system would be yet another milestone discovery. NASA reports that using its “powerful Pleiades [computing] system—which performs over 3 quadrillion calculations per second—will speed up this computationally expensive process, reducing the processing time to 30,000 hours per object. Over the next two years, the team will survey

the remaining candidates for exomoons by performing photo-dynamical analysis of the public data from Kepler, consuming about 10 million processor hours on Pleiades. Their results will be used to determine the occurrence rate of Earth-like moons.“ george lucas has moved on During an on-stage conversation at last year’s Sundance festival, filmmaker George Lucas dismissed films that were “more circus than substance.” During a conversation with Sundance founder and fellow film legend Robert

Redford, Lucas said he and Star Wars are sometimes blamed for the sensationalism in movies, but he defended his films, saying there was a lot more to the Wars films than critics sometimes credit. Gaining even more headlines was his statement that he no longer has an interest in science fiction, but that really just brings him full circle to when he was contemplating a new project after THX 1138: “I had no interest in science fiction; I spent my whole life driving cars.” Out of that interest came American Graffiti.

Deaths in the Family: Whitney and Lee

Whitney photo: NBC/Paramount; Christopher lee: Manfred Werner - Tsui

orn Mary Ann Chase in 1930, the young singer and actress eventually changed her name to Grace Lee Whitney and earned roles in commercials and television. In the first season of the original Star Trek, she portrayed Janice Rand, a yeoman who functioned primarily to have Captain Kirk sign her digital clipboard and to serve as his love interest. The producers famously decided they needed their handsome young captain to be playing the field, and Rand’s character was dropped unceremoniously. Rand would appear in small roles in several Star Trek films, and she became a fixture at Trek conventions. She thereby salvaged a relationship with the show, overcoming her firing and coming to terms with a sexual assault by an unnamed executive with the show, a tale she recounted in her autobiography The Longest Trek. But it wasn’t surviving Trek or the assault that was most important to her. After treatment for alcoholism, she devoted much of her final three and a half decades to helping others do the same. She passed away May 1, 2015, at the age of 85.

ctor Christopher Lee portrayed many villains whose deaths were applauded by audiences, but his own death on June 7, 2015, was greeted with near-universal sadness. Christopher Lee, also known formally as Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, jumped into an acting career following World War II, making his debut film appearance in the 1947 romance Corridor of Mirrors. He went on to play dozens of minor supporting characters in other productions until his fateful casting as Frankenstein’s monster in Hammer Films’ The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957. He and co-star Peter Cushing, who portrayed Baron Frankenstein, would go on to appear together in more than 20 films. He essayed another classic monster in 1958 with the title role in Hammer’s Dracula. It was onward and upward for Lee after that, starring in numerous roles in films that have attained classic status. The Mummy, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, The Wicker Man, The Three Musketeers, The Man with the Golden Gun, and too many others to recount here. Even in Left to right: his final years, he continued working Grace Lee Whitney with key roles in the Lord of the Rings in a publicity shot trilogy and as Count Dooku in the Star from classic Star Trek; Christopher Wars prequels. He was 93. Lee in 2009.

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Krazy Kat and Crazy Cats

y late stepfather was a political cartoonist. Like most such artists, he would use characters out of the day’s news to populate his graphic editorial commentary, but he also occasionally needed someone to act as a one-character Greek chorus and comment on the other characters. For that, he usually added a mouse. When he needed someone to talk back to the mouse, it was often a cat. His love for comic strips was evident in his reading material. He was a constant reader (and to the end of his life, he would often spend the early evening working on some project around the house and then finish up in the living room with my mother, both of them reading books). He read politics, novels, science fiction, magazines, newspapers, and more. But he would also bring home from the library large coffee-table books of reprinted comic strips from the early days of comics. I’ve never cared for superheroes, but it was fun to read Superman’s or Batman’s earliest adventures in those big color reprints. Or Little Nemo in Slumberland? If you love awesome art and mind-bending comic

Galaxis September 2015

UPCOMING SF FILM RELEASES Fantastic Four, August 7, 2015 The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials, September 18, 2015 The Martian, October 2, 2015 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2, November 20, 2015 Star Wars: The Force Awakens, December 18, 2015 The 5th Wave, January 15, 2016 Deadpool, February 12, 2016 Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, March 25, 2016 Absolutely Anything, May 5, 2016

Captain America: Civil War, May 6, 2016 X-Men: Apocalypse, May 27, 2016 Independence Day Resurgence, June 24, 2016 The Three-Body Problem, July 2016 Star Trek Beyond, July 8, 2016 Ghostbusters, July 15, 2016 Star Wars: Rogue One, December 16, 2016 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, May 5, 2017 Star Wars Episode VIII, May 26, 2017 Unscheduled 2016: Inversion, Prometheus 2, Ready Player One Undated: Passage to Mars

A January 1922 Sunday color strip from Krazy Kat. stories, do yourself a favor and find a reprint edition of Little Nemo. And there was Krazy Kat. If you were pitching a Krazy Kat film to Hollywood in so-called “high concept” manner, you would cite the comics that were “a tale of frenemies in the Southwest.” Or perhaps “Salvador Dalí meets the Roadrunner.” Debuting in 1913 and running until 1944, Krazy Kat had a deceptively simple setup, involving the sweet title character of alternating genders who is in love with his antagonist Ignatz Mouse—a mouse—and Offissa Bull Pupp—a dog that forms the third part of what became a love triangle of sorts. A recurring action is Ignatz hurtling a brick at Krazy Kat, who thinks it’s a sign of love. Set in a surrealist version of the American Southwest, the landscapes were spare, colorful, and very, very weird. The strip, in short, was smart and funny and not at all the well-behaved comic story we’ve come to expect in our newspapers. Cat, mouse, brick, jail, possible homosexual subtext, great art. Such strangeness and sophistication on the comics page would be difficult to find today. We’re talking here about a comic strip that has been written up in The New York Review of Books numerous times. The Comics Journal gave Krazy Kat the

top spot in its ranking of the best strips of the 20th century. Krazy Kat should be on anyone’s short list for the greatest comics of all time. Mine would include Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, Bloom County (which featured the oddball character of Bill the Cat, a cat that was, well, dead but nonetheless a continuing character), and of course Calvin and Hobbes (and even Hobbes is a cat of a sort). Many comics artists have cited creator George Herriman and his Krazy Kat as influences, but Bloom County’s Berke Breathed went a step further in his Bloom County sequel strip Outland, which regularly featured those bizarre, zigzaggy, spartan Southwestern backgrounds. There have been other great cats to follow. Garfield has zillions of followers (and somewhere in our home there is a stuffed Garfield doll). Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts features a dog and a cat, Earl and Mooch; in that strip, the cat is a lovable but stupid companion to the titular dog. McDonnell, too, lists Krazy Kat as an influence, and he is the co-author of 1986’s Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman. All of us who have ever had a cat in our lives know that they make great characters; for about a century, comics creators have known the same thing. It all started with Krazy Kat. G

Imagery F

BI agent Fox Mulder’s office has been empty since he left The XFiles and set off on a life as a fugitive with Dana Scully. It’s easy to do a cosplay take on Mulder (suit) or Scully (haircut and pantsuit), and now with this photo you can make your office or bedroom into a copy of agent Mulder’s office. Key components include the “I Want to Believe” poster, a desk and chair, and numerous pencils embedded in the ceiling, the victims of Mulder’s boredom and frustration. Photo by Alistair mcmillan

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rankly, we’ve always been a bit worried whether earthlings would be up to the task of defending our planet from alien invaders. As this publicity still shows from 1940’s Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, if humanity fails, it won’t be for lack of dedicated heroes attempting to save us. Left to right: Actors Frank Shannon, Buster Crabbe, Carol Hughes, and Roland Drew seek to stop Ming the Merciless from killing humans with his “Death Dust.”

Galaxis September 2015

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Photo this page: gage skidmore; trek classic photo: NBC Television

Leonard Nimoy, 1931–2015:

He Was Nimoy It’s only logical to note the passing of one of the biggest stars of acting, directing, photography—and humanism. BY JOHN ZIPPERER

ou could name a long list of films and television programs with which Leonard Nimoy was involved, because he had a career spanning more than seven decades. But in reality, you probably could not name that long list unless you first consulted Wikipedia or IMDB. The reason Nimoy is known worldwide isn’t for that long list of productions; it’s for his role as the Vulcan science officer Spock in Star Trek. Nimoy took a role as a green-skinned, 14

Galaxis September 2015

emotionless alien and turned him into a popular and sympathetic character who lasted through the original series of Star Trek, the animated series, the motion pictures starring the original cast as well as a brief role in each of the J.J. Abrams-era Trek films, and a Next Generation guest appearance. How he was able to pull off that feat owes quite a bit to that same long list of films and television programs in which he honed and perfected his craft. It includes films ranging from the 1958 Roger Corman six-day schlocker The Brain Eaters to

the highly praised 1979 Philip Kaufman remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. His television acting resume included short roles or guest appearances in Sea Hunt, Dragnet, Bonanza, The Untouchables, The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and many others. Perhaps most people who know him from Star Trek got their first sense that he had an acting life beyond that show following its cancellation when he starred in two different series, the strange-facts investigation series In Search of… and Mission Impossible. But even acting wasn’t enough for him. He directed episodes of Night Gallery, The Powers of Matthew Star, his friend William Shatner’s T.J. Hooker, and others, including big-screen stories such as 1987’s Three Men and a Baby. With such a long and active career, one might assume he worried less about typecasting than did his fellow Trek veterans, but he did write a 1975 autobiography titled I Am not Spock, which some critics saw as an attempt to distance himself from his most famous character. Two decades later, a second autobiography was titled I Am Spock, in which he said that the Spock character had been a part of him since the 1960s when he first put on the pointed ears. After Nimoy passed away February 27, 2015, his granddaughter Dani posted a

Left: Leonard Nimoy at a 21st-century science fiction convention in Phoenix, Arizona. Right: Nimoy as Spock.

message online that her grandfather died of “end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was an extraordinary man, husband, grandfather, brother, actor, author— the list goes on—and friend. Thank you for the warm condolences. May you all LLAP.” His co-star in Trek and longtime friend William Shatner released a statement saying “I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humour, his talent, and his capacity to love.” President Barack Obama, a noted fan of Star Trek, issued a statement upon learning about Nimoy’s passing. “Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy. Leonard was a lifelong lover of the arts and humanities, a supporter of the sciences, generous with his talent and his time. And of course, Leonard was Spock. Cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed, the center of Star Trek’s optimistic, inclusive vision of humanity’s future. I loved Spock. “In 2007, I had the chance to meet Leonard in person,” the president continued. “It was only logical to greet him with the Vulcan salute, the universal sign for ‘Live long and prosper.’ And after 83 years on this planet—and on his visits to many others—it’s clear Leonard Nimoy did just that. Michelle and I join his family, friends, and countless fans who miss him so dearly today.” In an editorial in the early years of Omni magazine, editor Ben Bova complained that even Star Trek, a show that supposedly stood for the victory of logic and rationality over superstition and emotion, still let the emotion side win. Captain Kirk was the fusion of the logical Spock and the emotional Dr. McCoy; but the captain often won the day by an outburst of emotion or energy or violence, and not the logic counseled by Spock. But if the logical Spock was considered by that show’s writers and the network to be too unsympathetic, they were missing the achievement of the man who portrayed the Enterprise’s science officer. Nimoy made him believable, likeable, and honorable. In real life, Leonard Nimoy was also a man who was likeable and honorable. He was a philanthropist, an artist—not least in photography, in which he was a published and exhibited professional—and humanist who had learned to communicate via the stage, the screen, the camera, and the computer. Nimoy’s final tweet, just four days before his death, was “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP.” G weimar.ws Galaxis

Sad Puppies and Hugo Awards When conservatives try to steer the Hugo Awards toward what they see as overlooked works, civil war ensues.

BY JOHN ZIPPERER

he Hugo Awards are a big deal in the science fiction universe. They vie for prestige with the Nebula Awards; Hugos are awarded by fans, Nebulas are awarded by science fiction authors to their own. But Hugos are not a big deal outside of the science fiction community. In Mel Brooks’ 1980s remake of the World War II film To Be or Not to Be, Brooks plays a self-important half of a locally famous Polish stage duo who is surprised when people don’t recognize them.

Galaxis September 2015

“But we’re world famous in Poland,” he’d exclaim. Hugos are world famous in science fiction fandom, but elsewhere people wouldn’t know what they are. Until this year, when Salon, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal and other mainstream journals suddenly produced reports on the controversy roiling the Hugo community. What’s going on? The Hugo Awards are given out by the World Science Fiction Convention. For months, people have been arguing about an effort called Sad Puppies, led by writers Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia, who

While you may believe your slatemongering was a moral act, a justified act, a pushback against some kind of social justice tyranny—at least that’s

PUPPy photo: Geoff Stearns;Hugo award logo: “Hugo Award” and The Hugo Award Logo are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.

managed to get their supporters to nominate a slate of books that were of a more conservative bent than many past winners. They were accused of taking over the Hugos, debasing them, insulting the WorldCon team, and sundry other crimes. For only $40, anyone can buy a supporting membership, which gives them voting rights. The numbers and coordination needed to pull off a takeover aren’t that large. Writer Kameron Hurley, a 2014 Hugo laureate, explained in Atlantic.com that “[l]ow participation, paired with the sheer breadth of eligible work, means nominees can get onto the ballot with as few as 50 nominations. After failing to move the needle the first year, Sad Puppies organized around another slate of candidates and garnered an additional 70 or so votes last year to edge a few of their chosen authors onto the ballot. The overall voting membership wasn’t impressed with these choices, and awarded other work in every category. But this year, Sad Puppies ... managed to secure the extra votes needed to dominate the nominations.” Hugo- and Nebula-winning author David Gerrold is a guest of honor at the 2015 WorldCon, called Sasquan, which is due to take place in Seattle shortly after this issue of Galaxis goes to press. He will also cohost the Hugo ceremony with Tananarive Due. He devoted numerous Facebook posts to the Sad Puppies controversy, both mourning the hurt it has caused and promising to pull off a positive awards ceremony nonetheless. In April, he published an online open letter to Torgersen:

how it’s been characterized by some of those who favored the slate—while you may feel that your actions are not blameworthy, you have hurt the entire community. That’s your legacy in this genre, Brad. And Larry Correia too. You have hurt people. You have hurt a great many people much more than you realize—many more people than you can recognize in that insular bubble of agreement you are currently encapsulated within. ...You have hurt people. And there is nothing you can say that will mitigate it or justify it, excuse it or rationalize it. You have hurt people. ... The narrative about this has hardened. You and Larry are now perceived as the men who tried to kill the Hugos. That’s a stain you’ll never erase. I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry that you have painted yourself into a corner. I’m sorry that you have dragged a few others in there with you. But I doubt anyone will want to forgive you for this. This is the kind of hurt that doesn’t heal easily, if at all.” For his part, Torgersen wrote on his blog about his frustration that people were associating Sad Puppies with other more radical groups. “None of us wants to burn the Hugos down. We want the Hugos to live up to their reputation as the preeminent award in the combined field of science fiction and fantasy. We want Worldcon to be an actually diverse thing with authors and fans participating from across the spectrum, without having to worry about litmus tests or being in the correct groups. We don’t want people to have to be chameleons who hide who they are — or what they like or what they create — because it’s not what the ‘cool kids’ agree with.” Political division is not new in the SF world. The New Wave writers of the 1960s and 1970s sought to explore all kinds of human interest stories, exploring social problems, racism and other bigotries, and at the same time move away from what many of them saw as an overreliance on technology-lust in previous generations. As the science fiction world hurtles toward WorldCon, people are making accusations of sexism, political correctness, homophobia, and more. A lot could happen in Seattle. The conservative slate could win. A lot of awards could go unawarded. People might mouth off in acceptance speeches. Whatever happens, one thing will be certain: The Hugo Awards are now world famous outside of G Poland.

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Galaxis September 2015

Previous page, top: Frazetta’s image was featured in a two-page ad spread in TV Guide magazine; inset: ABC also released it as a promotional poster; lower left: Star Battles and Space Trek magazines, both published by the same company, featured portions of the iconic painting on their covers. This page top: The painting was used for the covers of two separate Galactica novels, including a reprint of the premiere episode and a novelization of “Gun on Ice Planet Zero”; Lower right, rock music magazine Circus, for whatever reason, featured the painting as a poster.

The many lives of a Frank Frazetta Battlestar Galactica painting

Saga of a Star Painting

BY JOHN ZIPPERER

n 1978, no one in the science fiction and fantasy worlds needed an introduction to Frank Frazetta. Frazetta, who died in 2010, was one of the most talented and influential painters and illustrators in the genre world. When the producers of ABC TV’s 1978 space opera extravaganza Battlestar Galactica pulled out all of the stops to promote their show, they enlisted Frazetta to provide some dramatic illustrations. The result was a handful of paintings that outdid the series itself in drama and fantastical imagination. One of the paintings featured a group of beautiful female Viper pilots rushing to their ships. Another features Commander Adama and others reacting to a wizardlike character in a medieval set piece. A third painting features the characters of Athena, her brother Captain Apollo, and his pal Starbuck seemingly marooned on a planet while Cylon Raiders menacingly descend. In the distance, viewers can spot a possibly crash-landed Viper fighter, as well as the Galactica soaring above. It is this third painting that seems to have a life far beyond the others, and far beyond the typical advertising promo image. The female Viper pilots painting has appeared on the hardcover edition of a Galactica novel by series star Richard Hatch, but it can’t match the visual pro-

miscuity of the third painting. Frazetta’s imagining of Battlestar Galactica is, well, vintage Frazetta. It involves unclad woman (Athena is nearly naked while the equally sexy Apollo and Starbuck are fully clothed), heroic men, and high drama. The setting is either an ice planet or a desert planet; it’s not clear which, but if it’s the former, Athena is going to be mighty cold. Meanwhile, the Cylon Raider looks even more sinister and threatening than it appears in the TV series. The only weak point of the painting is the main ship, the Galactica, which looks like it’s made of wicker. The painting appeared most widely in a two-page black-and-white ad in TV Guide, which at that time was one of the largest magazines in the United States; it was also released as a poster by ABC; a poster in rock music weekly Circus; a wrap-around cover for the Berkley paperback novelization of “Gun on Ice Planet Zero” (renamed The Cylon Death Machine); a reissue of the novelization of the premiere episode, “Saga of

a Star World,” also featured the painting on its front cover; and low-rent SF media magazines Star Battles and Space Trek each used details from the painting on their covers. It’s not hard to see why the painting is so successful and has been so oft-published. It is dramatic, sexy, and it suggests high adventure. Today, fans and collectors hunt down this painting in its many manifestations on eBay and Amazon. On these pages, you can see the main uses of this Frazetta classic. G

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BY JOHN ZIPPERER This page: Isaac Asimovâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first Foundation stories appeared more than 60 years ago; it is being developed into a series for HBO by Jonathan Nolan. Facing page: Asimov was the king of the science fiction book, having written or edited more than 500 books.

Galaxis September 2015

elevision appears set to enter a new era of high-level science fiction creativity, with exciting projects coming from a variety of studios and channels. This era will also boast the entry or the return to the TV format of a number of celebrated genre greats, including the late Isaac Asimov, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, Jonathan Nolan, Chris Carter, Lev Grossman, and others. To break the news or give you an update, here is our roundup of what genre shows are in production, headed to the production phase, or being serious talked about as potential television productions.

G: Rowe-

Big names head to the small screen with some intriguing science fiction.

Foundation HBO, Date TBA HBO will bring together one of the legends of science fiction and one of the wunderkinds of the new wave for this series. Based on Isaac Asimovâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seminal books, the series is being developed with Warner Bros. by Interstellar writer Jonathan Nolan. The fall of the Roman Empire. The wandering of the Jews. People have attached various analogies to the Foundation books over the years, but their achievement is a true science fictional triumph: Through these stories, author Isaac Asimov made math and science the fascinating and compelling forces behind the story arc, which takes us

PAINTING: Rowena Morrill; Nolan photo: flickr/Genevieve719

Return of the Giants

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PHOTO COURTESY: J. Michael Straczynski

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from the slow-motion collapse of a galaxyspanning empire directed by a secret organization (the Foundation) that is trying to establish a civilized successor in the resulting power vacuum. Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy was actually made up of a collection of stories he had published in science fiction magazines decades ago. The first book, Foundation, appeared in 1951 and was a collection of five stories, four of which had appeared in Astounding magazine (later Analog). That first book described the political and military decay that made the empire’s continued existence impossible. Based on Trantor, the capital planet of a 12,000-year-old galactic empire (known less-than-creatively as the Galactic Empire), is a mathematician named Hari Seldon who has developed psychohistory, a science that mixes math and psychology in an effort to be able to predict future history. Seldon is persecuted for his work exploring an end to the seemingly eternal empire. He establishes the Foundation, a group that seeks to guide the galaxy toward a new union in the post-imperial era. The subsequent two books in the original trilogy involved explorations of how the Foundation worked, problems with its calculations, and the slow creation of successor states to the empire. The idea of a galaxy-spanning empire and its end would echo loudly in the Star Wars movies, touching on the most romantic aspects of space opera’s love of grand concepts and actions. But Asimov’s original books were anything but laser battles in space. Noting that author Asimov had a somewhat negative reaction upon re-reading his original books decades later, writer Ben Lindbergh says it’s considered somewhat unfilmable.“Foundation hasn’t made it into other media. Multiple studios and filmmakers have tried to turn it into a movie (most recently Roland Emmerich), but none has come close to succeeding. It’s a small wonder, since Asimov’s initial reaction after revisiting his earlier work only scratches the surface of what makes the series difficult to translate to the screen. Foundation isn’t a traditional story that incorporates some easy-to-sell ‘sci-fi elements.’ From the first page, it’s full-stop science fiction, starting with an italicized entry from the Encyclopedia Galactica that establishes the setting (more than 12,000 years into the ‘Galactic Era’) and doesn’t skimp on the strangesounding names that reliably repel some

portion of the non-sci-fi-fan population.... Asimov, who was barely into his twenties when he wrote his first Foundation story, was an accomplished futurist and scientist, and his prose was, well, scientific.” Westworld HBO, undated 2016 Another Jonathan Nolan-HBO collaboration, Westworld is a remake of a 43-yearold low-budget film that shows us what the world would be like if Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Data went very, very bad. In the original 1973 Westworld film, a theme park recreating a past environment goes awry when the amusements turn on the visitors—think Jurassic Park but replace the dinosaurs with androids. It was written and directed by Michael “Hey, I also wrote Jurassic Park” Crichton. As The New Yorker noted in 2013, Crichton’s challenges included “the modest budget of $1.25 million imposed by MGM. Westworld had been turned down by every other studio, perhaps because Crichton’s directing credentials were limited to making an ABC movie of the week and hanging around the set of The Andromeda Strain, the 1971 thriller based on a novel he had written as a Harvard medical student.” Replacing the original film’s Yul Brynner, James Brolin, and Richard Benjamin in the series will be some big-name actors such as Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, James Mars-

den, Jeffrey Wright, and Thandie Newton. Actor Wright, who portrays the head programmer of the theme park, told talk show host Queen Latifah: “If you go to an amusement park and live out all your fantasies in the American West of the 1880s, what would you do? Would you hang out in the saloon? Would you hang out on the prairie? Would you wear the white hat? The black hat? Would you be the sherrif or a gunslinger? You have the opportunity to do all this in Westworld, and everyone you interact with is really a lifelike robot, so there really are no consequences to what you do.” Galaxy Quest Paramount, in development The 1999 comedy Galaxy Quest is in development as a television series. According to Variety, the project is being spearheaded by Robert Gordon, co-writer of the film, along with its director Dean Parisot and executive producers Mark Johnson and Melissa Bernstein. They are hoping to put the deal together at Paramount TV. The film featured a cast of a 1970s science fiction show who are called together to help out some aliens who think the TV series was a documentary. It starred Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, and Sam Rockwell. There have been rumors of a sequel, and a script reportedly exists, but the producers appear more interested in trying the television

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route, first. Writer Gordon’s credits also include Men in Black II, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Pasisot’s credits include Red 2, Home Fries, and Fun with Dick and Jane. Sense8 Granville Television, Streaming on Netflix J. Michael Straczynski, Andy Wachowski, and Lana Wachowski have teamed up to produce a new science fiction series? Shouldn’t they leave some talent for other shows to use? Those three powerhouses of the genre have created Sense8, an ensemble drama in which each episode focuses on one of the eight core characters. The so-called Sense8 people find themselves linked mentally, while they deal with two mysterious figures, Jonas and Mr. Whispers. The eight “sensates” are portrayed by Aml Ameen, Jamie Clayton, Tena Desae, Bae Doona, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, and Brian J. Smith. The series launched its first season of 12 episodes in early June to mixed reviews, even baffling responses. The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber wrote that “It’s a cool idea that pays off with some spine-tingling moments,” but added that “Most of the screen time fleshes out the eight fairly banal principals’ lives. This affords ... some refreshing diversity in regards to race and, more notably,

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sex and sexuality. Two gay couples figure in prominently, and the protagonist with perhaps the most screen time is a transgender woman. Still, many of these stories feel familiar.... As has happened so many times in the Wachowskis’ career, you’re left wishing they’d been paid for their initial idea and that the execution had been left entirely to someone else.” After viewing the first few episodes, i09. com’s Jane-Claire Quigley—in a generally upbeat review—writes “it’s pretty unsatisfying, if not frustrating, to be a quarter of the way into the show, and still not know what the through-line is.... If this were a book, I certainly would have stopped reading by now.” Challenging. Frustrating. Intriguing. That seems to be normal for the Wachowskis and for Straczynski. But that’s not the only thing Straczynski’s been doing with his time. Read on. Red Mars Spike TV, Date TBA Kim Stanley Robinson’s landmark series of Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning books—Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996)—tells the story of the colonization of the red planet. The books have long been hyped from one fan reader to the next (yours truly got a particularly impassioned endorsement from a friend who thought it was one of the greatest science fiction series she’d read). Now, it’s headed to the small screen, thanks to Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski. Spike TV promises that the series will explore “the core question at the heart of the novels—what is it to be human when we are no longer of earth? Are we not then Martians?” “This series shines a light onto many views of what it means to be human – and asks if we can sustain our humanity under incredible duress,” Sharon Levy, Spike’s executive vice president for original series, said on thewrap.com. “We are thrilled to partner with such an accomplished producer as Vince Gerardis to tell this incredible and thought-provoking story.” “There are many homes for large canvas television these days,” said Gerardis, returning the compliment. “It inspires me that Sharon has offered her network as home for this and provided a canvas for me to bring the world created in these books to the screen,” said Gerardis, whose producing

credits include Game of Thrones. Levy will oversee the project; Robinson will consult. Straczynski is slated to write the adaptation of the books for Spike TV. If Spike TV—the cable channel for, well, guys—seems an unlikely host for this series, consider how many times you’ve run through the cable channels to find the Star Wars films airing in heavy rotation on Spike. We’ve seen it happen a lot. We suspect there are some strong SF fans there, in Spikeland. The Magicians Syfy, 2016 date TBA In upstate New York, there is a secretive (of course) school of magic called Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. Into this, well, magical but creepy school comes Quentin Coldwater, who finally finds that his most hoped-for dreams are real. Just creepier than he had hoped for. Thus Quentin starred in the first of three books by Time magazine book critic Lev Grossman, The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magician’s Land. The best-selling adult fantasy books gathered a huge following, including Galaxis’ editor. As with any highly popular literary property, the book seemed destined to hit the big or the small screen, and soon someone tried to make it come to fruition. Fox TV mulled a possible Magicians TV show (see Galaxis #3), but in the end it passed on the opportunity. Now, cable channel Syfy is developing a Magicians TV series; its 12-episode first season began shooting in July. “Ever since The Magicians was published I’ve wanted to see this story on screen,” said author Grossman. “The people, the school, the other worlds, the magic. I’m so thrilled that it’s finally happening, and I’m beyond thrilled that we found the right people to do it. Get ready; you’ve never seen anything like this.” SyFy’s series stares Jason Ralph as Quentin Coldwater, Esme Bianco as Eliza, Micahel Cassidy as James, and Hale Appleman as Eliot. Dave Howe, Syfy’s president, said, “We can’t wait to delve deeper into the lives of Quentin and his college friends, as they struggle with the enormity of their burgeoning powers—and unleash them upon the world.” “Lev is a visionary world-creator. It’s an awesome responsibility to honor the novels’ core audience and also to translate that vision to the screen,” said Jeff Wachtel, president and chief content officer of NBCUni-

anderson PHOTO: gage skidmore; grossman photo: courtesy lev grossman

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versal Cable Entertainment. “We are lucky to have Sera Gamble, Michael London, John McNamara and Janice Williams as the team bringing this series to life.” Utopia HBO, not yet scheduled David Fincher was remaking the shortlived UK series about a group of people who come across a graphic novel (known as The Utopia Experiments) and are chased by a secretive unit known as The Network. As they try to stay out of the clutches of The Network, they attempt to head off the disasters predicted in the pages of the comics. Fincher, whose credits include Alien 3, House of Cards, Fight Club, The Social Network, and the U.S. remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was set to direct the entire first season of Utopia. But in August, negotiations over budgets between him and HBO reportedly caused him to leave the project. HBO might seek another person to head up the series. The X-Files Fox, January 2016 Ground-breaking spooky series The XFiles returns after its nine-year run ended 13 years ago, with original stars and creative staff in a limited-series six-episode event on Fox TV. Production on the shows began in summer 2015. Additional information was scarce—secretive Hollywood as usual.

