That’s the question Neil Gaiman answers in his poem “Instructions,” which I love; since I found out today that YouTube has a video of him reading it, I had to post it.
Interestingly, the artist Charles Vess is working to turn it into a picture book. Follow the link for a sample illustration, and links to more. That ought to be wonderful.
so said Robert Heinlein; forty years ago today, the human race took the first giant leap toward finding out if he was right.
Then five more landings, 10 more moonwalkers and, in the decades since, nothing. . . .
America’s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the United States will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We’ll be totally grounded. We’ll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.
Maybe I read too much science fiction, but I agree with Charles Krauthammer: that’s a crying shame. It marks, I think, a grand failure of vision, imagination, and nerve on the part of this country.
So what, you say? Don’t we have problems here on Earth? Oh, please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we’d waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we’d still be living in caves.
Yes, we have a financial crisis. No one’s asking for a crash Manhattan Project. All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington—”stimulus” monies that, unlike Eisenhower’s interstate highway system or Kennedy’s Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness—to build Constellation and get us back to Earth orbit and the moon a half-century after the original landing.
I can’t imagine a better stimulus than to crank up the space program once again; not only would it stimulate the economy by creating lots of new high-paying jobs, it would also stimulate the national spirit. I wasn’t around for the first missions to the moon; I’d love to have a chance to see the new ones.
Someone who was, Joyce over at tallgrassworship, illustrates the very real significance of those missions, posting on her childhood memories of the Apollo 11 landing. I can understand the awe she reflects; even forty years later, watching the videos, it comes through.
Just for fun, here’s a map NASA produced overlaying the Apollo 11 expedition’s exploration of the lunar surface on a baseball diamond (HT: Graham MacAfee):
Sara and I finally got the chance to go see the new Star Trek last night, thanks to a couple in the church who took our kids for the evening (and a wonderful time was had by all, too; we have some great folks in this congregation), and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. In reinventing Trek, J. J. Abrams and his writers managed to make it what it should have been; they did an amazing job of keeping the characters true to themselves while justifying the reinvention of the series through the story they told. In a way, the plot exists to explain and validate the creation of a whole new version of the same crew, and it succeeds fully in that. Of course, that’s an ulterior purpose; The Phantom Menace succeeded in its ulterior purpose, too, but failed dismally as an actual movie. Star Trek, by contrast, is a smashing success.
I’ve read some complaints about the plot being full of holes and overly dependent on coincidence, but I don’t agree; by and large, I’d say that the necessary coincidences arise logically out of the agency of the plot. The one ringing exception to that is the coincidence of Montgomery Scott’s introduction into the movie, which is implausible to the point of indefensibility; I’m not sure it quite rises (or sinks, if you prefer) to the level of deus ex machina, but it’s pretty close. For the rest, though—sure, there are coincidences, but they’re reasonable consequences of past events, and as McAndrew would say, “The laws of probability not only permit coincidences, they insist on them.”
I saw someone complain that what the old Spock tells Kirk doesn’t square with what he tells young Spock, but it doesn’t seem to me there’s cause for criticism there; he explains that himself in admitting that he misled Kirk in order to assure that Kirk did not only what he wanted, but in the way that he wanted it, as a way of trying to repair the breach between the two. As for Eli’s comment that “the villain’s method of attack is very creative, but basically requires that planetary defense systems are non-existent”—point taken, but that’s Trek. As a fan of the military SF of folks like David Weber and John Ringo, the idea of an interstellar power without extensive planetary defenses sounds ludicrous to me, too, but Trek never has had them.
In other ways, though, Abrams and company have made Starfleet, and the crew of the Enterprise, a lot more believable. Everybody has a job that actually means something, and everybody gets to contribute. Sulu isn’t just turning the wheel, and Uhura doesn’t just answer the phone; in fact, the changes in the character of Nyota Uhura are the biggest improvement in the whole movie. Not only is she introduced as a genuinely impressive human being—a tough, intelligent, independent woman who needs that intelligence and independence to do her job—but her specialty, communications, is finally shown to be a real specialty of real and critical importance, one that needs a good xenolinguist (scholar in alien languages—which she is) if it’s to be done well. They’ve set up the crew as a true ensemble in a way that the original never was.
Roger Ebert, in his review, complained that “the Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action,” and I’ll grant that there’s some justice to his charge; as a practical matter, he provides the defense himself when he notes that “the movie deals with narrative housekeeping,” setting up the new cast for sequels, but that doesn’t change the fact that this movie has things happen which implicitly raise huge issues that are never addressed on-screen. A bit more introspection along Roddenberry’s lines, I think, would be a good thing, and I do hope we’ll see some thoughtfulness as the sequels come along.
On the other hand, the movie is a cracking good adventure yarn, which has always been the core of Trek, and it does this a lot better in some ways than Roddenberry did, too. For one thing, while the scripts Roddenberry oversaw “might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy,” they never put anything really at risk; there were never any long-term negative consequences for any of the permanent cast. (The one exception to that I can think of might be “The City on the Edge of Forever.”) The same cannot be said of the new Trek, which inflicts staggering losses on its version of the Federation. I admire Abrams’ guts, because I don’t think I would have had the nerve to have the Federation suffer that badly.