But the show’s producers were talking it up nonetheless. “I think of it as a 13-year commercial break,” said creator Chris Carter. “The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories.” “We had the privilege of working with Chris on all nine seasons of The X-Files— one of the most rewarding creative experiences of our careers—and we couldn’t be more excited to explore that incredible world with him again,” co-chairs and CEOs of Fox Television Group Dana Walden and Gary Newman said in a statement. “The X-Files was not only a seminal show for both the studio and the network, it was a worldwide phenomenon that shaped pop culture – yet remained a true gem for the legions of fans who embraced it from the beginning. Few shows on television have drawn such dedicated fans as The X-Files, and we’re ecstatic to give them the next thrilling chapter of Mulder and Scully they’ve been waiting for.” The X-Files originally premiered in September 1993 (see Viewscreen, page 4). The series quickly became a runaway hit and pop cultural phenomenon, spawning two big-screen productions. Space: 2099 Status: Dead? It appears to be bad news for fans awaiting a relaunch of Gerry Anderson’s 1970s series Space: 1999. Plans to resurrect Space: 1999

as Space: 2099 appear to be in low gear, with HDFilms and ITV reportedly last heard of shopping the project to various distribution partners. Announced several years ago as Space: 2099, the show was described as a continuation of the ideas of the original series. Space: 2099 producer Jace Hall told i09. com back in 2012: “The goal of our project is not to ‘replace’ or ‘alter’ Space: 1999 or its original memory – our goal is to wonderfully explore some of the great thought-provoking key axioms and notions that gathered and excited people around the original Space: 1999 in the first place. We are very interested in exploring the human condition through compelling individual characters against a backdrop of an epic situation. “Space: 2099’s goal is not to attempt to re-tell the specific story of Space: 1999,” he continued. “We are not trying to make some ‘dark and gritty’ version of Space: 1999. There is no reason to re-tell the Space: 1999 story since we already have Space: 1999! However, through our new story and presentation, Space: 2099 hopes to re-kindle and remind fans of those memories of a show from 35 years ago, but more importantly help bring back to all science fiction fans that sense of awe, fear, and incredible spectacle that is the unknown, unexplored universe. It is important that we endeavor to bring something new and exciting to the table.” Perhaps, as with the on-again/off-again Magicians series, we might yet see this one. Brave New World Syfy, Date TBA And, finally, you can throw into the mix of giant genre names coming (or returning) to television those of Steven Spielberg and Aldous Huxley. Spielberg’s Amblin Television is developing a series based on Huxley’s novel Brave New World. The book is set in a future world without poverty, disease, war, or Kardashians. People who don’t fit into the safe but regimented society are exiled, and one of those exiles eventually fights back. “Brave New World is one of the most influential genre classics of all time,” said Syfy President Dave Howe. “Its provocative vision of a future gone awry remains as powerful and as timeless as ever. Promising to be a monumental television event, Brave New World is precisely the groundbreaking programming that is becoming the hallG mark of Syfy.”

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X-FILES PHOTOS: gage skidmore

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The Best of Terry Pratchett

One of the world’s best-selling authors gave us Discworld, and then went away. Left: Terry Pratchett at a June 2012 launch event for his collaboration with Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth. Right: Pratchett surrounded by his works.

BY JOHN ZIPPERER

oing public relations for a nuclear power plant might not seem like good preparation for becoming a fantasy writer, but for British writer Terry Pratchett, it was just another step in an extraordinary career that only ended on March 12, 2015, with his untimely death. In 2007, Pratchett made a public announcement that he had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the illness that would claim his life eight years later. Alzheimer’s is a neruodegenerative disease that progressively attacks a body’s mental, emotional, and physical systems. Despite his diagnosis, Pratchett kept up a busy publishing schedule, publishing a book or two a year. His final novel set in his beloved fantasy land of Discworld was finished in 2014 and will be published posthumously this year. Titled The Shepherd’s Crown, it stars the young witch Tiffany Aching. Another book was published after his death, his fourth consecutive collaboration with Steven Baxter, called The

Long Utopia. Like many Britons who excelled in the arts, Pratchett was made a knight in 2009, later quipping, “You can’t ask a fantasy writer not to want a knighthood.” Even if he had not been honored by Queen Elizabeth, Pratchett would have gone down in fantasy history as a leading and favorite light. Though he wrote dozens of books, most of them humorous fantasy, he also let his private views and preferences show through, making a case for a humanistic approach to people and things. He was an atheist who wrote about a flat circular disc-shaped planet (that rode upon four elephants that rode in turn on the back of a giant space-faring turtle) that had countless gods. The gods on Discworld existed as long as someone believed in them, and there were good ones and bad ones, and many, many silly ones. The people were equally silly, however. From vampires that have AA-style organizations to help them abstain from drinking blood to a six-foot-tall adopted dwarf to an incompetent wizard who always seemed to find himself in the middle of every Earthshaking (or Discworld-shaking) event to

PHOTO: MYRMI

PHOTO: SILVERLUTRA

a ne’er-do-well seller of questionable meat products—Pratchett’s imagination seemed to never tire of coming up with characters who were odd, funny, and at the same time endearing. Even Death, the old scythemaster himself and the character who appeared in the most Discworld books, was a somewhat melancholy creature that loved cats and had family troubles. When the most powerful forces in the world are that odd and normal, it makes the little humans who also populated the books (and read them) a bit more understandable, too. His books and ideas were translated into films and television specials and stage plays, and those efforts are likely to go on in his wake, as his decades of work leave much source material for adaptation. His collaborator Steven Baxter gave a hint of what might have been if Pratchett had lived longer, as well as an insight into the late author’s lively imagination, in an interview with The Guardian in July. “Terry had buzzing round in his head a new plot strand for book five [in the Long Earth series], and we talked through that—we didn’t do much writing that time,” he told the British paper. “It was giant trees. He had this vision of trees, five kilometres tall, as tall as Everest, on one of the parallel G worlds. Just remember that.”

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BY JOHN ZIPPERER & MICHELLE MEOW ugo- and Nebula-winning author David Gerrold has been a major presence in the science fiction world since the late 1960s, when he wrote what would become one of the most-loved episodes of the original Star Trek, “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Since then, he has written many novels—including his popular Chtorr invasion series and his Star Wolf series, as well as his ground-breaking The Martian Child, which was soon made into a motion picture starring John Cusack. And still he keeps writing, with thousands of new and old fans following him on Facebook, where he opines regularly and forcefully on everything from the Hugo awards controversy (see page 16) to gay rights to the art of writing. If anything, his fiction output seems to have increased in the past decade, and he is a frequent presence in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and elsewhere. To get an update on David Gerrold’s professional life, we interviewed him in early 2015 for The Michelle Meow Show, a national radio program produced in San Francisco. Here is our conversation. JOHN ZIPPERER: I grew up reading David Gerrold—his fiction and his columns every month in Starlog. I’m one of his millions of fans. MICHELLE MEOW: David Gerrold wrote an episode of Star Trek. He’s also “family,” right? He’s an American science fiction screenwriter, he’s a novelist, he’s a voiceover actor, he’s an actor. He’s an all-around amazing guy. Millions of people are fans of his. David, welcome. DAVID GERROLD: Hi, thank you. MEOW: You wrote the original Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.” GERROLD: Yes, I did. It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. ZIPPERER: You were in college at the time, weren’t you? GERROLD: Yes, I was. ZIPPERER: You were very young. GERROLD: Probably still in diapers, I’m not sure. MEOW: I’ve heard you speak openly about that point of your life, and what I love about when people have asked you about that first episode and how you got there, you [said you] wrote several episodes and you pitched them, and you just never, ever gave up. You just kept sending in scripts, right? GERROLD: Yeah. Actually, the first conversation I had with [Star Trek producer} Gene L. Coon about it, I pitched it. He said 28

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“It sounds expensive.” Anybody else would have said, “Oh, okay, I won’t go there.” And my attitude was: No, it’s not expensive; there’s a way to do this, and I’m going to show him. As it happened, Dorothy Fontana read the outline that I submitted, and she said, “This has whimsy.” I remember the memo. She said, “This has some real whimsy,” and Gene L. Coon was at that place where he was starting to realize that Star Trek had a comedic aspect to it. I don’t think at the beginning that any of us expected the episode to get that funny, but once you’re working on something that makes you smile, you keep going until it makes you giggle and then you laugh and then you’re falling down rolling on the floor peeing in your pants, and the audience is, too. So it worked out very well, and I give a lot of credit to Gene L. Coon, but especially the director and the

there with an outfit — and you already know where I’m going — she had these little black fuzzy balls on it. The people I was watching it with were like, “Tribbles.” GERROLD: I was waiting for the joke. [Oscars host] Neil Patrick Harris could have said, “There’s an outfit that was no tribble at all.” That’s where I would have gone, because I thought his remark provoked an embarrassed reaction at first before people went for the laugh. ZIPPERER: How did you feel when Deep Space Nine kind of remade that episode? GERROLD: I thought they did a brilliant job. I read the script before they shot it. I was there when they shot it. I saw one of the first cuts, and I know how hard they worked to match the sets, the costumes, the props, the set decorations; they also matched the original makeup. They had to go back to the

The Martian Father cast, because they understood exactly how to play that script so it would fit into the whole series. I’m very proud of having been a part of that team. ZIPPERER: That episode is regularly, when people list their favorite Star Trek episodes, it’s either number one or it vies with your friend Harlan Ellison’s episode as number one and number two. GERROLD: Well, Harlan and I have an agreement. His is the very best episode of Star Trek, and mine is the most popular. ZIPPERER: It’s just become such a part of American culture. On Sunday night I was watching the Oscars, and a woman gets up

original [camera] lenses, the original film stock. There are things that you aren’t aware of that from a technical standpoint were astonishing. I was delighted, I was absolutely just overjoyed, because it’s a part of history when other shows reference what you’ve done. They’re saying this is iconic, this is a landmark moment of TV history that we’re recognizing. ZIPPERER: I think most people who know you also know you were part of the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation. You left in the first year, am I right? GERROLD: I was there from October of

‘86 to June of ’87. I did a lot of heavy lifting for Gene [Roddenberry, the show’s creator], who was in very frail shape. I wrote the writers/directors guide, what we call the bible. And I was instrumental in bringing aboard a number of writers and getting some scripts started. Then office politics started to get out of control. As other people have noted elsewhere, one of the reasons I left was because of the hypocrisy surrounding the cancellation of a script I wrote. I wanted to write Star Trek that would be unafraid to tackle issues; that was the promise that the studio had made for us. Then we had somebody— actually a couple somebodies—come in and say “You can’t do that, it would endanger the franchise.” I said, “That’s the point, to rattle cages. If we’re not here to rattle some cages, I don’t want to be here.” Anybody can slice another slice off the old baloney. I want to

David Gerrold Speaks do something that will—I grew up admiring Rod Serling and Paddy Chayevsky and Harlan Ellison and John Steinbeck, writers who weren’t afraid to say, “Here’s something in the world that isn’t working right. We need to know this.” MEOW: Can we touch on some of the specific issues here? I read somewhere that Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator, had told you that the new show would touch on gay characters and gay issues. Was that one of the reasons why you left? GERROLD: There was a convention that we both had been invited to before the announcement of Star Trek: The Next Gen-

eration. We arrived there in November, a month after the announcement. Everyone’s very excited. The convention has 5,000 [or] 10,000 people in attendance; they’re all packed into one room. And they all wanted to know what the new Star Trek was going to be. But no decisions had been made, we hadn’t even gotten there yet, we were still trying to find offices on the lot. We were still bringing ourselves up to speed, trying to decide, well, what has changed in 20 years? A fan asked, “Will there be gay people in the new crew, because isn’t it time that Star Trek acknowledged the existence of gay people?” And Gene, to his credit, said, “You’re right, it is time.” Then a couple weeks later in a staff meeting where we were talking about the possibility of the crew, Gene mentioned it again, so I knew he was serious, because if you say it in a staff meeting, you’re serious.

The man who gave us tribbles discusses his struggle to get gay characters into the 24th century, and why he left The Next Generation. One of the other producers made a smarmy remark and Gene balled him out on the spot. So I knew Gene was serious, he wasn’t just playing limousine liberal games. What happened was we even got a memo from Rick Berman listing all of the different story ideas, and one of them, the third idea, was AIDS. So I’m thinking, “Okay, that would be something worth tackling.” So when I got a script assignment, I had an idea for a disease on another ship that is so dreadful that you have to destroy the other ship, you can’t just attempt a rescue mission. This would be about the fear of AIDS, which was

so serious that blood donorship had fallen off. I mean, come on, you can’t get AIDS from donating blood. Blood donorship was [Robert A.] Heinlein’s big cause. I had donated a gallon by then; I had my gold pin. So I thought, how about an episode where the crew has to donate blood to save lives, and at the end, we can put a card in [that says] anybody can donate blood? The whole script was structured about blood donorship. Along the way, I said, you know, because this is about the fear of AIDS, even though we never mention it in specific, I had two gay characters, two gay crewmen, off doing a small part on the side. The only way you know they’re gay is because Riker turns to one and says, “So how long have you two been together?” The other says, “Since the academy.” So that’s it. If you’re 13, you’re not going to notice. If you’re 20, you’re going to go, “Oh, that’s cool.” That would have been it. Nineteen eighty-seven, that would have been. But that would have been groundbreaking; it would have said to the audience, We know you’re out there. I turned in the script, and we got a memo back from Rick Berman again, saying “We can’t do this, we’re going to be on at four in the afternoon. Mommies will be offended and they’ll write letters. We can’t risk endangering the franchise, we can’t offend anyone.” I wrote a memo saying that Gene made a promise. If we don’t do it here, where are we going to do it? If we don’t do it now, when are we going to do it? Everybody in the office, the writers, said “David’s right.” But it came back—Gene Roddenberry’s lawyer was also a notorious homophobe, and he was influencing Gene’s thinking way too much. It came back down, “You’ve got to take out the gay characters.” So I did a rewrite. It wasn’t that hard. I gave one character’s lines to Tasha Yar. And they still started saying, “No, you can’t do this,” “You can’t do that.” I realized that we weren’t going to be allowed to do Star Trek that had hair on its chest, so to speak. We weren’t going to be allowed to rattle the bars of the cage. MEOW: This is great. I never knew any of this. I was born in 1982. GERROLD: I have things in the fridge older than you. ZIPPERER: David, if you could finish, because there’s an arc of what did happen to that story. You got a chance to direct it. GERROLD: Yes, it’s funny. It’s kind of like a story that would not die. I have a novel series about a starship called the Star Wolf. I thought I’ve done all this work, and my script is pretty much an outline, the structure is there, so I turned it into a novel version called Blood and Fire. I get a call, this is weimar.ws Galaxis

about 2000, from James Cawley, who does Star Trek New Voyages. They do an extraordinary job; I can’t say enough good things about them. I kept saying no, I’m not interested. Dorothy Fontana called me and said, “David, I just did one, I just did a script for them. Would you please return their calls?” So I talked to James Cawley and said, “What is it you want?” “Well, I want a script from you.” I said, “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you take one they never shot? Take ‘Blood and Fire.’” He said, “That’s the one I want. I want ‘Blood and Fire.’ But we have to do it for Kirk and Spock and McCoy.

not taking out the gay characters.” He said, “Of course not; one of them has to be Kirk’s nephew.” I said, “Ooh, I like that.” So in creating that subplot with Kirk’s nephew, if he’s on the ship with his boyfriend or fiance, then that’s going to be a plot point. So I said, “How about he wants to marry his partner, and they’re going to ask Uncle Kirk to marry them? That gives us a through-line.” As the script developed, it became that the story’s not just about the gay relationship, it’s also about the nephew’s relationship with Kirk. Which was a very profound relationship by the time we were done, and Bobby Quinn Rice [who portrayed Kirk’s nephew, Peter Kirk] really nailed it. He really got in there and did a brilliant job. It ended up where I came in and directed, because at that point it was like, “All right, I’d better direct it; as good as anybody else might be, I know what this has to look like.” ZIPPERER: It’s really your baby. GERROLD: Yeah. So we did. I can’t say enough good things about the cast and crew. In 10 days, we shot 80 pages of script, so we were shooting eight pages a day. That’s big, that’s very big; nobody even attempts eight pages a day for 10 days straight. But these people did it. We were on-time, onschedule, just nailed it, went from shot to shot; it was as professional and enthusiastic a group—any director would give his left arm for the opportunity to work in an environment that enthusiastic and passionate and committed. Now, I’m not totally thrilled with the editing; I do want to re-edit it when I get the chance. We got 90 percent of what I wanted. So I’m thrilled. ZIPPERER: I urge everyone to go find it. It’s on YouTube; it’s Star Trek New Voyages. Search for that in Google and you’ll find it. It’s a two-parter, and it’s definitely worth catching. I wanted to cover a couple other things. I’m one of your zillions of Facebook followers, and occasionally you’ll note on there your word count goal for the day was xamount and you just blew past it. You are writing up a storm these days. Are you in a

“I wrote a memo saying that Gene made a promise. If we don’t do it here, where are we going to do it? If we don’t do it now, when are we going to do it?” I said, “Fine, go ahead.” He said, “Don’t you want to do it?” “No, go ahead, have your guys do it.” I was like, I couldn’t care less. So Carlos Pedraza translated it to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Cawley sent me the script. I read it and said “That’s fine, go shoot it.” Cawley said, “No, don’t you want to rewrite it? Don’t you want to fix it?” I said, “No, not really. But—there is one line that Carlos has written that we would never have said on the original series. I’ll tweak that line.” So I booted up the script. Next thing I know, after two weeks of everyday calls from James Cawley, I have rewritten the entire script, from page one to page last. I’m not taking anything away from Carlos, who did a wonderful job. But I realized there are possibilities that Carlos didn’t scratch because he only did the one hour, and I said “You know, this is going to be a two-hour script, a two-parter. There is just too much story here.” One of the things we added was one of the gay characters. I said to Carlos, “We’re 30

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groove in writing? GERROLD: I’m in a groove, yeah. The funny thing is, I ran out of vitamins, I haven’t replaced my vitamins, but I’m still in the groove. So it wasn’t the vitamins. MEOW: I was going to touch on this. I wanted to ask this very silly question: Is scifi dead? The reason I ask is because nowadays—John is throwing daggers at me — ZIPPERER: No, no. My only daggers are, and I think David might appreciate this: You might call it science fiction or SF. [Laughter.] MEOW: What is it? GERROLD: I’m resigned to the fact that the term sci-fi will be the [widely used term]. Sci-fi is the lessor form of what we call science fiction, it’s pop-culture form. But it’s not dead. It’s like Monty Python’s parrot; it’s resting. It’s nailed to the perch. The really great writers, the ones who still question “What are we doing here? Where are we going next? What’s our place in the universe” are still writing. It’s just we’re not writing hard science anymore as much as we used to. It doesn’t mean we’re not writing hard science. It’s just that the field has expanded to include what you might want to call trans-realism, where we start out in reality and then go to places that can’t be easily explained. ZIPPERER: We started off today talking about the Academy Awards. One of the things I thought of while watching it was that this was kind of the return of a number of political shout-outs. For LGBTQ teens, for women’s equal pay, African-American rights. Earlier you were talking about writers and TV shows that actually get to say something, that are not just pabulum. Were you pleased that we appear to be over this post-9/11 fear of politics and the film world? GERROLD: Very much. If you have got 30 seconds to speak to 1 billion people, why not make it count? That fellow Graham Moore, who made that speech that when he was 16 he considered suicide—he’s my hero. What courage he demonstrated. The message he said, “Stay weird,” that is one of the most inspiring things I have ever heard. I wish somebody had said that when I was 16. That’s just brilliant, to be able to get up there and speak out to the audience. And Patricia Arquette saying it’s time for women to get equal pay? Damn right it is. And all the others, the awareness of ALS, the awareness of Alzheimer’s, it’s time that we stopped pretending that everything is all right and started addressing the situations that need to be addressed. ZIPPERER: Right. And you know what? When I was 16, one of the people telling me to stay weird was David Gerrold. I’m serious. That’s why you’ve always been G a hero of mine.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Danish scientist

W BY JOHN ZIPPERER

e’re only 12 miles closer to actually seeing Earth’s core from our birth places up here on the outer crust of this blueand-green planet, but we have been reading books or watching films about what’s there for more than a century. Nearly 80 years ago, one woman figured out what we’ll see if we’re ever stupid enough to lead an expedition down there. “Stupid” because at the center of our planet is a solid core surrounded by molten material. It would be a very unpleasant vacation spot. But that hasn’t stopped the dreaming and suppositions. Perhaps the most famous is

also one of the oldest, Jules Verne’s 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth (in French: Voyage au centre de la Terre). Verne imagined a German professor Lidenbrock, who drags his nephew along on a trip to Iceland, where he has discovered an entry point to the Earth’s interior. As they descend, they discover giant insects and mammals, huge mushrooms, evidence of prehistoric giant human-like creatures, and other wonders. They never actually get to the center of the planet, but they have a grand adventure in the trying. In 1914, 22 years before the truth about the core would be published, Edgar Rice Burroughs published his fantasy novel At the Earth’s Core. In that book, the earth is a shell, with its hollow interior containing the world of Pellucidar—along with some more giant animals and prehistoric

Inge Lehmann discovered something that had been underneath our feet forever: The Earth’s core

humans, of course. Needless to say, it was not based upon a true story. In 1976, 40 years after the reality was known, Amicus Productions nevertheless released a film version of Burrough’s book starring Peter Cushing and Caroline Munro. Verne’s novel, for its part, has been filmed numerous times for television and film, including most recently the Brandon Fraser-starring 2008 theatrical film. Even today, people can only imagine what it’s like at the center of this rocky planet, our knowledge only informed by scientific conjecture. Caltech planetary science professor David J. Stevenson jokingly suggested getting to the center of Earth by way of a probe, which would be inserted into a mass of molten iron. The hard crust of the planet first would be broken by a nuclear explosion, and the heavy, hot iron weimar.ws Galaxis

would then make its way downward toward the planet’s center. The BBC helpfully provided a graphic showing what any real trip to the middle of the Earth would find. It ranges from the animal burrows a few meters below the surface to the Yellowstone Supervolcano magma chamber at 15,000 meters to the level at which diamonds form (150,000 meters) and onward finally to the center, at 6,371 kilometers, which it helpfully notes is hotter than 6,000 degrees Celcius but not to worry because “you were cooked long ago.” The pressure there would equal 3.6 million atmospheres, “the same as 47,700 elephants balanced on your head,” weighing 334,000 tons, BBC helpfully notes for everyone who is familiar with how it feels to have a real elephant on top of them. But even before the Vernes and the Burroughs put forth their fantastical stories, no one in science really thought that the planet 32 32

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was filled with dinosaurs or the lost city of Atlantis. Still, it was a big unknown regarding what was actually down there, and there was no way to go down and see for ourselves. No moonshot-type landing could take place, nor could an unmanned probe like the Mars Sojourner go there and take readings. If scientists and the public at large were to learn what was really at the center of our planet, the knowledge would have to come from indirect knowledge, measuring and interpreting secondary interactions, much the same way astronomers detect planets around distant stars not by seeing the planets themselves but by measuring their gravitational impacts upon the stars. In 1936, a Danish seismologist and geophysicist named Inge Lehmann set the record straight. She discovered that Earth’s core is solid; previously, scientists had thought that the core was totally molten, but she calculated that it must have a solid

inner core surrounded by molten material. Eventually, her theory was backed up by further studies and calculations and was accepted by other scientists. Today, scientists believe that Earth’s core is made up of primarily iron (about 80 percent of it) with nickel (about 20 percent). It is either a real solid or a plasma of some sort that has the properties of a solid—same difference, as they say. Like much of the best in modern science, the marvel of Lehmann’s conclusion was that it was done not by leading an expedition down into the Earth and battling giant birds and camping under giant mushrooms. It was done by brain power and observing what was available to be observed. Scientists have numerous definitions for different types of seismic waves that travel through Earth, reflecting disturbances in the planet. One of those types of waves,

Earth illustration: Mats Halldin; book cover: At the Earth’s Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1976 Nelson Doubleday printing

Left: Danish geologist Inge Lehmann. Center: a modern depiction of the Earth’s layers. Right: No, the Earth’s core doesn’t look like this, though that would be exciting—but writers had imagined the center of the earth a long time before Lehmann used science to explain it.

called primary waves or P-waves, are fasttraveling and can move through any kind of material. Lehmann made her conclusions public with a 1936 scientific paper called just “P1,” in which she explained a P-wave phenomenon (specifically “arrivals,” a mysterious effect that shows up in the shadows of P waves); she wrote that their behavior reflected a hard inner planetary core. In 1971, computer models backed up her claim. Even in an era in which women had far fewer opportunities to reach the heights of their professions, Lehmann reached the heights of her profession. But it was not without challenges. Born in 1888 in Copenhagen and later strongly influenced by her high school educator Hanna Adler, the aunt of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr, Lehmann would go on to study math and physical science at the University of Copenhagen and the University of

Cambridge. However, her studies would be interrupted and delayed for more than a decade by ill health and exhaustion. She finally finished her degree and became an assistant to an actuarial science professor at Copenhagen University in 1923. She soon became an expert in geodesy or geodetics, which is a science that uses mathematics to examine the measurement of the Earth and planetary phenomena, including changes to the planet’s structure. During a time of her life spent working in the United States examining seismic activity in the Earth’s crust and upper mantle, Lehmann also gave her name to a specific phase of seismic wave movement in which the velocities suddenly increase; this “Lehmann discontinuity” is found well above the core-depth on the planet and is located in the mantle layer. Her honors are many, including having asteroid 5632 Ingelehmann named after her

just a couple months after her death in 1993. In 1997, Donald Helmberger was awarded the first Inge Lehmann Medal, presented by the American Geophysical Union for people who did significant work relating to the Earth’s mantle and core. Her office walls would also have been filled with honors such as the 1960 Gordon Wood Award, the 1964 Emil Wiechert Medal, the 1965 Gold Medal of the Danish Royal Society of Science and Letters, the 1938 and 1967 Tagea Brandt Rejselegat, the 1971 William Bowie Medal, and the 1977 Medal of the Seismological Society of America. In addition, she got honorary doctorates from Columbia University in 1964 and the University of Copenhagen in 1968, and in 1969 Lehmann was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. She died in February 1993 at the age of 104, a grand old age at which she could reflect on having changed the way we see our very planet. G weimar.ws Galaxis weimar.ws Galaxis

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Game Set

Science Fiction Quiz

How good is your SFIQ—science fiction intelligence quotient? Test your skills with this quiz, which ranges from easy to expert questions. Answers are at the end of the quiz.

1] Who is Cordwainer Bird? a. The first pilot to die in the original Battlestar Galactica b. The late magazine editor who coined the term “sci fi” c. That’s the pseudonym for Harlan Ellison d. The founder of SpaceX 2] What television show featured characters called Queen of Diamonds, King of Hearts, Jack of Spades, Joker, Queen 6, and Ace of Hearts? a. Battlestar Galactica b. Space: Above and Beyond c. Red Dwarf d. Space: 1999 3] What horror movie was pitched to Hollywood studios as “Jaws in space”? a. Galaxy of Terror b. Event Horizon c. It! The Terror from Beyond Space d. Alien 4] Who is the author of Red Planet Blues, Flashforward, and The Terminal Experiment? a. Robert J. Sawyer b. Maureen F. McHugh c. Kim Stanley Robinson d. C.J. Cherryh 5] What 1990s television series starred Linda Hunt? a. Space Rangers b. Star Trek Voyager c. Sliders d. Lexx 6] Writer Kristine Kathryn 34

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Rusch won a Hugo for editing what magazine in the 1990s? a. Interzone b. Cinefantastique c. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction d. Asimov’s Science Fiction 7] What character did actor Nicholas Lea portray on The XFiles? a. The Cigarette-Smoking Man b. John Doggett c. Alex Krycek d. Melvin Frohike 8] What short story was adapted for film as Blade Runner? a. Neuromancer b. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? c. Death on a Silver Motorcycle d. Dhalgren 9] In William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s novel Logan’s Run, at what age are people supposed to be killed? a. 31 b. 30 c. 21 d. 55 10] Who wrote The Hunger Games? a. Susanna Clarke b. Suzanne Collins c. Jackie Collins d. Veronica Roth 11] Though primarily known for fantasy, the late Terry Pratchett also wrote some science fiction. Which one of the

PHOTO QUESTION) From what famous silent French film is this image taken? a. Landing on the Moon b. Metropolis c. A Trip to the Moon d. Space Cadet following is an SF book authored by Pratchett? a. Stradivarius b. The Dark Beyond the Stars c. Stardust d. The Dark Side of the Sun 12] In the series Star Blazers, the spaceship is known as the Argo. What was the name of the ship in the Japanese original? a. The Yamato b. The White Base c. The Honnêamise d. The God Phoenix 13] Which one of the following films was not written by Lawrence Kasdan? a. The Empire Strikes Back b. Raiders of the Lost Ark c. Return of the Jedi d. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 14] Actor Danny DeVito is also a producer. Which science fiction film did he produce? a. Starman b. Gattaca c. Inception

d. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow 15] Before he portrayed Flash Gordon on the big screen, what SF/fantasy role did Buster Crabbe essay? a. Buck Rogers b. Tarzan c. Commander Cody d. Houdini 16] Who starred in the film adaption of the video game series Wing Commander? a. Courtney Cox b. River Phoenix c. Bill Maher d. Freddie Prinze, Jr. 17] What is an ansible? a. Wireless hearing device b. Interplanetary transporter c. Faster-than-light communicator d. A death ray ANSWERS: 1) c. 2) b. 3) d. 4) a. 5) a. 6) c. 7) c. 8) b. 9) c. 10) b. 11) d. 12) a. 13) d. 14) b. 15) b (he played Buck after Flash). 16) d. 17) c. Photo) c.

x Episode Guide, Part II: Seasons 2 & 3, 1988-1990

The Best Yet After a successful launch, Gene Roddenberryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Next Generation focused on setting new marks for televised SF quality in its next two seasons. BY JOHN ZIPPERER

PHOTO: Cdt. Patrick Caughey

n the 1970s, science fiction on TV had some brief hits and a neverending supply of disappointments. Cheap production values, unimaginative writing, rushed acting, and usually poorly executed special effects did much to inure audiences to low expectations. Networks might offer higher budgets (such as for the original Battlestar Galactica), but they also came with all sorts of timeslot restrictions and network interference from executives who wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know the difference between a nebula cluster and a peanut cluster. Syndication offered a little bit

less interference, but budgets were lower and it came with a constant sales job needed to get the show on enough stations to pay the bills. In the late 1980s, Star Trek: The Next Generation changed much of that. The reborn Star Trek became a syndicated behemoth, at one point garnering the top ratings of any syndicated show in that era, and it managed to please both critics and fans. Despite the change-up of a major cast member in the second season (and then the switch back to the original cast member in the third season), the show continued to get stronger and stronger, developing characters in ways t he or ig inal Star Tr e k s e r ies ne ver did, producing stories that were

many steps above the westerns-inspace fodder so often served up in the 1970s, and cultivating an entire new generation of science fiction screenwriters and producers who would go on to transform the small screen SF of the 1990s and 2000s. It also cultivated an entirely new group of Star Trek fans, who appreciated the engaging stories told from the starship Enterprise each week. Cast and Crew

Studio: Paramount Creator and Executive Producer: Gene Roddenberry Producers (various titles and timeframes): Rick Berman, Peter Lauritson, David Livingston, Robert Justman, Robert Lewin, Burton Armus, Mike Gray, John Mason Theme Music by: Alexander Courage Composer: Jerry Goldsmith Associate Producer: D.C. Fontana Production Associate: Susan Sackett Script Supervisor: Cosmo Genovese Casting Executive: Helen Mossler Special Effects: Dick Brownfield Scenic Art Supervisor: Michael Okuda Senior Illustrator: Rick Sternbach Set Designer: Herman F. Zimmerman Consulting Senior Illustrator: Andrew Probert Patrick Stewart: Captain Jean-Luc

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Picard Jonathan Frakes: Commander William Riker Brent Spiner: Lt. Commander Data LeVar Burton: Lt. Commander Geordi la Forge Diana Muldaur (Season two): Dr. Kate Pulaski Gates McFadden (Season three): Dr. Beverley Crusher Marina Sirtis: Counselor Deanna Troi Michael Dorn: Lt. Worf Wil Wheaton: Wesley Crusher SEASON TWO The Child Writers: Jaron Summers, Jon Povill, Maurice Hurley Director: Rob Bowman Airdate: November 21, 1988 Troi gives birth after being, er, impregnated by an alien entity. She names the child Ian, and he grows extraordinarily quickly. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is transporting a special cargo of a plague that is causing trouble in the Rachelis system. When the plague sample begins to grow as a result of Eichner radiation, the crew learns that Ian is the cause of the radiation. He informs his mother that it is time for him to leave—his mission to learn about life among the humans complete. NOTES: A Hollywood writers’ strike left the Star Trek producers with a shortage of available scripts, so they turned to “The Child,” a script originally written for the unrealized Star Trek: Phase II series from the 1970s (which eventually morphed into Star Trek: The Motion Picture). The idea of a mysterious child growing at an absurdly accelerated rate is a recurring one in science fiction, but here it is married with the queasy idea of Troi being impregnated without her knowledge. Rape? Or are unwanted pregnancies so common in the 24th century that this doesn’t raise any eyebrows? Where Silence Has Lease Writer: Jack B. Sowards Director: Winrich Kolbe Airdate: November 28, 1988 The Enterprise encounters an area of pitch black. In space, yes. But this is blacker than normal; if the ship sends probes into the blackness, they just … disappear. The area of blackness soon expands and takes in the Enterprise. A Romulan warship appears and the Enterprise destroys it, easily. Then a Federation ship appears, and Riker and Worf beam over to it to investigate, but they find nothing. There are occasional openings to “real” space in the blackness, but when the Enterprise tries to approach any of the openings, they quickly close up. With Riker and Worf back aboard, some sort of space being—Nagilum, by name— makes itself present and promptly kills a crewman to learn about the human body. Picard pulls the Corbomite maneuver and threatens to destroy the ship if anyone else is injured. Nagilum tries subterfuge to get Picard to change his mind, but eventually relents and says humans and Nagilum’s race have nothing in common. 36

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Dr. Pulaski: Why do I get the feeling this was not the time to join this ship? NOTES: Even more than awkwardly executed sexual concepts, Star Trek loves to explore the interaction of the Enterprise crew with a godlike higher power that toys with it. The first and fifth Trek films were given over to that idea, as was the premiere and finale (and a handful of Q-laden episodes in between) of The Next Generation. Elementary, Dear Data Writer: Brian Alan Lane Director: Rob Bowman Airdate: December 5, 1988 Data and la Forge use the holodeck to create a Sherlock Holmes mystery for them to play in. But when Data quickly solves the mystery, Geordi is upset. Dr. Pulaski tells them that the problem is that Data, as an android, simply can’t do the independent reasoning necessary to figure out a mystery to which he doesn’t already know the answer. So the three of them head back into the holodeck for a new mystery, but this time Geordi has told the holodeck to create a new story with a villain who is able to defeat Data. The story unfolds, and Dr. Pulaski is kidnapped by Professor Moriarty; Data must solve the abduction. They find that Moriarty knows that he’s in a holodeck simulation, and he even creates a drawing of the Enterprise. Data and Geordi flee the holodeck and get Captain Picard. Geordi figures out how the problem came to be: He told the holodeck to create someone who could defeat Data, not Sherlock Holmes, and therefore the computer made Moriarty knowledgeable about everything that could trip up Data. It gets worse. Moriarty uses his knowledge of the ship to gain control of some of the ship’s computers, and Picard has to negotiate the return of Pulaski and convince Moriarty to be content to stay in the holodeck. NOTES: One of the stronger second-season episodes. Diana Muldaur’s Dr. Katherine Pulaski gets her first real opportunity to show her acting chops in this episode. It also highlights her skepticism of the idea that Data is more than an emotionless computer, instead seeing him as nothing more than the sum of his programming. The Outrageous Okona Writer: Burton Armus, Les Menchen, Lance Dickson, David Landsberg Director: Robert Becker Airdate: December 12, 1988 The Enterprise offers help to a cargo ship and its one-man crew, comprised of a handsome

fresh influencers New talent

onsider this to be a strange switch. In the third season of the original series of Star Trek in the 1960s, creator Gene Roddenberry was effectively sidelined and a new producer—Fred Freiberger—took over. The third season had a few high points, but it was arguably easily the weakest season of that iteration of Trek. “Spock’s Brain.” Nuff said. But with Star Trek: The Next Generation, it was almost as if the calculus were reversed. Gene Roddenberry’s health declined throughout the seasons of Next Generation, and yet the show got better. Roddenberry would eventually pass away while the show was still in production, but he had bequeathed this sequel series with

and apparently very randy man named Okona. Once aboard the Federation starship, he sets about trying to charm the women. But the Enterprise soon also encounters two other ships, both of them too weak to harm the starship but very interested in its newly acquired passenger. The leader of one says that Okona got his daughter pregnant; the other claims Okona stole the Jewel of Thesia. Each of the aliens wants Okona, who proclaims himself innocent of both accusations. Picard helps uncover the truth. NOTES: The actor who brings Okona to life is William O. Campbell, who is of course best known to many SF fans as Billy Campbell, the star of the underappreciated 1991 comic book adaptation film The Rocketeer. He almost did not get that film role because studio executives reportedly wanted a bigger name. The holodeck comedian who teaches Data about comedy is real-life standup comic Joe Piscopo. The Saturday Night Live alum reportedly wrote his own comedy bits in this episode. Also, the transporter operator was portrayed by an uncredited Teri Hatcher, who would go on to star in Lois & Clark. Loud As a Whisper Writer: Jacqueline Zambrano

a deeper bench of talent to take the show to new heights. We can already see those talented new faces starting in the third season. Perhaps the biggest name is Ronald D. Moore, who joined as a writer and became a script editor and producer for Next Generation, co-wrote the first two Next Generation feature films, was an executive producer for a couple seasons of Deep Space Nine, produced Roswell, developed and executive produced the critically lauded Battlestar Galactica reboot, created Caprica, developed the Outlander series, and worked on many other series and potential series. Not a bad legacy for a college dropout who wormed his way onto the staff of Next Generation.

PHOTO: KEITH MCDUFFEE

Right: Ronald D. Moore joined ST:TNG’s staff in the third season, writing some of its strongest entries.

Michael Piller also joined the ST:TNG staff as a writer, became a producer, co-created the spinoffs Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and developed The Dead Zone TV series. Melinda Snodgrass began contributing stories to Next Generation, and over the next couple decades would write many short stories and novels. Producer Rick Berman assumed increasing control and authority on the series as Roddenberry’s health got worse, and he eventually became an executive producer.

He would go on to lead Paramount’s Star Trek franchise for nearly two decades, until Star Trek: Enterprise was taken off the air in 2005. Ira Steven Behr joined as a producer in the third season, and he went on to work for Deep Space Nine as well as non-Trek productions Dark Angel, The Twilight Zone, The 4400, and Alphas. These voices and others came to prominence with the second and third season of ST:TNG, but they would go on to influence SF TV and film for decades.

Director: Larry Shaw Airdate: January 9, 1989 The Enterprise takes on a new passenger, Riva, a deaf-mute federation mediator who communicates via a three-person backup group that speaks his ideas. But when he beams down to the planet Solais V, his “chorus” trio is killed by someone hoping to stop the peace negotiations between two tribes. Back on the Enterprise, Data and Troi learn to communicate with Riva and how he uses his inability to hear or talk to get opposing sides in a negotiation to deal with each other. Despite the loss of his backup, Riva decides to return to the planet, where he will try once more to turn a problem into a tool NOTES: We met Spock’s parents on the original Star Trek series episode “Journey to Babel.” In the first season of Next Generation, the Enterprise ferries ambassadors to the unimaginatively named planet Parliament. And there would be other episodes, this one included, in which the Enterprise is a very expensive transit service for ambassadors.

Airdate: January 23, 1989 Dr. Ira Graves is one of only two people on a planet; the other is Kareen Brianon. In response to a request for medical help, the Enterprise sends a team headed by Dr. Pulaski to help Graves. When they arrive, they learn that Kareen requested the help unbeknownst to Graves. Graves realizes that Data is the creation of Noonien Soong, who was Graves’ protege. But he wants more than credit; he wants to transfer his consciousness into Data by using a computer he developed. The crew returns to the Enterprise, where they slowly realize what has happened. After a confrontation with Captain Picard, Graves leaves Data and transfers everything he knows into the ship’s computer, but not his consciousness. NOTES: One of the Enterprise medical team members is the Vulcan Dr. Selar, who is portrayed by Suzie Plakson. Her other Trek roles include Worf ’s mate in two Next Generation episodes, as well as several other characters in Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise.

The Schizoid Man Writer: Tracy Tormé, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler Director: Les Landau

Unnatural Selection Writers: John Mason, Mike Gray Director: Paul Lynch Airdate: January 30, 1989

The Enterprise finds that the entire crew of the USS Lantree has died of old age—despite their actual ages being no more advanced than the Enterprise crew’s. The starship then heads to the last known place visited by the Lantree, the Darwin Genetic Research Station. There they discover that the station’s staff is also beginning to age rapidly. Dr. Pulaski investigates genetically engineered children who were supposedly kept isolated from the researchers; she finds that the rapid aging is caused by the teenager she is examining. She begins to undergo the deterioration herself, and the Enterprise must rush to find a solution to the process before it takes her life. They find that the transporter can be used to filter out the aging-causing virus, but Pulaski doesn’t use transporters. Captain Taggert (Pulaski’s former captain): The moment she heard of the opening on the Enterprise, she put in a request for transfer. Knew your service record backward and forward. Apparently, she has been an admirer of yours for some time. Picard: Extraordinary. NOTES: If some of this sounds familiar, that might be because you remember “The Deadly Years,” the original Trek series episode that also involves super-fast aging of the Enterprise crew. Don’t forget that Star Trek is a creation of Californians, for whom growing old is the greatest terror. A Matter of Honor Writers: Burton Armus, Wanda M. Haight, Gregory W. Amos Director: Rob Bowman Airdate: February 6, 1989 It’s time for an officer exchange, so the Enterprise gets a Benzite named Ensign Mendon and Riker gets sent to a Klingon ship, the IKS Pagh. Worf gives Riker a transponder that he can use in case he needs to signal for help. The Enterprise discovers that it and the Pagh have somehow taken on an unwanted life form. Mendon figures out how to remove it from the ships, but before they can let the Klingons know, the Pagh’s captain discovers the lifeform eating away at his ship and, thinking it’s a Federation weapon, prepares to attack the Enterprise. Riker, playing the good Klingon officer, helps with the attack plans, but he makes use of the transponder to trick the Klingon captain into being beamed aboard the Enterprise. Riker then takes control of the Pagh—and gets Picard to surrender. The Federation crew then helps the Pagh get rid of the alien organism. Kargan: To be ordered to die is an expectation for any officer at any time. Klag: For a Klingon perhaps, but Riker’s people do not volunteer for death so easily. NOTES: If you want to see a Klingon punch Riker, then this is your episode. The Measure of a Man Writer: Melinda M. Snodgrass weimar.ws Galaxis

Doctor, Doctor From Crusher to Pulaski to Crusher

fter the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the producers decided they wanted something different than Dr. Beverly Crusher on board the Enterprise. Actor Gates McFadden was let go, and Diana Muldaur was cast as Dr. Katherine Pulaski. Muldaur had appeared in two gueststarring roles in the original series, “Is There in Truth no Beauty?” and “Return to Tomorrow.” Pulaski brought a bit of an outsider’s perspective to the happy mall-ship that was the Enterprise. She sees Data as a machine and treats him that way. She doesn’t treat Worf as the moral disappointment that many of the other crew-

members do; she seems to like and respect him, and she is knowledgeable about his culture and his needs. She comes across at times as a bit colder than McFadden’s Dr. Crusher, but that was because she was often offering alternative ideas and opinions than what was offered by the other characters, and when producers decided not to have her back for season three, the show lost what was becoming a breath of fresh air. It would have been a suffocating situation if the first season’s heavy-handed political correctness hadn’t been steadily dissipating. Next Generation producers reportedly let Muldaur go after one season because they didn’t see the necessary

Director: Robert Scheerer Airdate: February 13, 1989 When is an android a piece of property and when is it an independent being with its own “human” rights? Commander Bruce Maddox brings the theoretical question to reality when he wants to use Data’s positronic brain in the computer at a starbase, which would mean the end of everyone’s favorite android. If Data wants to avoid this fate, he has to resign from Starfleet, but Maddox argues that he is the property of Starfleet, and therefore not an individual with sentience and rights. A legal hearing is held to determine Data’s rights, with Riker serving as Maddox’s legal representative and Picard as Data’s lawyer. The captain turns the case into a question of slavery. NOTES: Poker, which will become a recurrent feature of stories right through to the final scene of the final episode of the series, appears here for the first time. In terms of character development, it’s an effective way of showing the crew off-duty and giving them some background. A very M*A*S*H touch. Writer Melinda Snodgrass served as a story editor for ST:TNG’s second and third seasons. The Dauphin Writers: Scott Rubenstein, Leonard Mlodinow 38

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Top right: Actress and choreographer Gates McFadden returned to Next Generation after being replaced in the second season; bottom right: Diana Muldaur filled in as second seasons’ Dr. Kate Pulaski

chemistry evolve between her and the other characters. It was perhaps a case of art imitating life, because Muldaur herself has noted that she did not enjoy herself on the show because the other cast members didn’t seem to want her there and it was not the imaginative, creative experience she had wanted. The loss of Pulaski did not hold back the series, but it does give rise to thoughts of how she might have played a role in the remaining five seasons. Muldaur is a great actor—she went on to earn two Emmy nominations for her role as Rosalind Shays on L.A. Law—and she added some weight to what was an often ill-defined position on

Director: Rob Bowman Airdate: February 20, 1989 Salia could be the key to peace on Daled IV, where her parents’ deaths left the planet vulnerable to renewed conflict between two groups of people. Salia’s protector, Anya, watches over her, going so far as to try to kill a sick crew member she thought could infect Salia. Meanwhile, young Wesley Crusher is getting sweet on Salia, showing her around and getting dating advice from others on the Enterprise. But when Anya reveals her true form in an attempt to scare away Wesley, Salia reverts to the same alien form, and Wesley begins to think he’s too young to be dating. NOTES: Co-writer Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist who is author, most recently of The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos. He has also worked in computer gaming and, in addition to Trek, wrote scripts for MacGuyver, Hunter, and Night Court. Contagion Writers: Steve Gerber, Beth Woods Director: Joseph L. Scanlan Airdate: March 20, 1989 After trying unsuccessfully to help the disabled U.S.S. Yamato, a Federation ship stuck

the Enterprise. Outsiders can only guess about any conflicted feelings McFadden might have had about returning to a series that had rejected her and then invited her back; Hollywood can be a brutal place for an actor’s feelings. One source reports that she resisted the initial invitation to return but was convinced by Patrick Stewart to resume her former role. If her character was sometimes hesitant and weakly played in the first season (and at times in the third), she nonetheless grew into a stronger and convincing central player in the remainder of the series, becoming more and more a good counterpoint to Stewart’s Captain Picard.

in the Neutral Zone, the Enterprise visits the planet that the Yamato had just visited. A probe launches from the planet; before it can be destroyed it manages to infect the Enterprise computer; Data is similarly infected while on an away team to investigate the probe’s launch site. A Romulan warbird shows up, similarly infected with the virus. Data is able to clear himself of the computer virus by basically doing a hard reboot, so La Forge suggests the same treatment for the Enterprise computer. It works, and with the solution shared with the Romulan ship, they flee the planet as the probe’s base is destroyed. NOTES: Now you know why Commander Adama wouldn’t network his ship’s computers in the SyFy Battlestar Galactica. Of course, he had other problems. Co-writer Steve Gerber is the award-winning creator of Thundarr the Barbarian and Howard the Duck. The Royale Writer: Tracy Tormé aka Keith Mills Director: Cliff Bole Airdate: March 27, 1989 A casino Royale, indeed. Looking for information to explain the wreckage of an Earth spaceship around an alien planet, Riker, Worf,

mcfadden photo: coolb; muldaur photo: alan light

and Data beam down to discover a hotel and casino called The Royale; but when they enter, they can’t get back out. The trio discovers what’s left of NASA astronaut Steven Richey, along with Hotel Royale, a book that some aliens used as a template to create what they thought was Richey’s ideal life. Instead, they unwittingly built him a gilded cage that he couldn’t escape, and now Riker, Worf, and Data find they, too, are stuck there. Data realizes they need to assume the roles of some characters from the book who leave the hotel; when they play through their roles as high-roller gamblers, they finally find their release. Data: Baby needs a new pair of shoes! NOTES: Writer Tracy Tormé used his pen name Keith Mills after being unsatisfied with rewrites to his script. Tormé would go on to create the quirky Fox SF series Sliders, which ran for five seasons in the late 1990s. Time Squared Writer: Kurt Michael Bensmiller Director: Joseph L. Scanlan Airdate: April 3, 1989 The Enterprise encounters a shuttlecraft that

is adrift and brings it aboard. Onboard is an unconscious Captain Picard—a double from six hours in the future. The “current” Picard orders the future Picard be awakened, but the crew is unable to learn anything from him. The future Picard is slightly out of phase sync with the “current” time. But a sensor log on the future Picard’s shuttlecraft shows the destruction of the Enterprise. Time’s a-tickin’. Then the Enterprise comes across a vortex, and the future Picard tries to flee into the shuttle, perhaps in a bid to draw away possibly damaging rays from the vortex. The “current” Picard ends the cycle by destroying his future self, and then orders his ship to go right into the vortex, which it does, resulting in the dissolution of his double and of the extra shuttlecraft. NOTES: Director Joseph Scanlan counts many film and television credits in his resume, including working on 1973’s The Starlost, a 16-episode SF series created by Harlan Ellison. The short-lived Canadian-made syndicated series involved a doomed space ark. It’s a show filled with painful 1970s haircuts and computerized music, but it also loaded up on the science fiction luminaries. Besides Ellison, the show also had Ben Bova as a science advisor and starred 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Keir Dullea, with guest stars including future Battlestar Galactica villain John Colicos, future Space: 1999 star Barry Morse, and Star Trek star and writer Walter Koenig; one of the producers was special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull. Dissatisfied with budget cuts and other problems, Ellison essentially disowned The Starlost, using his pseudonym Cordwainer Bird rather than have his real name appear in the credits. The Icarus Factor Writers: David Assael, Robert L. McCullough Director: Robert Iscove Airdate: April 24, 1989 One can be forgiven for thinking that almost as soon as Captain Picard ended up with Commander Riker as his “Number One”—his executive officer—he was trying to rid himself of the man. Out of respect, of course. The idea that Riker is ready and able to command his own ship but simply refuses to accept it is one that will recur throughout the Next Generation saga; it would not find resolution until the final Next Generation film, Star Trek Nemesis, which ends with Riker and Troi going off to Riker’s new command, the USS Titan. But first, we have this episode, in which Riker has the opportunity to command his own star-

ship, but his father’s involvement in the matter complicates things. Riker and his father do not get along, but the older man is trying to make amends with his son. Things are not helped by the discovery that the elder Riker is Doctor Pulaski’s old flame. Meanwhile, Worf is weirding out over not being able to perform an Age of Ascension anniversary ceremony, so his friends on the Enterprise use the holodeck to help him recreate the typically brutal Klingon ritual. In the end, Riker and his father come to terms with each other, finally dealing with their conflicted emotions over the death of Riker’s mother. And Riker decides he’s not ready to leave the Enterprise just yet. NOTES: Playing a holographic Klingon warrior in this episode is none other than John Tesh, who at that time was working for entertainment television as a host and was on set reporting about the show, which led to a quick acting gig. Pen Pals Writers: Melinda Snodgrass, Hannah Louise Shearer Director: Winrich Kolbe Airdate: May 1, 1989 Data receives a message from a young girl on a primitive planet that is being racked by earthquakes. The girl, Sarjenka, uses some oldfashioned radio technology to carry on a conversation with Data. When Data informs Picard about the girl and the peril to her planet, Picard orders him to end the pen pal-ship, due to the Prime Directive, the Federation rule that would allow genocide to take place rather than risk “infecting” a primitive planet with advanced Starfleet ideas, such as non-genocide. Eventually, the Enterprise team finds a way to stop the earthquakes, but in the course of the effort Data brings Sarjenka up to the Enterprise. Picard orders Dr. Pulaski to ensure that the girl’s memories are erased, so she doesn’t remember her visit to a better place. Meanwhile, Ensign Wesley Crusher is chosen to head up a science away team, but he finds that not all of his team members respect his authority. NOTES: Last issue, we vented our thoughts on the Prime Directive, a rule dreamed up by Trek’s creators but one that should trouble anyone stuck in a civilization that should be advancing faster than it is but is instead stuck under the thumbs of fundamentalists and anti-rationalists. Sound familiar? Actress Nikki Cox, who portrays Data’s pen pal Sarjenka, has acted in a number of roles over the years and is a dancer in addition to being an actor. But what interests us here is that from 1997 to 2005, she was the partner of comic Bob “Bobcat” Goldthwait. She’s currently married to comedian Jay Mohr, so she obviously likes the funny guys. Q Who Writer: Maurice Hurley Director: Rob Bowman Airdate: May 8, 1989 Out of small things come great villains. Q, the man who set the entire Next Generation weimar.ws Galaxis

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Borg, now aware of the Federation’s existence and knowledgeable about its capabilities, will make an appearance in Federation space. Picard: Why? Q: Why? Why, to give you a taste of your future—a preview of things to come. Con permiso, capitán? The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged ... it’s now time to see if you can dance. NOTES: This episode earned three Emmy nominations, for outstanding special visual effects, outstanding sound editing for a series, and outstanding sound mixing for a drama series. It won the second and third of those awards. Samaritan Snare Writer: Robert L. McCullough Director: Les Landau Airdate: May 15, 1989 Captain Picard is heartless. At least, he doesn’t have a “real” heart but instead an artificial heart. It’s due for replacement, so he heads to a starbase because he doesn’t want to look

weak in front of his crew by having Dr. Pulaski do the operation. Picard uses a trip by Wesley Crusher for Starfleet Academy tests as an excuse to visit the same starbase, where he will get his operation. But there are complications in the procedure, and the only person who can save Picard’s life is Dr. Pulaski. Meanwhile, La Forge is sent over to a Pakled ship that has asked for help. The aliens are big, dopey-looking and dopey-acting, and they appear unable to fix their ship or properly understand how it operates. But once the Federation officer is aboard, the Pakled kidnap La Forge in the hopes of having him help them with defense. The Enterprise gets its engineer back after running a ruse to convince the Pakleds that the Enterprise can easily defeat them. Picard, awakening from surgery: What in the hell are you doing here? Pulaski: Saving your life. This may be a commonplace procedure, but it appears that you are not a commonplace man. ... Don’t worry,

PHOTO: alistair mcmillan from glasgow, scotland

tale in motion in the premiere episode, returns and sets in motion a storyline that will return in some of the series’ greatest moments, including arguably the best Trek film. Q decides to teach the Enterprise a lesson by throwing the ship into another part of the galaxy, where its crew comes across the Borg. Guinan knows who the Borg are, and she warns Picard that they are incredibly powerful—they destroyed her people, and the Enterprise should get away from there right away to save its skin. The Borg manage to infiltrate the Enterprise and access its systems; they then demand that the Enterprise surrender. Resistance being futile and all. Captain Picard won’t do it, so the Borg attack and kill 18 Enterprise crew members. After a visit to the Borg ship, the Enterprise tries to flee, but the Borg easily catches up to it. Totally outgunned and out-powered, Picard is forced to call upon Q for help. Q helps, but warns that the Borg are something that the Federation is going to have to deal with sooner or later. Guinan gives Picard the bad news that the

you’re still the captain. Invincible. NOTES: Star Trek: The Next Generation became famous or infamous in Hollywood for becoming a producer-driven series, often employing multiple producers and a series of writers to craft a story. One might expect those frankenstories to be disjointed and a hodgepodge, but frankly Next Generation produced some truly great science fiction television drama both for its time and for all time. But this episode, with only one writer credited, seems a hodgepodge of two mismatched stories. The storyline about Picard is a great example of how Next Generation, so much more than the original Trek series, was able to focus on back story and character development, even in a quieter tale. It teaches us more about Picard, and it also feeds our growing appreciation of Patrick Stewart’s fine acting. But the story about the Pakleds is awkward, and viewers can be left wondering about a (hopefully unintended) impression that the aliens were somehow representing mentally retarded or impaired individuals. This storyline seems like it’s from a different script and a different outlook than the Picard storyline. Up the Long Ladder Writer: Melinda Snodgrass Director: Winrich Kolbe Airdate: May 22, 1989 Dr. Pulaski helps Worf cover up his embarrassment over having a childhood disease, and Worf starts to realize he has an ally on board. He rewards her with a Klingon tea ceremony. Meanwhile, the Enterprise comes across travelers who are a throwback to old-timey Europe—Ireland, to be exact. These travelers are primitive farmers, but their ship also includes cargo for an advanced colony on a different planet from the one to which the farmers are headed. The modern Bringloid colonists turn out to be seeking new genetic injections into their gene pool; they have been forced to use cloning because their numbers were too small, but after many generations of cloning, they are facing the cumulative effects of the process being too often repeated. Picard, perhaps eager to rid his ship of the barnyard animals and their colorful overseers, brokers an agreement by which the Irish farmers join with the modern colonists to help create a more survivable gene pool. The cost? They can’t be monogamous and the woman should have children from several different men. NOTES: What to make of this episode? A wildly stereotypical view of the Irish? A teenage boy’s fantasy of multiple sex partners? Another simplistic solution to a genetic problem? It’s all that and more. If the Irish immigrants aren’t enough to make you cringe, perhaps the one Irishman’s search for alcohol shocked you so much that you blanked out for the rest of the episode. Then there’s the ultimate solution, in which the immigrants are offered as mates and genetic banks for the advanced colonists, a happy solution as long as they want to mate like rabbits.

Manhunt Writer: Terry Devereaux Director: Rob Bowman Airdate: June 19, 1989 Once again, the Enterprise is pressed into service as a very well-appointed ferry for ambassadors, this time a group of dignitaries heading to the planet Pacifica for a conference. Everyone who’s anyone is aboard, including the Antedeans (traveling in an unconscious state) and Lwaxana Troi, who is Deanna Troi’s oversexed mother. The elder Troi is seeking a new husband, and she targets various men on the ship, starting with an uninterested Captain Picard and moving on through Riker and a character in a holonovel. When the Antedeans are awoken before the conference, Lwaxana Troi reveals them to be assassins. Their hidden explosives are discovered, and the Antedeans are arrested. NOTES: The Antedean ambassador is portrayed by Mick Fleetwood, one of the founding members of the Baby Boomer supergroup Fleetwood Mac. Lwaxana Troi is portrayed, as everyone knows, by Majel Barrett, the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. She also serves as the voice of the ship’s computer and was Nurse (eventually Doctor) Chapel on the original cast. The Emissary Writers: Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, Thomas H. Calder Director: Cliff Bole Airdate: June 26, 1989 Starfleet orders the Enterprise on a secret mission, which turns out to be a rendezvous with a Federation agent. Pressed for time, the agent arrives in a small space probe; the agent turns out to be a woman who is half human and half Klingon. Worf in particular is not pleased with her appearance aboard the Enterprise. Worf and K’Ehleyr are intimate, and he’s apparently honor bound to marry her now. In his mind, and the Southern Baptist tradition. She rejects him. She informs the crew that a Klingon ship, the T’Ong, carries a crew of warriors (well, every Klingon is a warrior, no?) in suspended animation; they are due to awaken soon. The problem? When they went into hibernation, the Federation and the Klingon Empire were at war. It’s up to the Klingon/human K’Ehleyr and the Enterprise to meet the T’Ong and educate them about the peace that exists between the two dominions. If they fail, the Enterprise must destroy the T’Ong. When the Klingon sleeper ship shows up, it fires upon the Enterprise, and Worf and K’Ehleyr pull a ruse to convince the Klingon warriors that the war is over. K’Ehleyr then goes to the T’Ong to continue educating them about the new realities since they went into hibernation 75 years previously. K’Ehleyr: Worf! So this is where you’ve been hiding. I told you we would meet again. Worf: I have nothing to say to you. K’Ehleyr: Haven’t changed a bit, eh? Well, I missed you, too.

NOTES: The discovery and recovery of sleeper ships and/or generation ships must be added to the list of recurring Trek themes. From “Space Seed” onward, the Buck Rogers-ian need to introduce out-of-time characters into a far-future storyline is a Star Trek favorite. In the world of Trek tie-in novels, a highlight is our favorite Star Trek novel, David Gerrold’s 1980 The Galactic Whirlpool, in which the Kirkera Enterprise encounters a generation ship with warring populations that don’t even realize they are on a spaceship. Peak Performance Writer: David Kemper Director: Robert Scheerer Airdate: July 10, 1989 The events of the earlier episode “Q Who” reverberate in this episode when Starfleet tries to ready its forces to face a possible Borg attack. The Enterprise is ordered to join a combat test, with Picard commanding the Enterprise and Riker helming the challenger, the Hathaway. During a simulated attack by the Hathaway, a real attacker shows up. Not the Borg, but a Ferengi ship; nonetheless, the Enterprise is unable to respond with its systems in simulation mode. The Ferengi think there must be something of value on the Hathaway, so they threaten the Enterprise. But the Federation crews take advantage of some quick thinking by Wesley Crusher (to allow the Hathaway to appear to be destroyed when it really just makes a short warp jump away) and Worf (to fool the sensors of the Ferengi into thinking there is another Starfleet ship nearby). NOTES: Armin Shimmerman, who would go on to portray the beloved Ferengi Quark in the sequel series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, plays the role of the Ferengi commander DaiMon Bractor. Another Ferengi is played by David Lander, who has a zillion TV and film credits, but he probably has the most fans from his work as the weird Squiggy on the 1970s sitcom Laverne & Shirley. Shades of Gray Writers: Maurice Hurley, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler Director: Rob Bowman Airdate: July 17, 1989 While on an away mission, Riker is injured by a thorn that gives him a deadly infection. With only hours to save him before the virus reaches Riker’s brain and kills him, Pulaski uses technology to stimulate his brain and resist the infection. Thus under the control of the machine, Riker has memories of his various past adventures on the Enterprise. In an attempt to drive away the infection, Pulaski has the machine draw up negative memories, which help chase down and destroy the virus. Riker: Deanna, facing death is the ultimate test of character. I don’t want to die, but if I have to, I’d like to do it with a little pride. NOTES: Star Trek: The Next Generation’s second season was so expensive, they managed to go over budget. That led to the need to do weimar.ws Galaxis

a cheap episode, one accomplished by stringing together some clips from previous episodes. This episode is a budget-forced low point for the series, and it’s a sad way to end a relatively good season. But much better things would be around the corner when Next Generation returned for its third season.

SEASON THREE Evolution Writers: Michael Piller, Michael Wagner Director: Winrich Kolbe Airdate: September 25, 1989 Wesley Crusher is a god. No, really. The young acting ensign has a project in which he uses nanites (super-teensy-weensy robots, if you will), but a couple of them escape and get into the Enterprise’s computer core. There, they evolve—hence the episode’s name—and are fruitful and multiply. Meanwhile, his mother, Dr. Beverly Crusher, has returned from a year at Starfleet Medical, and she’s concerned about whether her son is “normal.” She thinks he is overly involved in experiments and other work on the Enterprise, and not involved enough in causing trouble and dating. Complicating matters is that the starship is trying to launch a probe to study an explosion of stellar material in a nearby binary star system. Dr. Paul Stubbs tries to expose the nanites to gamma radiation in an attempt to wipe them out, but the nanites fight back, attacking the bridge of the Enterprise. Before Captain Picard can take drastic action, Commander Data makes contact with the nanites, who use him to speak to Picard and establish peace, forcing an apology out of Stubbs. The new sentient life that was created by Wesley Crusher is then sent to Kavis Alpha IV. Wesley’s children have been set free into the universe on their own. NOTES: This episode includes the return of Gates McFadden’s Dr. Beverly Crusher following her one-season replacement by Diana Muldaur’s Dr. Kate Pulaski. Guest star Ken Jenkins portrays Dr. Paul Stubbs. Jenkins has a long list of credits in genre series, including Babylon 5, The X-Files, the miniseries The Stand, and the film The Abyss. The Ensigns of Command Writer: Melinda M. Snodgrass Director: Cliff Bole Airdate: October 2, 1989 Data is a god. Not really, but the android commander is sent down to the surface of the planet Tau Cygni V to try to convince the 15,000 people there to evacuate immediately. Unable to convince the colonists that they need to leave, he takes it upon himself to prove that they are too puny and weak to defend themselves against him, much less against the Sheliak. The Sheliak are an alien race that has served notice that the colonists have four days to get off the planet so they can colonize it themselves, according to a longstanding if apparently poorly written treaty with the Federation. Data is the only one of the Enterprise crew that can go to the planet, because lethal hyper42

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onic radiation would make it too dangerous for the non-androids on board. Nonetheless, the human colonists on the planet were able to survive after initial troubles adjusting to the radiation. But the Enterprise’s transporter won’t work through the radiation, and it would take three weeks to evacuate the colonists with shuttles. Captain Picard finds a rule in the treaty that calls for using a third-party arbitrator, and he selects a species that won’t be done hibernating for another six months. Faced with waiting six months or allowing three weeks for evacuation, the Sheliak finally relent and allow the threeweek delay. Meanwhile, Data has no luck talking the colonists into abandoning the planet they’ve known as their only home. So he destroys their water supply and convinces them that if they can be so easily defeated by him, they couldn’t possibly win against the Sheliak. Mission accomplished. NOTES: This was not the first Next Generation appearance for Sheliak actor Mart McChesney, who had also appeared under heavy prosthetics in the much-maligned first-season episode “Skin of Evil,” which was the swan song for the Tasha Yar character. Until she returned. And returned. The Survivors Writer: Michael Wagner Director: Les Landau Airdate: October 9, 1989 The Enterprise receives a distress call from Delta Rana IV, a Federation colony. But upon arrival, the crew finds the colony to have been wiped off the face of the planet, save for one tiny spot of greenery with a house and two occupants. Inside are Kevin and Rishon Uxbridge. They want the Enterprise to leave them alone, but Picard refuses to leave until he finds out what happened and knows that they are safe— and why they alone seem to have survived the attack on the colony. Counselor Troi finds herself being driven insane by the effects of a music box discovered on the planet, and she is put into a medically induced coma. A strange ship appears in orbit and twice draws away the Enterprise; a third time it appears and destroys the Uxbridge’s home. The Enterprise moves away from the planet far enough to appear to have gone away, and the Uxbridge’s home and its occupants soon reappear on the planet’s surface. Picard has the Uxbridges brought aboard the Enterprise, where he learns that the strange ship was created by Kevin, a Douwd who has immense powers, to keep others away from the planet. He had been living with his human lover Rishon when aliens known as the Husnock arrived and attacked. Because he doesn’t believe in violence, he refused to join the fight, though Rishon did fight and she got killed along with the rest of the colonists. Kevin reacts by wiping out the entire species of Husnock, and consigns himself to living on this little patch of land with an artificially recreated Rishon. NOTES: This episode is an interesting exploration of violence, revenge, and pacifism. Surprisingly—and refreshingly—it isn’t a blackand-white portrayal of the issues involved,

simplified though it might be to fit into a one-hour teleplay. Kevin survives the attack by the Husnock because he is a pacifist and doesn’t fight them. That would seem to suggest pacifism is a viable alternative to even defensive violence. But he loses everything he loves, showing the possible cost of such an approach. Further, he had the power that could have saved the people around him, yet he did not use it. And finally, when he does strike out in vengeance, he commits a genocide that takes the lives of 50 billion Husnock. In the end, Kevin is left alone on his planet, there to contemplate the costs and moral issues raised by his experience, with the audience to do the same. Who Watches the Watchers Writers: Richard Manning, Hans Beimler Director: Robert Wiemer Airdate: October 16, 1989 Picard is a god, at least to the Mintakans, a primitive pre-Warp species on the planet Mintaka III who are being observed by a camouflaged Federation monitoring station. The Mintankans develop this odd belief after one of their own talks about “The Picard” as a godlike figure, all the result of a mind-wipe that didn’t work after he was treated aboard the Enterprise for injuries sustained in an accident at the monitoring station. In an attempt to learn what is going on in the colony, the Enterprise crew makes some visits to the planet. When there, a crewmember is taken captive and, in an attempt to get him back, the real Picard shows up, unfortunately during a thunderstorm, which increases his godlike visuals a bit. But there’s nothing like proving a man is not a god like shooting him with an arrow, as Picard and the Mintakans find out. NOTES: This episode is another example of the ridiculous Prime Directive creating and complicating conflicts. The humans were watching this pre-warp society, but they weren’t supposed to be seen. But they are. Doctor Crusher breaks the Prime Directive (which bans interfering or really interacting with a pre-warp civilization on the assumption that miserable people wallowing in primitive savagery and disease deserve to stay that way and it would be harmful to their dignity to actually help them or even let them know that there’s a better reality possible, or something like that) by healing the injured Mintankan. After trying to adhere to the Prime Directive, Picard has to intervene anyway. Much ado about an unnecessary to-do. As you might have guessed, we’re not big fans of the Prime Directive here at Galaxis. If there is some advanced alien species out there observing us but thinking it would be a breach of protocol to stop our wars and give us a big boost in science and rationality, please intervene. Break the Prime Directive. The Bonding Writer: Ronald D. Moore

the best of all seasons Next Generation’s third year was tops

very television series is going to have its share of weak episodes, and Star Trek: The Next Generation is no exception. The first season saw entries such as the embarrassing “Code of Honor” and “Angel One,” and the second season (which was over-budget and shortened by a writers’ strike) ended with “Shades of Gray,” a dreary compilation of clips from past shows united by a thin new story. But Next Generation’s third season simply wowed as it pushed stories and characters into new directions and complexity. Michael Simpson, writing for Sci Fi Now, noted “Sure, there would be classic episodes in years to come, but no other season produced qual-

ity as consistently as the third. Looking down the list of episodes split among the six discs in [the third-season DVD] set, there is barely a weak link in the chain that runs from the premiere, ‘Evolution’, to the seminal ‘The Best of Both Worlds, Part One’.” Our choices for the season’s strongest episodes are “The Enemy,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” and the first part of “The Best of Both Worlds.” From looking at other sources of “best episodes” lists, we can see that our choices are not unique. All three of these episodes rank among the best of the third season but also among the best of the entire seven-year run of the show. That is saying a lot, because as

Director: Winrich Kolbe Airdate: October 23, 1989 During a visit to a planet, Lt. Marla Aster is killed when a mine is tripped. The woman’s son, Jeremy, blames Lt. Worf for his mother’s death. The Enterprise crew finds more mines on the planet’s surface. Troi detects a consciousness on the planet, and Jeremy is visited by a vision of his dead mother, trying to convince him that she is still alive and trying to bring him back with her to the planet. The crew stops that from taking place. The fake mother reappears and again tries to take Jeremy, but she’s stopped. Under questioning, she reveals that she wants to help Jeremy deal with his mother’s death because her species has seen so many others die on that planet. In the end, Worf—like Jeremy, an orphan— helps the kid deal with the loss of his mother and honor her through the Klingon ritual of R’uustai. La Forge: Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow us to kingdom come while it’s figuring out how to blow us to kingdom come. NOTES: Mark your calendar. This episode is the first contribution from Ronald D. Moore, one of the creative giants of the science fiction

Below: Viewers can easily judge for themselves which season was the best, with the entire series out on Bluray and repeats airing frequently on BBC America.

we’ll see in future issues, there is a lot of great Next Generation to come, including great character studies, Picard’s torture by Cardassians, Dr. Crusher’s excellent “Remember Me” adventure in season four, and many others. A sound case can be made that season three was the very best season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and perhaps it was the best season of Star Trek in any televised form. In addition to those three stellar episodes mentioned above, there was also the bittersweet return of Spock’s father in “Sarek,” the deep-dive into Klingon political and familial workings in “Sins of the Father,” the tight drama of “The Defector,” the growth of Ge-

world. He would go on to become a producer for Next Generation, writing or co-writing dozens of Next Generation scripts, and he was involved with sequel series Deep Space Nine and Voyager. But his biggest credit to date is as the co-creator of the revamped Battlestar Galactica (see Galaxis #2 for a complete episode guide). This is a strong example of how The Next Generation could handle a smaller, quieter story, something that scares away most science fiction producers; that’s their loss, because “The Bonding” demonstrates how this type of an episode deepens the reality of the fictional series, increases the depth of the characters, and lets the audience live in this fictional environment more. Booby Trap Writers: Ron Roman, Michael Piller, Richard Danus, Michael Wagner Director: Gabrielle Beaumont Airdate: October 30, 1989 The Enterprise explores an area of space that had been the scene of a big battle between two species, the Menthars and the Promellians. A Promellian battleship sends out a distress call, and the Enterprise finds it adrift in space and its crew long dead. Before expiring, the Promellian

ordi La Forge’s character in several episodes, and even the comedic come-uppance of Q in “Déjà Q.” The show did not miss a beat when it started season four, and, as noted above, there would be many more strong episodes to come. But with the third season, the stories and characters clicked, and the audience and critics took note.

captain had left a message explaining that they were the victims of a trap by their enemy, the Menthars. Back on the Enterprise, the crew discover that their own ship has fallen prey to the Menthar trap. The ship begins to lose power, and Geordi La Forge calls up a holodeck program to help him find a way to make the engines work despite the effects of the Menthar weapons. A holographic version of Dr. Leah Brahms, the developer of the Enterprise’s warp engines, aids LaForge in his search, but they are unable to find a solution before Picard is forced to cut off all extraneous energy use. La Forge convinces the captain that the holodeck simulation is crucial to finding a solution, and indeed two solutions soon present themselves. First, the holo-Brahms suggests letting the computer take control, able to make decisions and moves faster than a living crewmember could. But La Forge comes up with the solution that Picard implements: manually steer the ship away from the Promellian ship and the Menthar trap using just a couple basic thrusters. NOTES: In the fourth season, watch for the real Dr. Brahms to make a visit to the Enterprise, and La Forge must fess up about his holodeck version of her. weimar.ws Galaxis

The Enemy Writers: David Kemper, Michael Piller Director: David Carson Airdate: November 6, 1989 The Enterprise discovers a Romulan craft that crash landed on the planet Galorndon Core. Upon investigation, they come across a badly injured survivor, who is brought back to the Enterprise for treatment. La Forge is separated from the rest of the away team and is captured by another Romulan survivor. They are both now stuck on the planet and must work together to devise a way to adapt La Forge’s VISOR to give them direction to a place where they can be beamed back to their ships. Above the planet, the Enterprise is in a standoff with a Romulan ship, and it turns out that Worf is the only crewmember on the Enterprise with the matching ribosomes that can save the injured Romulan’s life. But Worf refuses to make the donation, and the Romulan dies. When Picard informs the Romulan captain of the death, the two ships gear up for a battle until they learn that La Forge and his Romulan pal have made it to the beam-out site. The two are beamed directly to the Enterprise bridge, where the Romulan convinces his captain that the Enterprise isn’t at fault. Battle is averted, and the Enterprise escorts the Romulan ship back to the nearby Neutral Zone. NOTES: This is a stellar episode, because it lets Worf play out his character as his character would actually behave and not succumb to the wishes of a Hollywood wishy washy last-minute reprieve. The good-and-nice thing for Worf to do would be to help save the Romulan; the usual television writer thing to do would be to have Worf at the last minute be convinced that he should change his mind and have him do so. But Worf is not a liberal Episcopalian youth pastor. He is a Klingon, and if you introduce a warrior race onto the Enterprise, you have to be willing to follow that to its natural conclusions, beyond just having him appear gruff. Klingons have consequences, and it is a sign of the maturation of Next Generation and it’s a sign of the producers’ and writers’ trust in the maturity of their audience that they could have one of the show’s heroes behave in a way that pretty much everybody would say is wrong. The Price Writer: Hannah Louise Shearer Director: Robert Sheerer Airdate: November 13, 1989 In a thematic precurser to the spinoff series Deep Space Nine, the Federation is one of several parties vying to win rights to control the entrance to a wormhole. Troi immediately falls for Ral, the negotiator for one of the other groups. What she only learns later is that Ral is, like her, an empath and he has been using his abilities to manipulate the proceedings and undercut the Federation. Meanwhile, La Forge and Data are sent through the wormhole to test it out; a Ferengi ship makes the journey as well. Arriving at the other end of the wormhole, they find themselves in the Delta quadrant. Unfortunately, 44

Galaxis September 2015

My Season to shine How I fell in love with ST:TNG

his Star Trek episode guide represents this writer’s lone view of the series, its weaknesses and strengths. This entire magazine, for that matter, is a personal review of the science fiction and science universes. But let’s get even more personal for this short essay: How I Fell in Love with Star Trek: The Next Generation. It all has to do with my friend Jamie and the third season. When Next Generation premiered back on September 28, 1987, I was an editor at an independent student daily newspaper on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The paper was distributed in the morning, so in the afternoons and deep into the evenings, we were in the offices writing and editing and laying out the next day’s paper. For that premiere episode, many

the Delta end of the wormhole is unstable, and before it collapses the Federation shuttle is able to make the return trip, but the Ferengi ship stubbornly refuses to follow and its two crew members are stuck there. La Forge and Data arrive back at the site of the negotiations with the news that the wormhole isn’t worth it, but Ral has already won the rights for his employers, and his trickery has been unmasked by Troi. All in all, a bad day to be Ral. NOTES: In the Star Trek: Voyager episode “False Profits,” we once again meet up with the two Ferengi who are stranded in the Delta Quadrant. The Voyager discovers that they have set themselves up as gods on a primitive planet. They struggle to undo the Ferengi ploy, finally extricating them from the clutches of the now-indignant natives, only to have the Ferengi escape with their shuttlecraft into the wormhole, which has once again appeared but doesn’t stick around long enough to let the Voyager take it home. The Vengeance Factor Writer: Sam Rolfe Director: Timothy Bond Airdate: November 20, 1989 Internecine conflict is a messy thing. The

of us crammed into the paper’s grimy little lounge and watched the show on our television set mounted high up on the wall. We enjoyed it, but we were not blown away. I watched a few other episodes that first season, but none of them grabbed me, and my attitude changed from excitement about this new series to detached appreciation that the show was surviving. Frankly, I found the show to be a bit boring, way too politically correct, with a captain of Starfleet’s flagship who simply didn’t seem that strong or admirable. My feelings were somewhat echoed by Newsday’s Marvin Kitman, who wrote in 1988 that Next Generation “is somewhat boring and derivative. ... The new Star Trek tries to make the characters ‘realistic,’ and they turn out to be unbreakably plastic.”

Enterprise is on the hunt for the perpetrators of an attack on a Federation outpost. Their search leads them to Acamar III, where they are told that the guilty party was probably the Gatherers, an Acamarian offshoot that survives by piracy. Picard tries to establish a peaceful resolution to the Gatherer-Acamarian divide, but Yuta, the assistant to the Acamarian leader, complicates matters when she kills one of the Gatherer leaders. After studying Acamarian data, the Federation ship learns that Yuta is on a long-term mission to seek vengeance for the destruction of her clan. Riker is forced to destroy her in order to prevent her from ruining the negotiations, which are finally concluded successfully. NOTES: Star Trek: The Next Generation brought in a lot of new or young writers during its sevenyear run, but as with “The Vengeance Factor,” it also drew upon some serious veterans. Writer Sam Rolfe created Have Gun – Will Travel, a well-regarded western television series, and he played an important part in the development of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His very first screenplay, for the 1953 western The Naked Spur, earned him an Academy Award nomination. The Defector Writer: Ronald D. Moore

So I drifted away; college is a busy time, and I had much more interesting things to do. I soon forgot what day and time the syndicated show was even on, only catching it by chance when I was home and flipping channels. So it continued through the second season, when I was even more detached; I don’t remember if I saw a single second-season episode in its original run. But during that second season, the newspaper gained a new employee, a news reporter named Jamie who was smart, funny, a good person, and she liked science fiction. We became friends, and our circle of friends grew together over the next year or so. It was not unusual for Friday or Saturday evenings to see six or ten of us having dinner at someone’s apartment, maybe going out to a movie or watching a video, and talking for hours. A good group. Then one Friday night, we all came back to Jamie’s apartment after an evening at a movie, and before we could do anything else—such as play cards or open a bottle of wine—Jamie said we had to watch Star Trek, which aired at that time. It was her home, so her rules. So, reluctantly, we gathered

around her little television set, prepared to pepper the show with wisecracks and ironic remarks. The episode was “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” and I don’t believe we had any wisecracks and ironic remarks to throw at the TV. Instead, we were enthralled. This was great drama, great television, and great science fiction. They actually sent the old Enterprise back into the temporal rift! A number of us complimented the show, and Jamie told us we didn’t know what we’d been missing. She was right. That episode so impressed me that I began paying attention once more to The Next Generation. I now knew what time it aired in our market (late Friday evenings), and I began to watch the first-run and the repeat episodes. I saw “The Enemy” and marveled that this show that I thought I had pigeonholed as too precious in its politically correct attitudes would let an enemy die, but they did, and it was one of the heroes— Worf—who let it happen. If I recall correctly, I didn’t catch the first part of “The Best of Both Worlds” when it aired originally, but I didn’t have to be convinced to watch it when it was repeated, shortly before the air-

Director: Robert Scheerer Airdate: January 1, 1990 Data acts in a Shakespeare play to try to learn more about humanity. But his work is interrupted by the arrival of a Romulan scout vessel that is being chased by a Romulan warbird. The warbird returns to Romulan space, but the scout’s pilot boards the Enterprise and announces his intention to defect. Announcing that he is SubLieutenant Setal, the defector says he has information about a secret Romulan base on a planet in the Neutral Zone. Picard suspects that Setal is not what he claims. The Enterprise crew is concerned that Setal might be a trap set by the Romulans to lure them into the Neutral Zone. Data takes Setal into a holodeck recreation of Romulus after hearing the man’s sorrow at never again being able to see his home or family. Setal isn’t comforted, but it does help make up his mind to come clean. Picard was correct; Setal isn’t what he claimed. He now reveals that he is actually Admiral Jarok. Picard persuades him to give up the information needed to confirm his claim about a secret base. The Enterprise goes into the Neutral Zone and finds that there is no base there, but two Romulan warbirds promptly show up and attack the Enterprise. Luckily, Picard and Worf had prepared for such an even-

ing of the second part. The first part completed my conversion; I was a Next Generation fan. This show was a quality program like no other science fiction program on the air then or ever before, and it could go toe-to-toe with any drama on television, genre or not. I wasn’t the only one who was converted by Next Generation. Years later, a good friend of mine would be coming home from work in Washington, D.C., and he started viewing ST:TNG repeats while he recuperated from his stressful day. He was hooked, and he was in no way a science fiction fan. My mother—never an SF fan before—also got hooked through ST:TNG. And, of course, the series set new records for syndicated television, so it was bringing in new viewers across the country. I later enjoyed myself during a business trip to Berlin by watching an episode in German. Different language, same great series. Thanks to Jamie’s example and the many people who put together this show, especially but not exclusively season three, Star Trek: The Next Generation earned my lasting appreciation and enjoyment. —John Zipperer

tuality—Picard had worried about a trap from the beginning, remember—and three Klingon birds of prey appear, countering the warbirds. The Enterprise is allowed to leave, and it becomes clear that Jarok had been set up by the Romulans, who were able to lure the Enterprise into the forbidden area and to disgrace Jarok. The defector, utterly defeated, commits suicide. Picard to Jarok: You already betrayed your people, Admiral! You made your choices, sir! You’re a traitor! Now if the bitter taste of that is unpalatable to you, I am truly sorry; but I will not risk my crew because you think you can dance on the edge of the Neutral Zone. You crossed over, Admiral. You make yourself comfortable with that. NOTES: This is another excellent episode, one more example of the strong, well-told stories that make Next Generation’s third season stand out. It is a well-acted, well-executed story that manages to merge both hope and tragedy into one taut story. As with “The Enemy” and as we’ll see in “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “The Defector” does not take the easy way out of making everything nice, simple, and happily resolved at the end. Shakespeare is almost required reading for

any long-term Star Trek viewer. The Bard’s work was a favorite of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and it pops up in many episode titles, storylines, and quotes in the original series, Next Generation, and even in the movies (remember the Klingon Chang quoting “The Merchant of Venice”?).

The Hunted Writer: Robin Bernheim Director: Cliff Bole Airdate: January 8, 1990 The inhabitants of the planet Angosia III want to join the Federation, so the Enterprise is sent to check them out. Picard agrees to a request from Prime Minister Nayrok to help find a convict, Danar, who is soon located but turns out to have been a genetically enhanced soldier. The Angosians consider him a criminal unfit to live in their society any longer, but Danar says soldiers like him were just imprisoned after serving because the government didn’t undo the effects of their training and modifications. Danar manages to escape aboard an Angosian transport ship, which he uses to attack a colony and free some of his colleagues. They then attack the Angosian leaders, who call upon Picard for help, but Picard refuses. He leaves them to fix their own problems, holding out the possibility of help with deconditioning the soldiers and eventual reapplication to the Federation. NOTES: Prime Minister Nayrok is portrayed by veteran actor James Cromwell, who had roles in several other Trek episodes and of course played the colorful inventor of the warp drive in the film Star Trek First Contact. The High Ground Writer: Melinda Snodgrass Director: Gabrielle Beaumont Airdate: January 29, 1990 While the Enterprise crew is on Rutia IV dropping off medical supplies, a terrorist bombing takes place. Dr. Crusher is ordered to return to the ship, but she stays to tend the wounded. In the process, she is taken captive by Ansata separatist rebels. The Rutian government wants to use the Enterprise’s superior technology and firepower to search for and destroy the rebel base, but Picard refuses. Meanwhile, the Enterprise crew investigates the inverter transportation/shifting technology used by the rebels. Crusher finds out from her captors that the inverter is making the rebels sick from its overuse. The rebel leader, Kyril Finn, uses the inverter to attack the Enterprise, plant a bomb (swiftly removed by the Federation crew), and kidnap Captain Picard. Aboard the Enterprise, Data and Wesley Crusher are able to locate the rebels, weimar.ws Galaxis

and the Federation and the Rutian government invade the base and put them down. NOTES: Just a handful of episodes ago, Dr. Crusher broke the Prime Directive to heal an injured Mintankan in “Who Watches the Watchers.” Her captivity in this episode is the result of her disobeying an order and healing a wounded person. Apparently her year-long assignment at Starfleet Medical did not include a primer on following rules. Déjà Q Writer: Richard Danus Director: Les Landau Airdate: February 5, 1990 Q is no longer a god. The Enterprise crewmembers are distracted from their mission to prevent a moon from falling into a planet when Q appears on the starship’s bridge, stripped of his clothes and his powers. Picard is not pleased with Q’s story that he has lost his powers and been kicked out of the Q Continuum, exiled as a mortal human. Q is thrown into the brig. Eventually, Q is called upon to help the crew figure out how to save the planet’s population from being destroyed by the moon. But when the Calamarain, one of the species that had previously been the target of Q’s interference, show up trying to get at him, they succeed in getting past the Enterprise’s shields and inflicting harm on Data, who is trying to protect the Enterprise’s unwanted passenger. Q decides to flee the ship in a shuttle so that the Calamarain won’t harm the Enterprise’s crew any more. That causes the appearance of another member of the Q Continuum (also called Q, naturally), who says that the first Q’s actions show that he has demonstrated behavior that qualifies him for a restoration of his powers. Duly re-powered, Q gets ready to take vengeance on the Calamarain, but Q is stopped by Q (you get the idea) and instead lets the aliens go. As a reward for trying to save him, Q grants Data a gift: an outburst of laughter. NOTES: Is Q an evil omnipotent being or not? He’s an interesting recurring character, mixing sympathetic humor with malevolence, curiosity with indifference, ultimate power with the interest in puny powerless humans. A Matter of Perspective Writer: Ed Zuckerman Director: Cliff Bole Airdate: February 12, 1990 Commander Riker is accused of killing a Tanugan doctor, and the Tanugans want Riker to be extradited. Picard draws on the doctor’s relatives and coworkers, records and testimony, and even the holodeck to try to recreate what happened. The late Dr. Apgar had been working on an energy source for the Federation, but there’s much behind-the-scenes politicking going on, including Riker and Apgar’s wife getting too close for comfort (or propriety). But a discovery of energy beams continuing to strike the Enterprise leads to the conclusion that Apgar had tried to kill Riker and ended up an unintended casualty of his devious deed. 46

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NOTES: Filmmakers love the idea of retelling a story from different viewpoints. In “A Matter of Perspective,” the incidents leading to Apgar’s death are told from the vantage points of various actors. Similarly, the 1950 Akira Kurosawa classic Rashomon is the touchstone for all such stories, with different characters giving their versions of an event. Yesterday’s Enterprise Writers: Ira Steven Behr, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, Ronald D. Moore, Trent Christopher, Ganino, Eric A. Stillwell Director: David Carson Airdate: February 19, 1990 In Ten Forward, while Guinan is having a TMI conversation with Worf about drinking, companionship, and the well-being of females who get, um, close to Worf, a temporal rift is spotted out in space. On the bridge, the crew is trying to figure out what they have found. Suddenly, a starship emerges from the temporal phenomenon: The Enterprise C. Captain Picard learns that bit of information from Tasha Yar. Gone are Worf and Troi, but Tasha Yar is back, and things are definitely different aboard the Enterprise D. The Enterprise C has clearly been in a battle and is suffering visible damage. It is under the command of Captain Rachel Garrett, and it had been responding to a call for help from a Klingon outpost when it entered the rift. Thanks to the space phenomenon, the Enterprise C has unwittingly time traveled to the future, and that action has changed the timeline. The reality

Garrett’s ship arrives in is grim: The Federation is locked in a war it is losing against the Klingons, and the Enterprise D is not the familyfriendly 1980s shopping-mall of a starship we have known and loved; it is a warship. Only Guinan realizes something has happened, that things are not as they should be. She tells Picard to send the Enterprise C back into the rift, so they can hopefully restore the correct timeline, but he resists. In an attack by the Klingons, Captain Garrett is killed, and her first mate, Richard Castillo must take command. Tasha Yar has gotten close to Castillo. When she learns that her death in the real timeline is meaningless, she opts to join the Enterprise C on its suicide mission back into the rift. If the older ship rejoins the fight in the old timeline and is destroyed in the process, it would be seen as an honorable sacrifice by the Klingons. While several Klingon warships attack the Enterprises, Castillo’s ship limps back into the abyss. Tasha Yar: There’s something more when you look at me, isn’t there? I can see it in your eyes, Guinan. We’ve known each other too long. Guinan: We weren’t meant to know each other at all. At least, that’s what I sense when I look at you. Tasha, you’re not supposed to be here. NOTES: Usually when you see a plethora of writers attached to a script, you can confidently predict a muddle of embarrassing proportions. This time, instead, we get one of the greatest hours of Star Trek: The Next Generation—or any

CREW QUARTERS PHOTO: Derek Springer from Los Angeles, CA, USA;

science fiction television drama, for that matter. Season three of Next Generation is often called the year that the show came into its own, that it reached its potential. It’s also the year that the show did a lot of serious adult programming—and not “adult” in the sexual sense; adult in that it dealt with serious, often life-and-death matters without taking the easy outs in which no one is killed or no one makes a politically incorrect choice (see “The Enemy”). If you enjoyed this episode but think it’s just a normal good episode, consider all of the other ways it could have been done. Lesser writers could have turned it all into a dream, so it wouldn’t matter. It could have taken place in an alternate universe, so it wouldn’t really affect the world of our heroes. It could have been resolved in a way where everyone is safe in the end, including Tasha Yar in her escape into a different timeline. That’s not what these writers did, and by dealing with difficult choices and letting their characters make excruciatingly painful, life-or-death decisions with consequences, they made the story count. It does matter because—in the Star Trek universe—it is real and it took place. And the head of a Starfleet starship had to send to a certain death other Starfleet officers, all for a greater good. Those officers don’t want to die, but they do it because they understand the greater good. There is no easy way out. There is no last-minute quickie-save for the characters or the storyline. There is only the need to end a horrible war that has taken untold lives. Picard doesn’t know that his real timeline is (relatively) peaceful and in that timeline he is an explorer and scientist, not a warship captain. Therein lies the drama, and it is aided by great acting from everyone from Picard to the returning Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar. And, last but not least, credit must be given to the writers, director, and producers for giving a stellar take on one of the hoariest cliches in Star Trekdom: the time travel story. Instead of presenting characters who go back in time knowing that they are traveling back in time (such as in the original series’ “Assignment Earth,” the movies’ Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, or Next Generation’s own “Time’s Arrow” or even the film Star Trek: First Contact, for example), the characters here do not know that things have changed. They do not know that the hellish lives they are living, including fighting a disastrous war they are losing, is not the natural, actual way things should be going. It is only Guinan who realizes something is wrong and things shouldn’t be this way. She tells Tasha Yar that the younger woman shouldn’t be there. The audience already knows it, and because many of us miss her character, we share her sad but true realization that she does not in fact belong there and the only way to make things right is to sacrifice her life. The Offspring Writer: René Echevarria Director: Jonathan Frakes Airdate: March 12, 1990 Data is not a god, but he does become a lifecreating parent. The android creates a “child,” and like a Marin County parent, he lets the

child choose its own gender and appearance. Data names his offspring Lal, who has chosen to be a human young woman. At first, she appears to outdo even her creator in language and the display of emotion, and she learns human concepts quickly, albeit awkwardly. But her emotions turn out to be the result of problems with her positronic brain. Hearing about the creation of the new android, Starfleet Admiral Haftel comes aboard to try to get Data to give up Lal so she can be taken to a science lab elsewhere. Picard resists the move, telling Haftel that Data is sentient and can make his own choices. Their tug-of-war is interrupted by Lal’s positronic problems, which have reached a critical point. Even with Haftel’s help, Data is unable to save his offspring. Data downloads her memories into his own positronic brain. NOTES: This is the first episode directed by actor Jonathan Frakes, who has gone on to turn in numerous assignments in television and film, including of course the top-rated film Star Trek: First Contact. If that doesn’t impress you, then know that Frakes worked as a costumed Captain America at conventions in the 1970s while in the employ of Marvel Comics. “The Offspring” is a great story to run after “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” The producers follow the high-drama and cataclysmic time-travel tale with this deceptively quiet “character” story that nonetheless explores issues of sentience, parenting, and—as ever, when dealing with androids—humanity. Sins of the Father Writers: Ronald D. Moore, W. Reed Moran, Drew Deighan Director: Les Landau Airdate: March 19, 1990 Viewers have to start remembering those weird Klingon names that get thrown around in Klingon-heavy episodes, because they are starting to carry a lot of backstory, as this episode demonstrates. Duras is a powerful Klingon who is the son of the rival of Mogh, Worf ’s late father. Duras is charging the dead Klingon with having been a traitor and causing a massacre at the Khitomer colony by betraying security codes to the Romulans. Worf goes to the Klingon homeworld to defend his father’s honor, and he learns that he has a brother, Kurn, who agrees to help him in the defense. The other Klingons, however, do not know of Kurn’s family ties to Worf and Mogh. K’mpec, the Klingon chancellor, tires to get Worf to drop the challenge to Duras’ prosecution, but Worf refuses. When Kurn is seriously injured in an attack, Picard steps in to serve as Worf ’s backup, and the Starfleet captain also orders his crew to examine the evidence against Mogh. They discover that the evidence was faked, but when Picard attempts to demonstrate in court that Mogh was innocent, K’mpec interrupts the proceedings. He privately tells Worf and Picard that the Klingon High Council knows that Mogh is innocent and, worse, that Duras’ father was the actual traitor, but because Duras holds a powerful position in the empire,

revealing that information would lead to civil war. The chancellor and Picard come to loggerheads over the Klingon plan to condemn Worf and his brother Kurn despite the truth, and Worf opts to let the chancellor cover up the truth in the interests of peace in the empire. In the end, the council condemns Worf. NOTES: To have two stories centering on parents and their children air in consecutive weeks probably was not planned, because “Sins of the Father” and “The Offspring” have very different stories. But both are still about the relationships, responsibilities, and even the mistakes of parents and their offspring. Allegiance Writers: Hans Beimler, Richard Manning Director: Winrich Kolbe Airdate: March 26, 1990 Unknown aliens kidnap Picard from the Enterprise and replace him with a double. The fake Picard proceeds to give unusual orders and act in unexpected ways, eventually leading the bridge crew to refuse to carry out an order they deem dangerous to the ship and its crew. Meanwhile, the real Picard is stuck in a prison cell with three other captives. The Starfleet captain organizes the others into an effective team to attempt a breakout from their jail. But after managing to get their cell door open, they find themselves facing a blank wall. Picard realizes this is a test of some sort, and one of the prisoners, Haro, admits the jig is up and shows herself to be a different alien who explains that his race had set up this experiment to test out the idea of leadership. The aliens return Picard to the Enterprise, where he teaches them a brief lesson about captivity. NOTES: One of the things that makes the Enterprise crew suspicious of the fake Picard is his flirtatious behavior around Dr. Crusher. This would be followed up on in future episodes, of course, including the series finale, which has one timeline in which Crusher and Picard had been married and divorced. Captain’s Holiday Writer: Ira Steven Behr Director: Chip Chalmers Airdate: April 2, 1990 Captain Picard bows to pressure from his crew to take a vacation, so he heads to a resort on the planet Risa, where he is soon kissed by a strange woman named Vash. Later, relaxing by the pool, the woman returns with Sovak, a Ferengi. Sovak is trying to recover an optical disc that he believes Vash has stolen. In fact, she does have the disc, and she secretly slips it into Picard’s pocket before leaving. In his hotel room, Picard meets two Vorgons, who say they’re from the 27th century and are in search of the Tox Uthat, a weapon they say was hidden in their “past” to keep it out of dangerous hands. After the aliens depart, Picard finds the disc. He learns from Vash that she was given the disc by an archaeologist who knew where the Tox Uthat is, and she’s trying to prevent Sovak from getting it. The two of them head off to the location they think the Tox Uthat weimar.ws Galaxis

UNFINISHED BUSINESS The Next Generation of sex and race

tar Trek carries a weighty legacy, and it’s not one that was foisted upon it by fans or critics. It was proclaimed by the show’s creators and producers: This show imagines a better future, when problems and prejudices of the past are overcome, when humans are no longer held back by old ideas of racial and sexual superiority. That’s a tremendous claim to make, but it dedicates one to high ideals and goals; it tells people that this is not just escapist fun, it is a vision of a better world, not significantly different from utopian novels of the past such as Zwei Planeten. There are many excellent science fiction productions that make no claim about prophesying or guidance for a preferred future; Alien and The Empire Strikes Back come to mind. Star Trek chose to announce its ambitions, and what it promised was to show us a future that had solved the many problems that have held us back today. Then there’s the reality. One of the best ways of building a better future is to model it, to show the unusual as usual, not even worthy of comment. Star Wars might not be a proposed guide to the future, but creator George Lucas did a great job at making the unusual seem normal, whether it was peppering conversations with unknown concepts—kessel runs or clone wars, anyone?—or getting us to believe there was a grand galactic republic that was represented in the early films in no way other than by a tired old man who supposedly represented a knight of said republic. (For the sake of speed, we’ll overlook Princess Leia’s “Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” racist outburst, and chalk it up to frustration at her torture; it’s hard being a galactic princess, after all.) Star Trek aimed higher. Gene Roddenberry’s creation has arguably done better in matters of race than sex. The first season Next Generation episode “Code of

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Honor” was an uncomfortable and rare example of the writers and producers erring in their attempt to handle racial issues. As we noted in last issue’s guide to the first season, “Code of Honor” was truly cringe-worthy in its portrayal of a race portrayed entirely by AfricanAmerican actors who lived in a macho, tribal society. The selection of comedian and actor Whoopi Goldberg to play the new character of Guinan, beginning in second season’s “The Child,” was not the result of a cattle call of performers to find the right fit. It was instead the result of Goldberg’s determination to be a part of the show; she lobbied Gene Roddenberry directly (and repeatedly; he reportedly did not think she was serious and suspected her request to join the cast was a joke). Part of her motivation for joining the series came from her identification with Lt. Uhura in the original series, which presented a rare African-American face on the command bridge in a science fiction series. Truth be told, Uhura and the other regular cast members of the original series were given very little to do to expand their characters or show their acting chops —unless they were Kirk, Spock, or McCoy. That is very different in ST:TNG, where all of the regular characters had numerous opportunities to shine. The role of Geordi La Forge was quickly expanded from that of a blind navigator to the chief engineer, and actor LeVar Burton got many stories in which he was a central character or even the central character. Also, if “Code of Honor”’s portrayal of the all-black society as warlike and tribal produced revulsion, even three decades ago, the producers pulled off something entirely different with their fleshing out of Klingon society and characters. The Klingon actors, though under heavy makeup, were very often African American, beginning with series co-star and fan

favorite Michael Dorn. The Klingon society is also warlike, but its presentation in Next Generation and subsequent sequel series is rich and respectful, including the treatment it receives from secondseason doctor Kate Pulaski, who built a bond with Worf through her appreciation of and respect for his rituals. Star Trek: The Next Generation never dealt well with issues of sexuality, particularly homosexuality or bisexuality. We never got to see writer David Gerrold’s “Blood and Fire” script (see Gerrold interview, page 28). And when it came to good ol’ fashioned man-and-woman sexuality, Star Trek frequently treated it with all of the subtlety and depth that would be expected of a teenage boy. When it comes to sex and Star Trek, it’s easy to remember the juvenile aspects of it. Captain James Kirk having sex with numerous color-coded alien females. The ST:TNG crew visiting a planet where people were lightly clothed and health-obsessed. The Ferengi males designed to be extremely well-endowed you-know-how. The Betazed practice of nude weddings. Deep Space Nine would finally give us a female first officer, something Roddenberry tried to do in the original series but had to jettison in the face of 1960s reaction. Voyager would finally give us a female captain. But even into the J.J. Abrams rebooted series of films, Star Trek has still not come to terms with the apparently controversial idea that some men are attracted to men and some women are attracted to women and that it’s simply not a big deal. Even the fifth-season Next Generation episode “The Outcast,” a well-intentioned story about androgynous aliens and gender identity, was undercut by having Riker fall for an alien who was obviously played by a female. More explicitly suggestive of the show’s leanings were evident in the fourth-season

episode “The Host,” in which a gender-switching Trill is rejected by Dr. Crusher after it moves from a male to female host. In 2002, Kate Mulgrew, who portrayed Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, told Metrosource in a widely quoted statement that she supported the inclusion of gay characters “because of its both political and potentially incendiary substance. I’m in a minority as well, as a woman. It took a lot of courage on their part to hire a woman. I think that right up until the end they were very dubious about it. It’s one thing to cast a subordinate black, Asian or woman, but to put them in leading roles means the solid endorsement of one of the largest studios in the world. And that goes for a gay character as well. It requires a terrific social conscience on their part and the pledge of some solidarity and unanimity, which I think is probably at the source of most of this problem to get every one of those executives on board regarding this decision.”

Mulgrew photo: David Shankbone; Burton photo: RWOAN

Top: La Var Burton forged a new prominence for African Americans in Trek; bottom: Kate Mulgrew gets the final word on gender.

is buried, and—despite hearing that Vash was working with Sovak and has double-crossed him—Picard begins to fall for her. The next day, the Vorgons and Sovak arrive, but the Tox Uthat is not found. Picard realizes Vash already has the weapon, and he stops her from leaving. She tells him the Vorgons tried to steal the weapon from its creator in the future, and Picard destroys the Tox Uthat. Vash leaves. For now. NOTES: Vash, an ethically impaired archaeological explorer portrayed by Jennifer Hetrick, would go on to appear in the episode “Qpid” and in Deep Space Nine’s “Q-Less.” Among her many television credits, she also portrayed the wife of FBI Assistant Director Skinner in an episode of The X-Files. Tin Man Writer: Ira Steven Behr Director: Chip Chalmers Airdate: April 2, 1990 Federation ambassador Tam Elbrun is ferried by the Enterprise to a faraway star to make contact with a giant sentient starship, which they call Tin Man but who reveals its own name to be Gomtuu. Elbrun is a mentally unstable telepath of enormous powers, so strong that he has trouble focusing with all of the Enterprise crew’s mental noise around him. Also trying to deal with Tin Man/Gomtuu is a Romulan warbird, which tries to attack the alien ship but is destroyed by it after Elbrun telepathically warns it. Elbrun learns from Gomtuu that the ship is thousands of years old and from a very distant place. It is in orbit around a star that is about to go supernova; it wants to die with the star because it is lonely and sad about the loss of its crew in an accident. Elbrun becomes Gomtuu’s new crew, giving it a purpose in life again. Just before the star supernovas, Gomtuu sends the Enterprise to safety and gets itself out of danger, too. NOTES: Writer David Bischoff penned the short story “Tin Woodman” in 1978. It was nominated for a Nebula award that year and later was turned into a novel. Bischoff ’s story was adapted into this episode of Next Generation. Bischoff ’s list of books includes many genre licensed novels, including for Space Precinct, SeaQuest DSV, Jonny Quest, Farscape, and others, as well as the best-selling Next Generation novel Grounded. Hollow Pursuits Writer: Sally Caves Director: Cliff Bole Airdate: April 30, 1990 Engineer Reginald Barclay is having trouble relating to his fellow crewmembers aboard the Enterprise, and Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge wants him off the ship. But Captain Picard tells La Forge to bear with it, making it a project to help Barclay. La Forge tries to do so, but when he finds Barclay using a holodeck program to interact with fictional versions of the Enterprise crew, the chief engineer sends Barclay to Counselor Troi. Barclay’s distracted work and absences are particularly noticeable when the Enterprise is

carrying some tissue samples that are to be used to fight an epidemic on Nahmi IV. When one of the containers of samples is leaking, they destroy that batch to prevent it from contaminating the other samples. When the starship begins to move at warp speed, it is Barclay who comes up with the key piece of data that helps the crew find the element that has contaminated the system and caused the ship to accelerate. The ship’s matter/ antimatter injectors are cleared, and it heads to a nearby starbase to make sure the contaminant is all gone. Barclay stands on the bridge, thanks the bridge crew for their time with him, but explains that he should leave them. He then deletes the holodeck program of the bridge crew. NOTES: In a season that accomplishes so much by adding subtlety and complexity to the stories’ science fictional concepts, “Hollow Pursuits” is an anomaly. Actor Dwight Schultz’s Barclay is over-the-top in its awkwardness, and La Forge is surprisingly unsympathetic to a member of his crew who is different and a loner—aren’t Starfleet officers supposed to be more openminded and sensitive than that? La Forge loosens up a bit, under orders, but if a well-oiled machine like Starfleet saw fit to put Barclay on board its flagship, surely its crews are typically more accepting of eccentricities and individuals than is the Enterprise crew, which avoids Barclay and calls him names behind his back. All of that is done, of course, to make the script’s points about Barclay’s outsiderness, but it’s an unsubtle and inelegant way to make a point. What saves the episode is Schultz’s incredibly sympathetic portrayal of the character, turning him from what could have been a comedic schlub into a lovable and honest character with whom many in the audience could identify. The Most Toys Writer: Shari Goodhartz Director: Tim Bond Airdate: May 5, 1990 The Enterprise arranges to transport hitridium, something that can neutralize the tryicyanate contamination on a colony. Trader Kivas Fajo can get it for them, but the hitridium is too unstable to be beamed aboard, so Data goes to Fajo’s ship to help with the transport. During the final transport, Data’s shuttle explodes. With most of the hitridium it needs and its crew believing Data to be dead, the Enterprise leaves to deliver the decontaminant. But when it completes its mission, the contamination clears up too quickly, leading the ship’s leaders to conclude that they had been tricked, the contamination faked, the whole thing a setup. They head back to find Fajo. However, Data isn’t dead; he has been kidnapped and his death faked so he could be added to Fajo’s private collection. Data refuses to play the role of obedient museum piece, however, until Fajo threatens to kill one of the trader’s own crewmembers, Varria. When Data and Varria finally get their opportunity to escape, Fajo kills Varria, and Data is beamed aboard the Enterprise just as he threatens to kill Fajo, who

ends up in the starship’s brig. NOTES: Actor Saul Rubinek took over the role of Kivas Fajo following the attempted suicide of the character’s original actor, David Rappaport. Rappaport survived that attempt but, sadly, the Time Bandits actor who suffered from depression did later kill himself. Sarek Writers: Peter S. Beagle, Marc Cushman, Jake Jacobs Director: Les Landau Airdate: May 14, 1990 Ambassador Sarek, father of Spock, comes aboard with his wife Perrin on a mission to establish trade relations with the Legarans. Sarek is old and ready to retire after this final duty. But when the stoic Vulcan ambassador begins crying during a classical music concert, Picard knows things are not well. Then emotional and hostile outbursts spread throughout the ship. Dr. Crusher concludes Sarek might have a degenerative neurological condition that makes him lose control of his emotions, sending those emotions to those around him. Sarek’s staff confirms that this is the case, but Sarek denies it to Picard until the ambassador breaks down in front of the captain. Picard makes arrangements to cancel the meetings with the Legaran delegation, but Perrin suggests that Sarek mind meld with someone else, transferring his emotions to that other person so Sarek can finish this last mission. Picard agrees to become the host and take on the pain of the elder ambassador. NOTES: Sarek originated the character of Spock’s father in the original series episode “Journey to Babel,” but that was not the first alien he portrayed in Trek. In the first season of that series, he played a Romulan in “Balance of Terror,” and he was later the leader of a Klingon warship in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He reprised the Sarek character on the big screen in Star Trek II, III, and VI. Ménage à Troi Writers: Fred Bronson, Susan Sackett Director: Robert Legato Airdate: June 10, 1990 Love or at least lust is in the air when Ferengi Daimon Tog tries to seduce Lwaxana Troi following a trade conference on Betazed; the Betazed ambassador has her own concerns about love, when she urges her daughter Deanna Troi to find a mate and, well, to mate. Lwaxana rebuffs Tog but tags along when Deanna and Commander Riker take a quick vacation in the hope that she can rekindle her daughter’s relationship with Riker. But Tog isn’t so easily put off; he kidnaps Riker and the mother-daughter Troi team aboard his ship the Krayton, where the Ferengi doctor Farek plans to probe Lwaxana’s mind-reading abilities to see if the Ferengi can make use of it for their own purposes. Riker manages to trick a guard and escape his cell. Unable to use the Ferengi ship’s protected communications system to send an SOS to the Enterprise, he instead modifies the ship’s engine system to create a distortion in the warp field that he hopes will be recognized by weimar.ws Galaxis

his Starfleet colleagues. Back on the Enterprise, Wesley Crusher misses his ride back to Earth for another crack at the Starfleet Academy entrance exam when he notices Riker’s SOS and alerts the bridge crew. The Enterprise catches up to the Krayton; Lwaxana bargains with the Ferengi to let Riker and Deanna return to the Enterprise if Lwaxana stays behind as Tog’s partner. But Picard plays the jealous lover, claiming his intention to attack the Krayton unless his beloved Lwaxana is returned. A frightened Tog complies. NOTES: There’s something about the Ferengi that resemble’s a teenage boy’s sexual fantasies. As noted in last issue’s recap of Next Generation’s first season, the Ferengi males were conceived (pardon the word) as having extraordinarily large sexual organs. Here, Deanna and Lwaxana are shorn of their clothing aboard the Krayton; Tog makes sexual advances with abandon, and the Trois are both important figures as well as sexual objects throughout the story. Transfigurations Writer: René Echevarria Director: Tom Benko Airdate: June 17, 1990 John Doe just might be becoming godlike, but first he has to regain his memory. The Enterprise rescues a humanoid passenger from a crashed ship; the passenger has no memory of his identity, so the crew call him John Doe. Dr. Crusher says the man’s cells are mutating, and John Doe experiences occasional pain and power emissions; he also has the power to heal people’s injuries, as Worf learns following an accident. Another spaceship arrives, and its captain, Sunad, deeclares that John Doe is a condemned criminal and should be returned to their home planet Zalkon. Doe refuses to go, and Picard refuses to force him to leave until he learns more about why he was condemned. Sunad attacks the Enterprise crew, but John Doe counteracts the effects and brings Sunad to the Enterprise. John Doe’s memory has recovered, and he tells everyone that he is the next stage in his people’s evolution; Sunad represents the government’s efforts to stop the development of their species, capturing and killing anyone who exhibits these new powers. He sends Sunad and his ship on their way, and he completes his transformation into a being of pure energy. NOTES: Writer René Echevarria is a very significant contributor to the genre world. He went on to write dozens of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, and he also wrote for its sequel series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He created the science fiction series The 4400, which ran for four seasons on the USA Network; he was a producer on the short-lived Steven Spielberg series Terra Nova, and he contributed to series ranging from Dark Angel to Intelligence. 50

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The Best of Both Worlds, Part I Writer: Michael Piller Director: Cliff Bole Airdate: June 18, 1990 A Federation colony has been destroyed, and the Federation thinks the Borg did it. Admiral Hanson arrives on the Enterprise, and he brings along a Borg expert, Lt. Commander Shelby. Just like we saw in Season Two’s “The Icarus Factor,” Commander Riker is being pressed to accept the job of commanding his own starship, only this time Shelby is present and expecting to succeed Riker as Captain Picard’s Number One. Hanon suggests that Picard give Riker a “kick … in the rear end for his own good” and get him to take the offered command. The Enterprise heads off to intercept what is believed to be a Borg cube after reports from another Starfleet ship are abruptly cut off. It is indeed a Borg cube, and with typical Borg bureaucratic bravado, it demands the surrender of Captain Picard. He, of course, refuses, and the Borg chases the Enterprise into a nearby nebula; Shelby, La Forge, and Wesley Crusher try to modify the ship to produce a weapon capable of destroying the cube, but the Enterprise is forced out of the nebula and is boarded by the Borg, who kidnap Picard and go back to their ship. The cube then zooms toward Earth, closely followed by the Enterprise. Shelby leads an away team to the cube to try to rescue Picard, but they find that their captain has already been assimilated. Picard declares himself to be Locutus of Borg, and he orders the Enterprise to prepare to be assimilated. Riker, in command of a starship under unexpected circumstances, prefers to fight, and he

orders the Enterprise to fire its new weapon at the cube. Riker: When it comes to this ship and this crew, you’re damned right I play it safe. Shelby: If you can’t make the big decisions, commander, I suggest you make room for someone who can. NOTES: “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I” is justifiably considered one of the best episodes of the series, an even more amazing feat considering how many strong episodes appeared in the show’s third season. Writer Michael Piller’s script reflected a Mario Cuomo-esque should-I-or-shoudn’t-I angst, played out in Commander Riker’s indecisiveness about leaving the Enterprise. “[W]hile Riker is going through a personal dilemma of whether or not to leave the Enterprise, I was going through the dilemma of whether or not I was leaving Star Trek, and a lot of that bled into the script,” Piller told Starlog in October 1990. Talking about himself in the third person, he added that “Riker’s musing to himself is sort of like Michael Piller musing to himself.… I found it very difficult to walk away from the show that I had fallen in love with, a TV series that mattered.” “The Best of Both Worlds” is a cliffhanger episode, designed to keep fans thirsty for the resumption of the series in the fall. It accomplished that, and if, as we’ll see next issue, Part II was not as strong as Part I (albeit still a good episode), the show then followed up with an episode that demonstrated beyond a doubt how Star Trek: The Next Generation had come into its own as a highG quality, confident dramatic series.

WorldlyThings

What’s new from the tech and toy worlds

Police! No One’s Driving the Car!

GOOGLE CAR: GOOGLE: CUPS PHOTO: JOHN ZIPPERER

enterprise photo: Robert Young

self-driving car is not an automatically recognized need among human beings. Even among futurists and science fiction buffs, it seems out of left field. Teleportation, flying vehicles, super speed? Sure. But a driverless car? Why? But Google is the experimental lab of the future, and it has been working on self-driving cars for years. As they have been testing and improving the cars, known as autonomous vehicles, the rationals have begun to become clearer. For the blind or otherwise impaired, a self-driving car opens up a whole new world of safety and mobility. For people who are out celebrating too hard on a holiday, no more worries about blood alcohol limits. Just climb into the car and set it to take you home—and you can pass out and wake up the next morning in your driveway. Already, four states (California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, plus Washington, D.C.) have passed laws allowing driverless cars on their roads. For a legal structure that has been built up around the assumption that a driver is responsible for the functioning of a vehicle, a slow change in approach is taking place. Google has been testing the cars for years, using a small fleet of autonomous cars adapted from Toyota Priuses, Audi TTs, and Lexus SUVs. The cars have driven more than a million miles, and they have been found to be quite safe so far. Limited, so far; they can only go up to 25 miles per hour, and they’re not great at differentiating between a small obstruction in the road that should be avoided or that a human would have felt fine driving over. But Google continues to refine the computer system that runs the vehicles, and we have no doubt these challenges will be met. Matthew Inman shared his reactions to riding in a Google autonomous car, and he found the experience impressive. The cars were cautious and safe, and he’s eager for them to be on the road. “When discussing self-driving cars, people tend

to ask a lot of superficial questions: how much will these cars cost? Is this supposed to replace my car at home? Is this supposed to replace taxis or Uber? What if I need to use a drive-thru? They ignore the smarter questions. They ignore the fact that 45 percent of disabled people in the U.S. still work. They ignore the fact that 95 percent of a car’s lifetime is spent parked.They ignore how this technology could transform the lives of the elderly, or eradicate the need for parking lots or garages or gas stations. They dismiss the entire concept because they don’t think a computer could ever be as good at merging on the freeway as they are.” You can keep up-to-speed on the project at google.com/selfdrivingcar. a friend knows what’s our cup of tea. Specifically, it’s three cups stacked one atop the other, with a photo of Luke Skywalker apread across all three cups. But wait—turn the cups around and it’s an image of a stormtrooper. Turn it a little more, and it’s Han Solo. Turn one cup a third of the way to the right, and another one a third of the way to the left, and you get a composite photograph of Luke’s head atop Han’s torso with stormtrooper legs. It’s a lot more fun than what we’re actually drinking.

Top: Google’s self-driving cars hit the real streets. Bottom: Luke Skywalker’s our cup of tea.

and, finally, we want to highlight something that we helped create. Though this magazine has no official connection with San Francisco’s storied Commonwealth Club of California, we have many unofficial connections to that historic public forum, where nearly every president and zillions of scientists and authors and others have spoken over the decades. And if you go to the iTunes store and search for “commonwealth club,” you can download the free app that lets you watch hundreds of videos, listen to thousands of new and classic audio programs, and even buy tickets for upcoming programs. G Did we mention that it’s free? weimar.ws Galaxis

photo: European southern observatory

Dragon

Galaxis September 2015

Fire II FICTION

Being free might prove more of a challenge than the alternative.

BY john zipperer

looked at the data pin. It was half an inch long and thin as a sheet of paper. On its own, it was worthless. But slip it into just about any computer, android, vehicle, or building, and it took immediate control of that computer, android, whatever. It was as if you could transplant the brain of one person into the body of another. It was the smallest thing Jae and I had gotten out of our time with the Jiànqiè Typhoon. Our two ships and their crews tried to take on our common antagonists to get back the money that had been taken from us, but that had proved impossible. The money data had moved too quickly for any of us or our computers to keep up with it, and finally we lost the ability to even track where it was going next. But together we managed to get some other things from Hao’s various holdings, and if we could

sell them at good prices, this could all still end well. The data pin itself would either save my day or it would be one more worthless item in my inventory when I was finally crushed by creditors. I put it back into its plastic envelope and stuffed it into the storage bin. Then there was the one item that didn’t fit onto a memory stick. Dragon’s other owner Jae didn’t even know this was onboard yet. I walked down the corridor to a nearby door and told Dragon to open it. The door slid down, revealing the metal man. As tall as I was and completely silver, he stood on the other side of the open doorway, awaiting my instruction. For the first time, I decided to bring him out of sleep. I spoke the code: “Command wake 0-1-0-5.” Instantly, the android’s eyes snapped open and began to glow an electric blue. He didn’t speak, but he looked at once peaceful and powerful. “I’m Paulik, your owner. Confirm.” His mouth opened, in an a close approximation of a human mouth. His voice sounded hollow, impersonal; I’d have to change that if a buyer was to get interested. “You

are Paulik, my owner. How should I address you?” I thought for a second. “Call me Dragonmaster.” “Dragonmaster,” he repeated. “Do you have a name?” “Not yet. It is for the Dragonmaster to name me.” “I will not be your permanent owner. I’m seeking a buyer for you.” “Have I performed unsatisfactorily?” “Other than your annoying voice, no,” I said. “I am a trader, a ship owner. I need to sell you to pay off some debts.” “I see.” “You’ve got run of the ship while we seek that buyer. You will interface with Dragon for all access permissions; Dragon will speak for me in my absence.” “Yes, I see.” I paused. “And let’s change your voice. How adaptable is your voice?” “I can replicate and produce any human, Cenlaar, or Haarling voice. I can even replicate your own voice. How does this sound?” I grimaced. “It sounds creepy. Don’t do that.” I briefly considered having him copy Jae’s voice, but that also would be weird. I decided to use the voice of a male bookseller I had met on a visit to Fainoon

a few years back; the in-joke would be just for me, but what good is an in-joke if everyone gets it? I directed Dragon to share with the android a recording of the bookseller’s speaking voice. “I think that’s all for now. Why don’t you spend some time getting to know the ship and interfacing with Dragon?” I said, wanting to get on to other things. “Yes, I will. And what name will you use for me? Until you find a permanent owner, of course.” “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Why don’t I use Hey You?” “You are joking.” “I am the Dragonmaster.”

ragon’s voice sounded in the corridor as I approached the bridge. “Jae is attempting to reach you.” “I shut off my comm; gimme a sec,” I said, sidling into the pilot’s seat. I tabbed the commlink on the nav board. “Jae?” “Hey, Paulik. I can only do voice from here—they don’t have holo abilities.” “That’s because you’re at a third-rate buyer. Is she interested in anything we have?”

weimar.ws Galaxis

he Pantheon trader’s name was Tirner, and she ran her operation off a little station orbiting some nothing of a planet on the Union’s fringe. As soon as I arrived, Jae and I visited with Tirner. “How much will that cost me?” she asked, turning over the data pin in her fingers. 54

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I couldn’t tell if she was apprehensive about the price or would agree to anything. “Twenty-three thousand?” I said, trying not to sound too unsure of myself. Her face was impassive, but I guessed she was thinking it over. “I could buy two of those for that price from anyone else. I’ll give you 12,000.” I’m a terrible negotiator, I know. But I couldn’t accept less than 23,000. The only time I can negotiate a tough deal is when I’m not bluffing, and I wasn’t bluffing, so I persisted. “Can’t do it. Those half-price ones will fail you every time. You want one that would last? This is the one you want and this is the price.” I had no idea if this one would last. She smirked, then smiled and softened. “We can negotiate with that. Let’s go to my office and see if the pin works.” Jae nodded at me and headed back to Dragon’s dock to get things ready for launch. Tirner led me down the main corridor, the overhead lights flicking on as we approached and flicking off a few seconds after we’d passed by. Finally she stopped and waved a hand at a door, which promptly slid upward. “My office,” she said, as we both stepped in and the lights slowly brightened. I sat down on a couch and asked her to explain how Jae and I ended up as the new owners of Sicma. She told me it was a trade, the android in return for the Typhoon and its crew. “The crew works for you now?” “In a sense,” she said. “I own them, and I intend to trade them.” “So you’re a slaver?” “No, of course not,” she said. “I just have to trade these people to the slavers.” “I think that means you’re a slaver.” Our conversation went downhill from there, and I decided I wasn’t going to leave the Typhoon’s crewin the hands of this religious fanatic. “You know,” I said, “the Pantheon frowns upon selling people or androids. Rather anti-commerce, they are.” “Sometimes one has to bend the rules a bit.” She shook her head, a little uncertainly, I thought. I hoped she wasn’t unbalanced. When she spoke, however, her voice was firm. “I need the things you’re trying to sell.” “Uh, for 23,000?” She pulled a gun out of her pocket and pointed it at me. “Okay, 22,000.” “I’m not paying anything for it.” she said. “I need it to pay off my debts. That’s just too bad for you; I’m sorry. But I’ve got to do this. Now give me the storage bin.” I had not foreseen any of this. “I need the money to pay off my debts. You think I’m a rich trader? I’m up to my eyeballs in debt,

image: DARPA

“Sort of.” A pause, then, “She’s a Pantheon follower.” “I didn’t know she was that religious. Not good.” “Not good.” “So what do you think? Are you going to leave Parta and go to the next buyers?” There was silence, but I imagined him shaking his head. “No. I think you should come here. Something happened that you should see.” Oh, good, I thought, more bad news. “Oh good, more bad news.” “Sarcasm hurts, Paulik. Look, I did buy something here, I think.” “You think? You were supposed to sell stuff.” “Well, I appear to have bought something. An android.” I winced. Jae didn’t yet know Hey You existed. Slowly, I said, “Why did you buy an android, Jae?” “Protection. I’m sick of people boarding us or playing us for targets. And Sicma’s a weapon.” All I could think of saying was, “Sicma? That’s its name?” “That’s what you’re concerned about?” “No, I’m concerned that we just paid for Sicma and that we already have a new android.” “I didn’t really pay—wait, what?” I was developing a headache. I leaned back in the chair and rested my feet on the console. “Came with the latest batch of stuff to sell. He’s super smart, can act as an independent bot or can be an avatar of Dragon or one of us.” “Oh, it’s a he? But he’s not a weapon,” Jae laughed. “What’s his name?” “That’s not important. Look, why don’t you return to Dragon, and we’ll figure out where we can pay off our debts by unloading all of this stuff, including Sicma and Hey You.” “Hey me what?” “Nothing. What do you mean you didn’t really pay for the android?” “That’s what I was trying to tell you. I think the Pantheon woman traded the android to me for the Jiànqiè Typhoon. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but the Typhoon crew didn’t seem to care.” This was getting weird. “I’ll be there as soon as possible.” I tabbed off the commlink.

“Just let me go and we’ll forget this happened. After a lot of therapy, maybe.”

and if I don’t pay it, I lose my ship.” She made no response, so I went on. “There. So just let me go and we’ll forget this happened. After a lot of therapy, maybe.” She shook her head again, and backed partway into the still open doorway. “No,” she said. “I’ll lose a lot more than just my station if I don’t pay off my creditors, and as much as I never thought I’d be doing this, I’m afraid I’m going to have to sell your stuff and you.” “What? Wait—” She backed out and the door slid shut again. I heard her tell the station’s computer to secure the door.

fter an hour of trying to pry open the door with my fingers (didn’t work), searching for another exit (didn’t find one), and making lots of noise to force Tirner to come back (didn’t work), I sat down on the bunk, exhausted. I looked down at my hands, legs, feet. Why would anyone think they could get money in return for me? Tirner was so desperate to pay off her debts, she was scraping the bottom of the barrel. As much as that made me the bottom. I’m nothing special, though I like to think I’m a bit of all right. If she had a buyer for this—me—then that buyer would be willing to buy anyone, any human. Or a ship full of military trained men and women, like the Typhoon, which could only mean that whoever her buyer was, it was not someone nice. I began looking more carefully at my surroundings. The couch was covered by a couple of thin blankets—thin, but high quality. They were a dark green, with a pattern (wrought in a slightly less dark green) of an old religious design repeated over and over across its surface. I recognized it as a favorite of Pantheon artists. The walls weren’t completely blank. Each wall had a small round sigil, no more than a couple inches wide, of the Thermovas, a family even I knew had died out hundreds of years ago. This was a very old station; how it came to be in the hands of this strange woman was a mystery. Next I checked the desk, a cheap metaform model with four small drawers down one side. Three of the drawers were empty, but the bottom one contained a holo-disk; nothing happened when I tried to activate it. I slipped it into my pocket for later. So my captor was possibly a religious person or someone who bought household goods at stores run by religious people. This was getting me nowhere. Tirner just didn’t fit my concept of a Pantheon follower. Pantheon ships usually don’t go out of their way to cause trouble; they were a reliweimar.ws Galaxis

gious movement, and a large and growing one at that, but if you left them alone, they generally left you alone. If you didn’t leave them alone, however, they could be ruthless in getting back at you. If Tirner was somehow involved in Pantheon craziness, I’d feel better if I were light years away, and if I had the Typhoon and its Jiànqiè training to protect me. When Tirner finally opened the door again, I was lying on the bunk staring at the ceiling. I didn’t get up. She said she was ready to see what else I had in my ship. I pretended not to know what she was talking about, which was easy. “I’ve got lots of stuff to sell. You interested?” “I told your pal Jae to bring over the storage bin and any other items. He’s sending that stupid andoid.” Which android? If he sends Sicma, Tirner probably is going to keep the android, too. She probably never intended for him to actually change hands; if she had this all planned out, she knew she could get to keep her original android plus her newfound 100-person Jiànqiè ship. If I was a bad negotiator, she was turning out to be one of the best ever. Before I had come up with anything to say to her, a silver android walked up to her and took her gun out of her hand. She looked shocked. I was thrilled; Jae must have sent Hey You to come and save me. “Hey You! You came!” The android looked at me, but when it spoke its voice was not the bookseller’s. “Hey you. I am here to stop Tirner and return you to the Dragon.” Then I realized this was Sicma. He looked almost exactly like Hey You. Tirner was staring at her former property with fury. I was happy to see her angry. She couldn’t expect loyalty from anyone or anything she owned and treated like inanimate objects. She’s just lucky androids aren’t vindictive. Sicma motioned for me to join them in the corridor, but then he forced Tirner into the room, shutting and sealing the door. “Dragonmaster sent me to retrieve you and—” “Who’s Dragonmaster?” I asked, following Sicma as he walked down the corridor. “Jae told me to call him Dragonmaster.” Great. “We’ll deal with that later,” I said. “For now, let’s get off this ship.” Sicma said “No,” and turned a corner, heading away from the station’s docks. “First, we will retrieve the Typhoon’s crew, the Typhoon, and any items you have given to Tirner.” “Jae told you to do all of that?” I didn’t know if I was impressed with my partner or scared. 56

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“Dragonmaster told me to get you. I decided to get the rest.” Apparently androids can be vindictive. Point to remember.

yren had been the captain of the Typhoon for 45 years, and she had developed a steely calm demeanor that I had come to know well in the past couple months while we all tried to hunt down our money. I had always interpreted that calm as a power play on her part, as a reflection of her condescension toward me and other non-Jiànqiè. I was about to find out how wrong I had been. The Typhoon and the Dragon were the only two ships in the space station’s hold. When Sicma and I boarded the Typhoon and headed to the bridge, we found Lyren sitting in her captain’s chair with that same calm attitude, as if nothing in the world was urgent or bothersome. “Sicma messaged the Typhoon about what happened,” she said when she saw me. “Congratulations on getting out of Tirner’s clutches.” I thanked her but told her I was a bit confused. “Jae says you guys didn’t seem too bothered about being traded to Tirner for an android. Kind of an unequal trade, if you ask me. No insult intended, Sicma,” I said. “No insult taken, sir,” replied the android. Lyren, too, didn’t take any offense to the statement. Instead, she touched a couple controls on a panel beside her chair, and the front viewscreen lit up, showing a collection of schematics and running text fields. I shrugged, looking confused, and Lyren explained. “I never felt like Tirner’s prisoner or property. Let Tirner think what she wants, but I was always after this,” she waved a hand toward the viewscreen, “all of the data she has in her records are now in my computer, and all of her funds are now in my accounts. So I’ve got more information— more dirt—on practically everyone in this sector than I know what to do with.” “What will you do with it?” Before she answered, she looked at me a few seconds as if she were appraising me. “Oh, we’ll use it. Settle some scores, do some good, pay off your debts.” “What? How? Tirner couldn’t have had much money; she said she was swamped with debts. I know the feeling.” Lyren laughed; for a 68-year-old military commander, she had a nice laugh, and she looked like she was relaxing in my presence for the first time ever. “You’ve told me what you need to pay off the Dragon. It’s a fair amount, but nothing outrageous. Tirner, on the other hand, owes about 20 times that

“So many people who lust after space also are drawn to military structure.”

amount, and she owes it to the Pantheon court. So she’s got enough in her accounts to pay off the Dragon for you and buy the Typhoon food and other supplies to last us a while.” “So she had enough to pay my price for the data pin, the weasel,” I frowned. “I don’t know how to thank you.” “Let us join you. It might surprise you, but we actually like working with you,” Lyren said. “My crew and I have done our part for defense of all that needs defending. The Jiànqiè auxilliary service is rewarding. But we’re ready to clock out, proud of a job well done. What we’re not ready to do though is split up.” She shrugged. “That surprised me. I figured after years and years together, we’d be glad to go our separate ways, but the simple answer is that we wanted some adventure, something that would pay off, and we figured we could get it by taking on Tirner, an unsavory trader and slaver.” “She wanted to trade you to the slavers.” Again, that smile. “She wanted a lot of things, but we were never worried. We would have stopped her before we ever even got to the slavers. We would have had to, because the slavers would have come fullforce, and that might have been too much even for us. But I have faith in my crew that we would have been gone from this station long before the slavers showed up.” I eased myself down into the Typhoon’s navigator’s chair, still watching Lyren. “So what now? Are you all going to just leave? You taking Tirner prisoner? I think I’ll miss you; it’s been great working with you. A lot better than when I work with Union troops.” Lyren nodded. “Union troops are not fun, I agree. But ... I don’t think we want to leave.” “Why stay at the station? You’ve already downloaded everything that’s valuable, and the slavers are coming.” Now she shook her head. “Oh, we’ll leave the station very soon. What I mean is that I don’t think we want to leave you and the Dragon. It’s strange; just as we get our first real freedom in our lives, we find ourselves wanting to team up with someone, to be connected. For friendship and commerce, this time, and not for duty and war.” This was all taking a bit of time to sink in. The entire day had been up and down— mostly down—with things changing every few hours. Now Lyren was saying our money problems were over, and we had our own little army? I discovered that I liked the thought of it. “We should destroy this station,” I said, then explained myself. “First of all, it deserves it, too much bad stuff has happened here; and Tirner deserves to completely lose her little

base of operations. Second, if the slavers show up and find the place has been destroyed, along with whatever records were on it, it’ll be that much harder for them to trace it back to us. And the same thing for the Pantheon; if they show up wanting to collect Tirner’s debt, they’ll have nothing to go on. They’ll figure she was done in by one of her enemies, which is true enough.” “True enough.” “What about Tirner? She’s an awful person, but let’s not kill her with the station.” Lyren agreed, saying we could drop off Tirner on some planet or base where she couldn’t cause us any trouble. There were plenty of those out here on the fringe. She smiled again, a bit sadly. “I find it interesting, that so many people who lust after space travel and adventure also find themselves drawn to military structure. Even a lot of exploratory ships are run like military ships. I never understood that. Did you ever want that?” No, I said. I would make a terrible soldier. I don’t like to take orders, I question too much, and I like to make up my own mind, even if it causes a mistake. “I see,” she said. “I have more faith than you in the military structure. I’m good at following orders and giving them. I went into the auxiliaries because I wanted to be in the fight, to take on the bad guys, and I know enough about myself to know that I thrive in hierarchy. Now, well, now I’ll have to create my own hierarchy. You and I can jointly command this little new fleet. Agreed? Partners?” We shook hands, and together we went to talk to her crew in Typhoon’s back quarters.

ey You came out to greet Sicma and me when we got to the Dragon, and he accompanied us like a puppy as we walked to the cockpit. There I found Jae, giving instructions to Dragon’s nav system. Jae smiled at us. “Welcome back,” he said. “So my minion’s mission was successful.” Sicma made no response, but Hey You let out a nicely timed “Hmmm,” which made me smile. My android has a sense of humor. “We’re back together on the Dragon, and our androids are both alive and well. Our little party continues to grow.” I nodded. “It’s actually even better news: We’ve got an army. Sort of.” Jae raised his eyebrows. I pointed out the front viewscreen to the Typhoon’s crew, a dozen of whom were detaching couplings from the walls of the station’s hold in preparation for departure. “Dragon just became the flagship of our new fleet.” I told him about my conversation with Lyren and about her crew’s desire to leave the military life but stay together as

a unit, working with us. Jae protested, saying we could barely afford to feed ourselves and pay off the ship, but when I told him about Lyren’s looting of Tirner’s treasury, he sank back in his seat, absorbing it with the same awe I had. “What’ll we do with 100 men and women and another ship? I shrugged. It was clear we were going to have to start making a lot of new decisions. “Hey You?” “Yes, Dragonmaster.” “First, I think you should just call me Paulik from now on. Second, since it looks like Jae and I are your permanent owners after all, let’s give you a real name.” “I would like that, Paulik.” I thought a minute; I looked at Jae, but he just shrugged. No names were coming to me, and I was beginning to regret bringing it up before I’d thought it through. “What name would you like?” I said it before I’d really thought it through, but it seemed like the right thing to do. The android’s head tilted slightly to one side, and his blue eyes went blank in an android blink. “My first owner was named Forest.” “Okay, we’ll call you Forest. That’s a nice way to pay tribute—” “No,” the android interrupted. “I hated Forest. But Forest’s worst enemy was called Kriz. My new name will be Kriz.” Yes, robots can be vindictive. “I am now Kriz. Thank you, sirs. I am your property forever.” “No, no,” said Jae, shaking his head vigorously. “You and Sicma aren’t property, and we’re not your owners. Paulik and I are leaders of this ship, or this weird little fleet even, but not masters or owners.” He pointed at Kriz and Sicma. “You two are hereby crew of the Dragon, with all the rights and responsibilities that go with that. Understand?” Both androids agreed, giving that pleased android blink. “You know, Jae, we’re in uncharted territory here. We’ve got a ship of soldiers who don’t want to be military anymore, and we’ve got a crew of androids who have their freedom. We’re going to be making up our rules as we go along.” Jae nodded. “What you said Lyren told you is sticking with me. We need the Union military to be military, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us need to follow military rules and organization. The whole point of having a strong military is to protect the nonmilitary society. That’s us.” I agreed, then settled into my pilot’s chair and punched the commlink. “Captain Lyren? You have Tirner aboard? Then let’s get our little band together and put this staG tion out of its misery.” weimar.ws Galaxis

Galaxis September 2015

Mandelbrot Art

BY JOHN ZIPPERER

All art: wolfgang beyer

s Indiana Jones might have said, “Math—why did it have to be math?” Here at Galaxis, your editors are firmly in favor of math, really; but we’re also more than happy to avoid it wherever possible. Then along comes Dr. Wolfgang Beyer, a German physicist who shows us that math, specifically something called fractals, can be very beautiful indeed. In 2010, a PolishAmerican mathematician named Benoit B. Mandelbrot died at the age of 85. He left behind him a lifetime of work in fractal geometry. Fractals are mathematical sets with repeating patterns that can be seen at every size scale. As John Timmer explained in a 2012 article for ars technica, “some prints of Mandelbrot sets had small, individual pixels that might have been the result of an imperfect printing process. But, when zoomed in, each of these pixels represented a fractal world of its own. Not only did these visualizations reveal one of the central features of Mandelbrot sets, but they implied something about

the mathematical system itself.” It’s more complicated than that, and like we said, we like to avoid math if possible. But the upshot is that Dr. Mandelbrot coined the term fractal and, during a 35-year career at computing giant IBM, was a pioneer in the use of computer graphics to show fractal geometric images. Computers and math, we know they go together. But add art to the mix, and usually the mind dredges up images of early 1980s com-

puter art showing brightly colored blocks of nothingness. The computer might be brilliant, but the art was boring. Enter Dr. Wolfgang Beyer, who has created the fractal art—the Mandelbrot art—displayed on these pages. They are mathematical, they should be boring, they should be unimaginative. But instead they are virbrant with color,

Who knew math and art could create a beautiful partnership? Dr. Wolfgang Beyer and Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot, that’s who. weimar.ws Galaxis

they spur the mind to imagine a journey through the various scales of this image, which looks both similar to and much better than the trip through V-ger’s innards in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Star Trek is not a bad touchstone, in fact. In ST:TMP’s sequel, The Wrath of Khan, the digital sequence illustrating the Genesis Project’s capabilities involved fractals, thanks to Lucasfilm special effects wizard Loren Carpenter. Mandelbrot’s book The Fractal Geometry of Nature had influenced Carpenter to want to use the technique in film special effects, and he was able to do so, thanks to a human desire to create “life from lifelessness.” The art has been getting a serious hearing. In 2012, Manhattan’s Bard Graduate Center held an exhibit of Mandelbrot art, “The Islands of Benoit Mandelbrot.” The University of Bremen and the New Museum of Contemporary Art have also hosted exhibits of fractal art. On the popular side, there are Mandelbrot fine art, t-shirts, posters, and other paraphernalia for sale. It’s math at its most beautiful. 60

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Galaxis September 2015

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Star Wars Director JJ Abrams teams up with Lucasfilm veteran Lawrence Kasdan to continue George Lucas’ Star Wars stories.

BY JOHN ZIPPERER

hen a video goes super-viral, shooting into stratospheric levels of re-posting and commenting and tweeting, it is jokingly referred to as having “broken the internet.” This past winter, Star Wars broke the internet with the release of a trailer for its upcoming seventh film, and the reaction from fans and film press alike was downright celebratory. When Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens opens in theaters on December 18, 2015, everyone involved will have the opportunity to see if those high hopes are met and if the celebration continues to the rest of the projected third trilogy, which will be

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joined by a number of one-off stand-alone Star Wars films. The Star Wars cinematic juggernaut has geared up and will run at top speed for as long as Disney can manage. Budgeted at $200 million, The Force Awakens completed principal photography in November 2014, before beginning more than a year of post-production. The Force Awakens will of course feature returning series regulars Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker. Joining the cast will be John Boyega (portraying the stormtrooper Finn), Daisy Ridley (a scavenger named Rey), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Oscar Isaac (X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron), Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow. “It is both thrilling and surreal to watch

the beloved original cast and these brilliant new performers come together to bring this world to life, once again,” said J.J. Abrams, who took up the directing chores on the series, a longtime favorite of his. Following the hiring of the first two actors—Crystal Clarke and Pip Andersen—in an open casting call, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said “The Star Wars universe has always been about discovering and nurturing young talent and in casting Episode VII we wanted to remain absolutely faithful to this tradition. We are delighted that so many travelled to see us at the open casting calls and that we have been able to make Crystal and Pip a part of the film.” That tradition of mixing new and old, familiar and newcomers, is shared before the camera and behind it. James Bond star

cast photo by and copyright: david james. lucas and abrams PHOTO: joi ito.

Daniel Craig reportedly has a cameo appearance. The screenplay is from J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, who scripted a number of Lucasfilm hits; Abrams also directs and serves as a producer. Other producers include Bryan Burk and Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy. Music will once again be from John Williams. Creative change There has long been debate and even confusion about how many Star Wars films were ever envisioned and who would be in charge of them. In October 1983, Starlog magazine Editor Howard Zimmerman wrote “Lucas said ... that he personally will not be producing or directing [further Star Wars films]. He has already written the outlines to the two remaining trilogies. No matter how far removed he may be from the daily, online production, rest assured that Star Wars chapters one, two, three, seven, eight and nine will still be true to Lucas’ vision.” That was after Return of the Jedi had been released and was burning up the box office. Fans were worried that that was the end of the line for Star Wars films, and a promise of an imminent start on the first trilogy (the prequels) served to calm some nerves. Of course, it would be nearly two decades before the prequels came out, and though they were blockbuster films at the box office, they have been a source of continuing controversy and criticism from some quarters. The question of films seven, eight, and nine seemed to have been shelved.

But if some fans—especially older fans who wanted to feel the same emotional thrill they felt when they were ten years old watching the original Star Wars in the theater in 1977—thought the sequels fell flat, most remained eager for more Wars films. The storyline is no longer George Lucas’. After selling Lucasfilm to Disney, Lucas also handed over his story treatments for another trilogy; however, Lucas has said Disney is not using them for the post-Return of the Jedi films. The studio owns the property now and can do with it what it wants, and director J.J. Abrams does not lack self-confidence when it comes to reinterpreting an existing mythos; just look at what he did by jump-starting the moribund Star Trek film universe. If the positive fan reactions displayed after seeing the preview videos and Comic-Con road shows continue after they have seen the completed film this December, then Abrams, Disney, and Kennedy will be hailed far and wide in fandom. If fans feel that the magic or feel of the original films has not been rekindled or has been mishandled, Star Wars: The Force Awakens might come to be seen as nothing more than an expensive non-canon part of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Plot details on Abrams films are notoriously difficult to come by. The acclaimed trailor was a wild mix of action scenes, introducing new droids, crashed Star Destroyers, the beloved Millennium Falcon, and a brief bit of Chewbacca and Han Solo. According to online reports, the film’s story revolves around the First Order, a rump

Previous page: The cast gathers for a script read-through at Pinewood Studios, UK, including (at top center right) writer/ director/producer J.J Abrams (clockwise from Abrams) Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Producer Bryan Burk, Lucasfilm President and Producer Kathleen Kennedy, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Andy Serkis, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Adam Driver and writer Lawrence Kasdan. This page: George Lucas (left) meets with the man who will continue his legacy, J.J. Abrams.

force of the defeated Galactic Empire, fighting the Resistance, a successor to the Rebel Alliance. Fans can be hyper-critical. For example, half a year before the film even gets released, MTV published an online article listing “11 Things The Force Awakens Needs to Be a Real Star Wars Movie.” The list includes things such as “It needs to open with a spaceship.” Other stories making the online rounds have been praising the film for only having 28 out of 357 scenes filmed with CGI—presumably a retro criticism about the heavy CGI used in the prequels. However, one doesn’t crowd-source the writing of a Star Wars script. None of those criticisms, demands, and worries might even be remembered once the film is finally seen in its totality and the end credits roll. The Force Awakens might well be greeted as weimar.ws Galaxis 65 weimar.ws Galaxis 65

High hopes The filmmakers are not the only ones hoping the new film is met with enthusiasm by audiences. The invasion of the toys from the new film will reportedly land in stores September 4, 2015, several months before the film itself. Products will include computer apps, comics, posters, books, toys, shirts, and other collectibles. In fall 2015, Disney Publishing Worldwide will roll out more than 20 titles related to the series, everything from sticker books to narrative stories to comics. “The robust publishing program will appeal to a range of fans—old and new—across all formats from comics to novels to apps, making this one of the most exciting and collaborative collection of stories that we’ve seen to date,” said Andrew Sugarman, executive vice president of Disney Publishing Worldwide. “Every lightsaber, every action figure, every LEGO set tells a story for generations 66

Galaxis September 2015

of Star Wars fans, and this global event is a celebration of those stories,” said Josh Silverman, executive vice president, global licensing, Disney Consumer Products. “We’re excited to be part of the countdown to this enormous movie moment.” The company is urging fans to use Twitter and the hashtags #ForceFriday and #MidnightMadness to share images and tales of their toy-buying rapture. To whet fans’ appetites and to remind them of the back story, this past winter Disney released the first six Star Wars films for the first time on digital platforms such

Above: It’s been a quarter-century since Mark Hamill got aboard the publicity wagon for Empire Strikes Back. Below: Disney released an image of basic brand packaging that will be reflected on many Star Wars products for the new film.

as Google Play and iTunes. The studio released some additional bonus materials with the new films to sweeten the deal. For fans, this is a time to revel in their Star Wars affection. They can now watch The Empire Strikes Back at any time, in any place, simply by using their smartphone. And the arrival of new films—the new trilogy and the stand-alone films, which will include a Han Solo movie—will keep the avalanche of spinoff products coming. For Disney, it is a necessity to keep the films and the licensed deals coming; it paid a little more than $4 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012. Though that deal also included the Indiana Jones franchise (and there continue to be rumors of new films for Indy), Star Wars will clearly be the franchise that is expected to earn back the purchase price and then some. Star Wars Episode VIII is due to be released in 2017. G

hamill PHOTO: Bogaerts, Rob / Anefo, dutch national archives;

the new standard of the franchise, just like other productions that faced withering fan and press skepticism between their original announcements and their final release. That esteemed list would include Star Trek: The Next Generation and Micheal Keaton as Batman.

Are You a

Political

Animal

THEN FEAST ON Lyle Lahey’s AWARD-WINNING Political Cartoons For four decades, Wisconsin original Lyle Lahey commented on issues of the day in his own creative way. Now you can read a treasure trove of the late political artist’s work—meet the odd people who make the news.

They’re free! Classic Lahey cartoons:

weimar.ws/lahey or

lylelahey.blogspot.com

Compendium November 13, 2015 The Orbital Perspective Lecture. Former NASA astronaut Ron Garan, author of The Orbital Perspective, logged 178 days in space and 71 million miles in orbit. He will discuss his experience as an astronaut and his time aboard the International Space Station, where he was a long-time resident. As founder of Manna Energy Foundation, a nonprofit social-enterprise incubator, Garan helps address the developing world’s need for fresh water, renewable energy and access to communications. He started Fragile Oasis, a one-of-a-kind humanitarian initiative connecting Earth dwellers with Compendium is our catalog of things to do, see, and hear related to the worlds of science and science fiction. Please note: Events can change dates, times, prices, and locations. Therefore, we strongly recommend you contact each organization directly before making plans to participate in any activity listed here. If you would like your event to be considered for inclusion in these listings, send information—including contact information—to jzipperer@gmail. com. There is no cost to be listed in Compendium. Events are listed solely at the discretion of Galaxis.

September 6, 2015 Cassandra Clare and Holly Black Discussion. Ever wanted to be a fly on the wall when two of your favorite writers got together for a good old yarn? This is your chance to be in the room with Cassandra Clare and Holly Black as they talk about their creative collaboration, the Magisterium series, and traveling together across Australia. Location: The Edge, State Library of Queensland, Stanley Place, South Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Time: 1–2 p.m. Cost: $12–17. Contact: bwf.org.au September 18–19, 2015 Bakkencon 2015 Convention. The premier SF, fantasy, comics, and gaming convention in western North Dakota features costume contests, discussion groups, celebrity guests, and more. Guests of honor include Ben Novak, the lead researcher for the Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback;

astronauts in space. Location: The Commonwealth Club of California, 555 Post Street, San Francisco, California Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, 12 noon program. Cost: Free–$20. Contact: 415-597-6705, commonwealthclub.org

Robert Thomson, president of the Great Falls Gaming Rendezvous; and RK Post, artist with Magic the Gathering game and other works. Location: Grand Williston Hotel & Conference Center, Williston, North Dakota Cost: Contact for cost. Contact: bakken-con.com October 3, 2015 Richard Dawkins: My Life in Science Lecture. Dawkins has been central to kick-starting new conversations and debates surrounding creationism and intelligent design. His genecentric view of evolution helped popularize the radical new understanding of Darwinism. In the sequel to his bestselling memoir, Dawkins offers a candid look at the remarkable events and ideas that encouraged him to shift his attention to the intersection of culture, religion, and science. Location: Morris Dailey Auditorium, San Jose State University, One Washington Square, San Jose, California Time: 2 p.m. program, 3 p.m. book signing. Cost: $10–55. Contact: 415-5976705, commonwealthclub.org November 27–29, 2015 Starbase Indy Convention. This decades-old convention brings together about 650 fans to revel in Star Trekdom, and it raises money for Cats Haven, LUNGevity, and The Jason Foundation. Location: Wyndham Indianapolis West, 2544 Executive Drive, Indianapolis, Indiana. Cost: $30–55. Contact: 317-248-2481, starbaseindy. com weimar.ws Galaxis

Webbed If you would like your website to be considered for inclusion in upcoming Webbed listings, send information—including URL—to jzipperer@gmail. com. There is no cost to be listed in Webbed. Websites are listed solely at the discretion of Galaxis.

The Baryon Review thebaryonreview. blogspot.com Reviews and information on SF and related genre books European Science Fiction Society esfs.info Professionals and fans promoting science fiction in Europe Gord Sellar gordsellar.com News and insight into the world of Korean genre fiction Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction sfcenter.ku.edu University of Kansas site with resources and info on the genre The Heinlein Society heinleinsociety.org Dedicated to pursuing the goals of the late SF grandmaster i09.com i09.com SF and science news Jodorowsky’s Dune jodorowskysdune.com Official website of the documentary John Scalzi whatever.scalzi.com The blog featuring the thoughts and commentary by the best-selling SF author Public Library of Science plos.org A nonprofit publisher of digital science journals, free to the public Real Clear Science realclearscience.com An aggregating site of articles on science from news sources far and wide Red Orbit redorbit.com Nashville, Tennessee-based science community and news site Science Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange scifi.stackexchange.com Pose your question or provide answers (and vote on other answers) on this genre Q&A site Science Fiction Poetry Association sfpoetry.com Elevating the words of tomorrow SF-Fan sf-fan.de German-language news about SF books, films, games, and more Space-Art space-art.co.uk Featuring the work of illustrator Mark A. Garlick Star Wars 7 News starwars7news.com Fan site with news of the new movie Sharon Shinn sharonshinn.net Site of the author of the Shifting Circle series We Choose the Moon wechoosethemoon. org From the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, relive and explore the original trip to the moon G 68

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December 13–14, 2015 Geminid Meteor Shower Space. One of the “showiest” meteor events, the Geminids put on quite a show with “as many as two meteor sightings every minute, or 120 per hour,” according to space.com. Location: Up. Time: In the northern hemisphere, right after sunset; southern hemisphere post-midnight. Cost: Free. Contact: timeand date.com/astronomy/meteor-shower/geminids. html

inside magazines

February 11–13, 2016 Life, the Universe, and Everything: The Marion K. “Doc” Smith Symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy Conference. An academic event with book signings, awards, art shows, banquet gala, and more. Location: Provo Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, Provo, Utah. Cost: $45, free for students. Contact: itue.net March 1–2, 2016 Internet World Expo. The e-commerce fair with an accompanying trade congress (might have separate registration) attracts nearly 15,000 people for exhibits, speakers, parties, and more. Location: Messe München, east entrance, Am Messeturm 4, 81829 München, Germany. Cost: 10–50 euros. Contact: internetworld-messe.de April 11–14, 2016 32nd Space Symposium Expo/conference. This big conference and expo attracts up to 11,000 attendees from around the globe to discuss and plan for the future of space activities. Location: The Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Cost: Contact for cost. Contact: spacesymposium.org May 6–8, 2016 AniMinneapolis 2016 Convention. This multi-genre con is an annual anime event that brings together thousands of fans for a weekend of cosplay, guests, anime screenings, music, social events, and more. Location: Hyatt Regency, Minneapolis, Minnesota Cost: $30–110. Contact: animinneapolis. com

In-Depth, Fun, and Informative Review of the World of Magazines! Special publication: If you’re anything like us, you love magazines—the good, the bad, and the downright outrageous. So read Magma, the “magazine industry review,” and learn about the inner workings of Condé Nast, what Bob Guccione left behind, an interview with Carr D’Angelo, a post-mortem on Starlog, plus opinionated reviews, complaints, and ideas.

May 7–8, 2016 Ratha Con Convention. Pop culture convention. Location: Athens Community Center, 701 E. State Street. Cost: Contact for cost. Contact: rathacon.blogspot.com

MAGMA

May 27–30, 2016 WisCon 40 Convention. This feminist science fiction convention encourages discussion and debate of ideas relating to feminism, gender, race, and class. Guests of honor include Sofia Samatar, Justine Larbalestier, and Nalo Hopkinson. Location: Madison Concourse Hotel, 1 W. Dayton Street, Madison, Wisconsin. Cost: $15–50. Contact: wiscon.info G

TWO WAYS TO ORDER 1: Free digital download at issuu.com/weimarworldservice or 2: Purchase print edition at

Reviewscreen The new, the classic, and some fantastic finds

The Martian Victory The Martian By Andy Weir Crown Publishers • Original e-book publication 2011; Crown hardcover edition 2014 369 pages

weimar.ws Galaxis

pHOTO: John zipperer; cover art: crown publishers

he story of humankind’s ascent to interplanetary colonization is written in strongly felt arguments for and against investing in the dangerous and very expensive effort to get us off this planet. In fact, it is written in two separate letters received by me several decades ago, one from an American vice president and the other from a U.S. senator. As a junior high school student, I responded to a Starlog column by David Gerrold calling for people to urge the government to support space exploration; I wrote to Vice President George Bush, whose duties included heading up the Reagan administration’s NASA efforts. I received a form letter response—it was the only letter I had ever received from a U.S. vice president, so I didn’t mind—in which Bush thanked me for my letter and expressed his own enthusiasm for continued space exploration. Then, in high school, I wrote a letter in which I criticized U.S. Senator William Prox-

Weir PHOTO: Steve jurvetson; das marsprojekt cover: Umschau Verlag

Reviewscreen Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson photographed The Martian author Andy Weir during a visit to Jurvetson’s Silicon Valley office. He showed off a production engine (in the red frame) from the Mars Viking spacecraft program used for the first landing on Mars. It was an appropriate thing to show space-buff Weir. “It was a special honor to hand Andy his first rock from Mars,” writes Jurvetson. “I am going to try to let him get one of his own.”

mire’s opposition to investing in space programs. Senator Proxmire—a senator known for his integrity as well as his fierce opposition to what he deemed wasteful government spending—wrote back, arguing that before we spend zillions in space, we should fix our problems here on Earth. Those two letters, one for and one against investing in the exploration of space, do a pretty good job of covering the human ambivalence about space endeavors. For all of the popularity of big-screen science fiction over the past few decades, the wealthiest country in the history of the planet, the United States, has stepped back from human exploration and has stepped back from the idea of colonizing near-space (think Earthorbiting human habitats) as well as more ambitious efforts (think putting humans on Mars). Some of us want to be there, even desperately so; others don’t find it alluring at all and prefer to focus on life on earth, where there are plenty of problems to deal with. Certainly you can count Galaxis and me to be in the former camp. After all, as Jesus Christ said, “You will always have the poor among you.” Refusal to go into space does not mean we will spend that money on education and social programs to lift people out of poverty, but it does mean that we won’t create the jobs and industries that would enable us to expand into space and that also improve life here on Earth. Religion and science mix, and it takes faith in mankind and in science to take that leap into the great void beyond Earth’s warm envelope. But for the Earth-firsters, it will never be time to go, never be time to put in the ef70

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fort and money to get humanity into even just a bi-planetary existence, and never be time to risk life and limb to get it done—because it is not the fulfillment of a dream for them. In July 1989, George H.W. Bush—who had by then succeeded Ronald Reagan as president—called for the construction of a space station, the return of humans to the moon, and even sending people to Mars. Instead of a crash 10-year plan to get people to Mars, he was looking at a longer-term commitment to reaching the red planet, building up over time and ending with “a journey into tomorrow—a journey to another planet—a manned mission to Mars.” When his son, George W. Bush, was president more than a decade later, he repeated his father’s goals but upped the inspirational interplanetary rhetoric. He stressed plans “to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond.” His proposal envisioned a never-realized moon mission in 2015 “with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods of time.... With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond.” If there are any alien observers from other star systems watching us, or even if anyone on Earth is impatiently toting up the various promises of American presidents with empty national wallets, they would take note that it is 2015 and the United States isn’t remotely

close to returning to the satellite where it established space supremacy 36 years earlier when it was the first to land on it. George W. Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, tried to keep Martian hope alive. In a speech on U.S. space policy, he forecast “by the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.” His belief that the United States would be able to achieve such a thing would have been no surprise to German-turned-American rocket genius Wernher von Braun, whose prescient 1952 book Das Marsprojekt (The Mars Project) provided technical plans for such a mission. It was a complicated plan, but not unachievable, and it showed he was decades ahead of his time. For example, it involved a number of reusable space shuttles—something the United States would not have until the 1980s—assisting the assembly of a fleet of 10 spacecraft to ferry a crew of 70 to Mars. Between 1952 and 2015, the United States and Russia both had their days in the sun as spacegoing superpowers. Today, they are both running somewhat in neutral, while countries such as China and India are growing into the roles of space-going superpowers. “We” might indeed land a human on Mars during our lifetimes, but don’t be surprised if “we” means “humans” and not specifically “Americans,” because it’s possible the first words sent back from Mars will be in Chinese.

If President Obama has downsized American governmental ambitions for space, he has given a kick in the pants to possibly an even stronger agent: private enterprise. Under his watch, many key functions of American space activity have been turned over to private companies, and that has helped spur aggressive development of space plans by tech billionaires, drawing money from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and the Google boys. They are bringing innovation (and quite a bit of brashness) to an industry that has often been associated with bureaucracy. And yet, it is not private enterprise that is at the heart of Mars exploration in Andy Weir’s justifiably celebrated debut novel The Martian. In the book, the six-person crew of a NASA expedition to Mars—the Ares 3 mission—is just getting set up on the planet when they have to do an emergency evacuation because of a massive dust storm. All but one of the astronauts gets safely to the launch vehicle, but botanist and mechanical engineer Mark Watney is injured. The others think he has died and are forced to take off, leaving Watney behind. Botany and mechanical engineering skills turn out to be useful abilities for someone stranded on the red planet. When Watney finally drags himself back to the habitat structure and takes care of his injuries, he quickly comes to terms with both the unlikelihood of his survival and the absolute mathematical necessity of him to get cracking right away to do certain things, such as grow food. He has some supplies left behind by the other crew members from the Ares 3 mission, but he will need to grow more food if he wants to be able to survive to reach his ultimate goal: travel to the Schiaparelli crater 2,000 miles away, where in four years the Ares 4 mission is due to land. Meanwhile, NASA’s satellite imagery team is able to see Watney’s activity, and they set about coming up with a rescue plan. Communication is finally established with the stranded astronaut, which is a helpful thing, because a novel that is nothing more than a monologue of one character would have been a challenge to pull off for the author and an endurance test for the readers. What follows is a day-by-day and sometimes hour-by-hour account of Watney’s preparations, NASA’s planning, disasters along the way, and a lot of smart solutiondiscovery by the characters, Watney chief among them. Author Weir’s background in computer science and his strong love of space science

inform the problems and solutions in the novel. Weir reportedly went as far as writing his own software to help him determine the orbital paths followed by the spacecraft in the story as accurate as possible. So when he describes how Watney can adapt machinery to solve a problem, the non-technical reader can give him the benefit of the doubt. There are a lot of problems. In fact, there would be a lot of challenges even if the entire Ares 3 team had successfully carried out its mission as originally planned. Being on an unforgiving desert planet with limited food, water, technology, and contact with Earth means that every piece of equipment, food, and other supply is there for a reason and is not replicable in the Martian environment. If it’s a critical component and it breaks, you either fix it, come up with an alternative, or make plans to die. Watney faces even more challenges than a fully functioning team would, because he is without the skills of his team members, and various problems negatively affect his ability to grow food, adapt a roving vehicle, or even breath. But Watney tackles the problems as they come, planning ahead for whatever can be planned, using ingenuity at all steps. Potential readers worried that they’re going to have to wade through the equivalent of a 369-page VCR manual can put aside their fears. Weir makes all of the science and technology understandable, and he imbues his characters (but especially Watney) with strong senses of humor, which will bring many smiles to the faces of readers. Weir’s book is currently slated to hit movie screens in an adaptation by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon as stranded astronaut Mark Watney (see page 6). Damon should be a great choice as the star, because he has demonstrated the ability to portray characters who can mix intelligence and humor, though we can expect more than a few critics to point out some similarity in his roles in The Martian and as the recovered astronaut in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (see page 76). What might be most difficult to translate to the big screen is the sweetly sarcastic humor that crops up throughout the book. We’ll find out how Scott and Damon pull it off in early October, when The Martian opens in theaters. Of more interest here will be the reactions of readers and filmgoers to the trials and tribulations undergone by Watney and the other characters. In 2010, actor James Franco starred in 127 Hours, which recounted the real-life tale of a mountain climber forced to amputate his own arm to escape from a can-

Proof that politics can be fun & smart

Who convinced Americans that politics is all about shouting & polarization? Meet the antidote: Week to Week, the political roundtable program from The Commonwealth Club of California hosted by Galaxis editor/publisher John Zipperer, where we feature journalists & academics with differing views discussing the political issues of the day with intelligence, humor, & civility. Come to our roundtables (complete with a social hour) in San Francisco, download the podcasts, or watch us on the California Channel. For event dates & media links:

commonwealthclub.org/w2w

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photo: NASA; illustration: Aeronutronic Divison of Philco Corp, under contract by NASA

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yon. Some viewers no doubt wondered why anyone would want to go rock climbing after seeing that, but there’s no reason to expect a decline in climbing took place. Besides, it is not an activity that requires billions of dollars of tax money. But when viewers watch The Martian, expect the Earth-firsters to find their concerns about the dangers and wastefulness of space exploration to be confirmed. And expect the determination and imaginations of the dreamers and futurists to be fueled, because The Martian is a story about surviving, about the power of intelligence, about how even the seemingly impossible can be achieved, at a cost that many people are willing to pay. The willingness to do the unnecessary and the dangerous act is something that is not 72

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shared by everyone, but it is widespread. That same George H.W. Bush who foresaw a trip to Mars continued to go sky diving even as he reached his 90th birthday. The Martian the novel was a runaway best seller, first in e-book form and then in traditionally published form. Readers loved it. But The Martian the film will need to reach many millions more people to be successful, and for that, the brand names of Ridley Scott and Matt Damon will be useful. Just as real science informed the plot of The Martian, the reaction to the film will inform the social scientists interested in people’s appetite for challenge. However, watching a film is a smaller commitment than reading a book, and enjoying spending a couple hours with Matt Damon (who wouldn’t?) is different

Top: One of NASA’s visions for Mars exploration, circa 1964. Bottom: NASA’s real Sojourner rover on Mars. from wanting to spend money for a multiyear dangerous mission to another planet with no near-term payoff visible to the regular person. That’s unavoidable. The regular person is not the type of person who does great things. Mark Watney’s humor and likeability might make him seem like a normal person, but he is someone who spent the time learning botany and mechanical engineering to a degree that allowed him to survive on a planet far, far away. That’s not normal, and that’s not a regular person. Readers—and, eventually, filmgoers—are better off for it, though.

House of Pain House of Suns By Alastair Reynolds Ace • Paperback 2010 576 pages

Hear science. Talk science. Think science. Whether you’re in the Bay Area or elsewhere, The Commonwealth Club of California presents the best minds of science. Attend live events with leading scientists and thinkers on timely discoveries, controversies, and mysteries in the world of science. Or catch them on podcast, radio, or video. On our website, click on the “multimedia” tab and find hundreds of free podcasts and videos.

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hen novelist Jane Smiley uses a trilogy of novels to tell the story of a family across a century, it is an undertaking worth noting. But when deep-space-opera (in the best sense of the term) expert Alastair Reynolds tells a tale that takes place over a long time, it is not a matter of a century. Nor is it a matter of millennia. Instead, it becomes a sprawling story that covers millions of years and encircles the galaxy. Big-picture stuff, this. In Reynolds’ 2008 novel House of Suns, Abigail Gentian has left a rather unique legacy. Six million years ago, she cloned herself to create 999 “shatterlings,” who were then sent out into the galaxy to learn all they could, meeting occasionally (thousands of years apart) to share their knowledge. House of Suns skips back and forth between the “present”—the present of six million-plus years from now—and Abigail’s time, when she was a sheltered daughter of a mentally unbalanced woman who ran a family business that specialized in cloning. The clones had been a boon during wartime, because they were used to fill the armies waging a devastating war. But then peace came, and the family fortune was slowly declining, approaching disaster if it didn’t find new customers for its clones. That new customer comes along, saving the family business, and inspiring Abigail to found what would become Gentian Line. There are a handful of other “lines” of shatterlings, and over the eons, these lines become nearly godlike, watching other civilizations rise, expand, and fall, occasionally using their superior technology to help out (or interfere otherwise with) one of the smaller civilizations.

The galaxy slowly fills up with humans, some of whom evolve/devolve/morph into unrecognizable variants of humanity but still playing a part in the galactic human life. About a million years before the “present” of the book, a machine intelligence comes into being, and the Machine People develop into powerful players. The Gentian Line finds itself both lauded and occasionally feared, and when a disaster strikes the group, they do the best they can to find out who’s at fault and what secrets have been buried in their distant past. Two Gentians, the male Campion and the female Purslane, have formed a relationship (which is not approved by the line) and are travelling together in their separate ships toward the next meeting of Gentian Line. While searching for a replacement for one of the ships, they come across Hesperus, one of the Machine People who had been captured by a cruel trader. They nurse Hesperus back to health and agree to help him return to his own kind. They soon get a warning about an emergency situation, and when they arrive at the reunion site, they find among the Gentians two more Machine People, Cadence and Cascade, who agree to return Hesperus back to their home space. But all is truly not what it seems—not in the situation they find at the reunion site, not with Hesperus, not with Cadence and Cascade, and not even with the history that they themselves remember living through. Reynolds’ novels are long and complex, but they also explore massive concepts that require extra-galactic canvases stretching over millions of years. Humans, clones, robots, spaceships that stretch for miles, stardams that block out a star’s entire output, and more can be found in House of Suns, proving that space opera for thinking adults is alive and well.

The Gentian Line finds itself lauded and feared when a disaster strikes.

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Errors in Space Bowl of Heaven By Gregory Benford and Larry Niven Tor Science Fiction • October 2012 416 pages

n hour ago, I finished reading Bowl of Heaven, a 2013 science-fiction collaboration between Larry Niven and Gregory Benford. I am left feeling refreshed—it has been a very long time since I read a hard-science, deep-space SF novel—and stunned. Stunned because the book reads at times as if it went right from the 74

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writers’ computers to the printer, without going through an editor. I’m sure that isn’t true, but how else to explain mistakes that had me wondering if I had missed a couple pages or was losing my mind? It started early in the book where one character is injured; a metal shard had been embedded in his leg during an accident. He is tended to by a teammate, who removes the shard and applies medication. A few paragraphs later, however, a different teammate is removing the shard and medicating him. It continued throughout the book. People

who are described as being in a room are suddenly in a different room. An alien who is on the bridge of an airship descends a stairway and goes to ... the bridge. People who left a room are suddenly back in the room. The amount of time that has passed since the launch of the humans’ spaceship is stated, but then it’s given as a different amount of time later. On and on. I have read Benford’s books before, but I’m surprised to say that I don’t believe I have ever read anything by Niven, which is an admission not to my credit. Niven is a science-fiction legend with numerous big books to his credit. But, for whatever reason, I had never read his work. That was part of what made me select this book to read next after I finished reading a couple history books This was my chance to read Larry Niven. I actually enjoyed the grand-premise tale of Bowl of Heaven. The characterizations and relationships are a bit out of date (sorry guys, but having interpersonal relationships be key to the characters and their organization but not even mentioning a gay character—and then in the most oblique way—until the book is nearly finished suggests being a bit out of touch), but I’m willing to overlook that. However, I was astounded at the poor editing. It’s old news that even big publishers don’t do proper editing any more, but these mistakes (repeated incidences, actions described twice — just a few paragraphs apart — but differently, and more) are incredibly unprofessional. If it was a mind-bending game of fluid reality with the readers, that would be something, but of course the story would make use of that. No, that just was not the case. Bowl of Heaven was a normal hard-science SF novel, and publishers Tor did themselves, their authors, and their readers a major disservice — publishing malpractice, really — by releasing a hardcover book with this many major, obvious errors in it. The writers should have caught some of this in the various drafts they would have proofed. But writers are often focused on making sure other aspects are correct; that is compounded by working with a collaborator. We’ll give Niven and Benford a small slice of the blame, but the majority of the blame cake has to be served up to Tor. The sequel to what apparently is the first of a series has been published. Called Shipstar, it was published by Tor in April 2014. Do you want to bet that the publisher had its editors do a good line-by-line on the sequel? If they didn’t, then forget it.

jodorowsky PHOTO: lionel allorge

Jodorowsky would have left no doubt that his film was the product of his own unique and very fertile imagination.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s delayed dream Dune Jodorowsky’s Dune Directed by Frank Pavich Snowfort Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics • March 21, 2014 90 minutes

legendary science fiction film production, one that had fans drooling over pre-production images for years, is one that never got made. It had the greatest of DNA, being pulled from Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune, and it had some of the most talented and imaginative filmmakers and artists involved. Yet it never got filmed, despite years of work by all involved. Now, director Frank Pavich has unleashed the story of this unmade could-have-been-a-classic, Jodorowsky’s Dune. Uber-independent Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky found himself in the mid1970s with the rights to Herbert’s book, and he was determined to not just make a regular film adaptation. “For me, Dune will be the coming of a god. I wanted to make something sacred, free, with new perspective,” he said. “Open the mind!” He wanted to make a mind-bending film that would blow the audience’s minds and blow Hollywood’s mind. Ultimately, he did neither, but this overdue documentary gives us an inside look at what could have been.

The overall impression of the Dune that would have come out of Jodorowsky’s involvement (and out of his imagination) is that it would have been a very particular production, but not necessarily better than what others later created. Frank Herbert’s Dune is a book that is loved by millions, and it was read and re-read for years before it appeared on the big screen, so it would always be hard to please many of those fans. David Lynch’s 1984 film adaptation remains very controversial years later; Syfy’s 2000 television adaptation seemed to fair better with many critics. Lynch’s film was a box office flop, not even earning back its production cost. Syfy’s version ranks among its highest-rated miniseries ever. Would anyone claim that either of those was a definitive adaptation? So how would things have been different if Jodorowsky had been able to make his film? The cast would have included Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, and Salvador Dali, as well as Jodorowsky’s teenage son, who went through two years of tough martial arts training for the role he would never get to actually play. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was on hand. But the film probably would have packed its biggest punch in the graphics arena; SF illustrator Chris Foss was involved, as was H.R. Giger and Moebius. (O’Bannon and H.R. Giger

would later be part of the team that brought the nightmarish genius of Alien to deadly life.) The documentary includes interviews with many of the people involved in the ill-fated project, and it features many impressive images created for the film. Giant formations shaped like creatures; colorful, bold spaceships. This film would have blown science-fiction minds in 1975, and it could still do so in 2015. But even if Jodorowsky’s film might have mystified many Dune fans, it would have been a breath of fresh air for everyone oversated with bland Hollywood by-the-numbers scripts that never dare to leave an audience in confusion. The 1970s were a time of experimentation in film; we could use more of these filmmakers today and tomorrow. Jodorowsky’s Dune would definitely have been very different from anything later delivered by Lynch or SyFy. Was Jodorowsky’s Dune a lost unmade classic? That depends on your own viewpoint and your own dreams from reading the book. Many people can read the same book and envision it in entirely different ways. Alejandro Jodorowsky would have left no doubt that his film was the product of his own unique and very fertile imagination, and we think fans would have been enthralled to come along for the ride. weimar.ws Galaxis

PHOTO: In-theatre display for interstellar

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Interstellar: Another Nolan Victory Interstellar Directed by Christopher Nolan Paramount Pictures 169 minutes Out now in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD

he 1970s would have done this so much less successfully. A story about a dying earth, an anti-science regime, and a scientific-mystical attempt to reach for the stars? That decade of dystopias such as Soylent Green and Invasion of the Body Snatchers would have found it impossible to tell a sad tale with a hopeful through-line. But this is the new century, and if the environmental challenges facing humans on earth are even worse than they were in the 1970s, at least we have genre superstar Christopher Nolan to give us a vision that offers hope. In Interstellar, crops on earth are dying— not just dying, but dying out, and farmers are reduced to ever-fewer things to grow. Though it isn’t spelled out in any heavy-handed way, climate change and farming techniques have backed humanity in the corner, leaving them with a planet trying to kill them and one swingfor-the-fences option to save themselves: find a planet to colonize and ensure the continuation of the species. A slight hindrance to that option is that people have turned against planetary exploration; the moon landings have been officially declared to be hoaxes and schools try to ensure enough people become farmers to continue pushing the string of farming on a dying planet. Former NASA astronaut Joseph Cooper doesn’t play along, and neither does his daugh76

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ter. Cooper stumbles across a NASA plan to populate outer space, but it involves a long journey through a wormhole to report on the attempts of three previous astronauts to locate a habitable world. That means leaving behind his family on the dying earth, something that is more painful for Cooper and his daughter than it appears to be for his son or father-inlaw. But he makes the decision to go and is soon navigating between three planets next to a black hole god-knows-how-far away from Earth, hoping that one of them turns out to be habitable. For all of its galaxy-stretching story, Interstellar stakes a claim to scientific plausibility absent from, say, Armageddon or Guardians of the Galaxy. It is an adult pleasure to watch shuttles disengage from their stationary mother ships—with the sound abruptly cutting off when the disengagement takes place. Sound in space in SF media is often excused as necessary for dramatic effect. But when your protagonists are in an unknown star system with the future of the human race at risk, the drama is already there, and the lack of sound emphasizes rather than weakens the dangers to the characters. Physicist Kip Thorne acted as a scientific consultant on Interstellar, and he can be seen in the supplementary material on the DVD/ Blu-ray discussing the filmmakers’ attempts to be as accurate as possible about gravitational lensing, accretion disks, and other fun details of black holes. Playing a fictional man of science, Matthew McConaughey portrays Cooper, an engineer and former NASA pilot; Anne Hathaway is Dr. Amelia Brand, daughter of Dr. John Brand,

who is played by Christopher Nolan mainstay Michael Caine. Cooper’s daughter, Murphy, is played wonderfully as a child by Mackenzie Foy, and as an adult by Jessica Chastain. Other big names ranging from Matt Damon to Ellen Burstyn to Casey Affleck to John Lithgow play key roles. All of the actors acquit themselves well, but McConaughey is perhaps the most surprising success. Someone with a thick southern accent is usually placed into an SF cast to portray the salt-of-the-earth character, a second banana, soon dead in the story. But here, McConaughey’s Cooper is the voice of the future and of science, along with his daughter Murphy he is the voice of reason and of the dreamers of tomorrow. That’s not to say there are not any false notes in the movie. When—we’ll keep this vague so as not to give away the ending—a famous character enters a hospital room full of people and is ignored by all of them except the person in the hospital bed, it simply isn’t logical, no matter how much they might care for the person in the bed. The person who just entered the room is justifiably a legend, and only the stone-dumbest person would not at least watch with a bit of awe. But missteps like that are rare in Interstellar. The film is another example of Christopher Nolan and his (co-scripter) brother Jonathan Nolan entrenching themselves at the top of the genre pyramid. It’s not for no reason that George R.R. Martin called Interstellar the best film of 2014 and “the most ambitious and challenging SF film since Kubrick’s 2001.”

Capsule Reviews

Guardians of the Galaxy Directed by James Gunn Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios • 2014 122 minutes ou don’t need us to tell you Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was a monster hit, its popularity fueled by the breath of fresh air it represented in the superhero genre. Comics-based movies have become successful big business, but they have also become either overly dark (Batman) or needlessly and complexly intertwined (The Avengers, Iron Man, etc.). Guardians is fun and funny, with a hunky young Fletchlike lead with a team of galactic misfits taking on the bad guys. The films stars Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord; Zoe Saldana as Gamora; Dave Bautista as Drax; Bradley Cooper as Rocket; and Vin Diesel as Groot. It involves a wide-ranging fight to control the Infinity Stone, which gives its owner lots of power blah blah blah. The Stone is just the reason to send our characters into and out of a variety of situations—prison, space, planetary defense setups, etc.—and entertain the heck out of the audience. This is not high-IQ brain food, but it is a very welcome dessert.

capsule image: El cosmonauta; Avengers theater display photo: john zipperer

The Revolutions By Felix Gilman Tor Books • Out now 416 pages elix Gilman’s The Revolutions begins with a tremendous storm hitting London in 1893. Like many readers, no doubt, after reading the first pages I searched for historical information on any such storm at that time to see if Gilman is basing it on any true events. No giant 1893 storm took place. That storm, like the rest of this deceptively straight-laced book about magicians and psychic travel to Mars and winged Martians, all came from the mind of Gilman. It must be a great place, that mind. The Revolutions is an addictive page-turner of a fantasy loosely starring Arthur Shaw, a young man who loses his job writing popular science articles and becomes involved in metaphysical experiments involving a stew of religious and pseudo-religious components. Shaw finds himself drawn into a small society of magicians trying to get to Mars, but not using spaceships. They are relying on the power of their minds. When his psychically gifted girlfriend, Josephine, is acciden-

tally transported to Mars (just go with it), he finds himself drawn in even further. We were, too. Hot Space Cowboys Directed by somebody Critical Mass • Out now 45 minutes s Exhibit One in our wereview-anything-department, this video is something like what Mobile Suit Gundam would be if it were X-rated. Except despite some explicit (and gay) sex, it’s not really going to satisfy viewers who were just searching for porn. And it’s got too much of that aforementioned sex to please people just searching for mecha anime. So its an oddity. Hot Space Cowboys (or we could refer to it by another title under which it has been released, Legend of the Blue Wolves) features the pilots who are fighting off the Apocalypse, which is not that biblical end-of-world thing but here is actually the name of an alien creature that is attacking human settlements and turning people into “brain food,” literally. Jonathan Tyberius and Leonard Schteinberg (what is it with Japanese mecha using German names?) fall in love but are tragically separated due to events

in the terrible war. Throw in some nice sex scenes, an annoying forced-sex scene, and some nudity that was presumably meant to be sexy but just emphasizes the limits of the animators. It’s macho gay mecha, and definitely not for everyone. Even for people who like macho gay mecha. Avengers: Age of Ultron Directed by Joss Whedon Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios • May 1, 2015 141 minutes he second superhero mashup featuring Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and others finds them all up against an artificial intelligence—Ultron—and occasionally each other. The film is enjoyable, the interplay between the Avengers is filled with great lines, and most likely audiences will come away feeling that their money was wellspent. However, more than a few of them are also likely to be confused by the plot threads from the first Avengers movie, TV’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the various separate films starring the superheroes gathered for this mashup. Longtime fans of the comics are likley to get more out of following

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Reviewscreen the details than will the average viewer. Those answers will either be delivered in the next two Avengers films (out in 2018 and 2019) or will be joined by yet more questions. The Long Mars By Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett Doubleday • June 19, 2014 357 pages n interplanetary science fiction novel that doesn’t feature traditional spaceship travel, The Long Mars continues the collaboration between Baxter and the late Pratchett begun in The Long Earth and The Long War. This time, as the title suggests, the long-Earthers find a way to get to Mars through a development in a distant alternate Earth. Which makes no sense to you, the Galaxis reader, unless you’ve read the book. Though some of the most sublimely enjoyable passages in The Long Earth involved the rapid travel through alternate Earths aboard an airship, in The Long Mars far too much time is taken up with travel through countless alternate Marses. Here are 1,000 boring sandy ones, followed by 10,000 boring sandy ones with a

mountain in the distance. You get the idea. Nothing much happens during these transits, so tighter editing might have saved readers the boring parts. Inside Out Directed by Pete Docter Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Studios • 2015 94 minutes his animated comedy tells its story through the personification of a young girl’s emotions: Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear, and Sadness. It’s fun and occasionally funny, unfortunately it’s also at times predictable. In brief, the story concerns an 11-year-old girl who moves from Minnesota to San Francisco when her hipster Dad gets some sort of undefined business opportunity that involves him taking random distracting phone calls about investors. The girl, Riley, is tremendously angered that her father seems to be ignoring her and that she has trouble adjusting to a new city. (And, as San Francisco residents, we must point out the great work done by the animators in the city scenes; however, having her new classroom with only one visibly Asian student does suggest that her parents sent her to some racially segregated school

or something.) Not the best Pixar. Not the worst Pixar. Godzilla Directed by Gareth Edwards Legendary Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures • May 8, 2014 123 minutes We’re not convinced that any Godzilla movies needed to be created after the first, original Japanese masterpiece. That’s not because we’re stuck in nostalgia; it’s a reflection of the insipid quality of much of what followed in Japan’s Godzilla series, the pained attempts to translate them to American audiences, and the underwhelming 1998 American version. Still, this 2014 kaiju not only plays it straight and avoids camp, it’s a damn good adventure monster movie. One of the big failings of most giant-monster films is that the characters are so paper-thin, the story so rote, that fans generally are just waiting for the citystomping to begin. That’s fine for people who want a film that’s so

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New Earth By Ben Bova Tor • 2013 384 pages n expedition to another planet raises great hopes among Earthbound humans, but when they arrive, the reality is both stranger than they expected—and more normal than it should be. What’s going on? Though the concept and plotting are quite good, the characters are too often two-dimensional figures, like a throwback to the 1950s. New Earth is part of an expansive series by Bova about humankind’s reach into the stars, and we’re open to seeing its development. But more character development, please. G

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y how time flies. Has it been five decades already since Star Trek premiered on NBC and started a science fiction revolution? In the sixth issue of Galaxis, we will have special features on the 50th anniversary of the ground-breaking SF franchise. But we’ll also take a look at new and upcoming science fiction films, television programs, and books. And we’ll include our patented Galaxisstyle in-depth articles on how 78

bad it’s good. But director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter Max Borenstein have done something much better, giving us characters who matter (starting with Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ford Brody and Bryan Cranston as his father, Joe Brody) and a story that does build to a climax in downtown San Francisco. Instead of eagerly awaiting the stomping of the city, though, the audience is given understanding of why that is a tragedy. And then the stomping happens anyway.

the United States has changed its attitudes about exploring space, as well as a look at how sex is handled in this genre. All that, and our famous review section, the third chapter of “Dragon Fire,” remembering Glen A. Larson and Ray Harryhausen, the fourth and fifth season episode guides to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and much more. Coming soon.

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Galaxis September 2015