I’m no movie reviewer, but I enjoyed Abrams’ Star Trek immensely; I won’t call it great art, but for what it is, it’s excellent—I think it’s clearly the best version of Trek yet—and I look forward to seeing what the folks behind it have for us next.
I have not yet gotten the chance to see the new Star Trek—this week has just been too crazy—but I’m hoping my wife and I will be able to go sometime next week. In the meantime, I’ve been interested to read the various reviews and comments (including, of course, the brilliant spoof The Onion came up with—see below), which have left me looking forward to the movie. I’d rather see a sequel to Serenity (preferably involving a couple resurrections), but goodTrek is a solid second-best. Of everything I’ve read, I might be biased, but I’ve appreciated my friend Eli Evans’ analysis the most—especially this, which I think is quite insightful:
Trek presents us a vision of a future that, frankly, I wouldn’t want to live in. It seems like the most ponderous, politically correct, and (quick! think of another word that begins with “p” . . . yes!) and perfect place. Too perfect. . . .
It’s as if the UN were running the world—no, the galaxy—and (get this) they’re doing a bang-up job. Suspension of disbelief, indeed.
James Tiberius Kirk always rubbed against the grain of that society. Why? Because he refused to evolve beyond his petty human ego. He realized that human nature has no history. People are people, no matter where (or when) you go. Kirk is an un-reconstituted man in a world that is entirely reconstituted, right down to the replicated coffee and doughnuts. (Wait, no. Starfleet personnel definitely do not eat doughnuts. Unless they were square and made of a substance resembling balsa wood.)
Much of the dramatic tension in the 60’s TV show came from the conflict between the adventurer Kirk and his bureaucratic surroundings. Starfleet Command is chirping on the subspace frequency? Don’t answer it, Lt. Uhura. We have aliens to fry.
Now, I like “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and I have a lot of respect for Patrick Stewart as an actor. But then and there, the Trek producers pretty much de-fanged the franchise. Picard is a man settled into his society. Yes, he pops out of gear now and then, but for the most part, he’s a cog in the Starfleet machine.
My thanks to Bill Roberts for posting this—it’s the trailer for a fan-made movie about Aragorn’s search for Gollum, a chapter in the story of The Lord of the Rings which isn’t told, only recounted briefly by Aragorn. It is, obviously, a low-budget production, but from the trailer, it seems to be an impressive piece of work nevertheless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FnMHgwG9aAo
I’ve been meaning to post this and hadn’t gotten around to doing so, but now’s probably as good a time as ever; so, apropos of nothing in particular, here’s the title sequence to the late, much lamented show Firefly:
I do hope that someday we get the rest of the story; and I particularly hope that that includes Whedon resurrecting the characters he so callously killed off. (Yes, people die, but under the circumstances, I think that really was a callous way to treat the actors in question.)
There’s an interesting article up on Touchstone by a chap named John Granger, the author of several books on Harry Potter who’s a graduate of the University of Chicago, analyzing Rowling’s books as “the ‘shared text’ of the twenty-first century.” This is a more significant statement than it might seem, coming from a former student of Allan Bloom, who argued “that ‘shared books’ are the foundation of culture, politics, and individual thinking; as such, Granger is arguing—quoting Chuck Klosterman in Esquire—that
Over time, these novels (and whatever ideas lie within them) will come to represent the mainstream ethos of our future popular culture.
Klosterman thinks that’s a bad thing, but Granger strongly disagrees:
Before meeting Allan Bloom and, through him, the Western canon, my friends and I were a sarcastic and self-absorbed, if good-hearted lot, nourished on stories that were only diversion and dissipation. I have to think my children are better prepared and more willing to embrace that tradition than I was because of their years of instruction at Hogwarts castle. . . .I struggle to think of any fictional work of the last two or three centuries that had the potential to shape the cultural and political agendas of its time as this one does. Dickens’s crusading social novels? Uncle Tom’s Cabin? The Jungle? Harry Potter differs from these in that the others ignited a latent Christian conscience. The Potter novels help foster one into existence. . . .From this text, we can build a conversation about virtue and vice, and about what reading does to the right-side-up soul. From it, too, we can take an invitation to go on to even better books—ones that our grandparents’ great-grandparents had in common, and others that our children may one day write. Hasten the day!
It’s an interesting argument, and I think he may be on to something. It’s certainly worth considering seriously.
Pride is a blossom of ashes—bitter in the mouth, sharp to the nose, stinging to the eyes, and blown away on the first wind from the mountains. Plant no pride, lest you harvest shame.—Proverb of AltiplanoThis proverb (and the whole society of Altiplano) comes from Elizabeth Moon’s novel Once a Hero; Moon’s one of the better writers of military science fiction around, and this is one of her best. I note the irony of posting a proverb from a fictional society so soon after posting the title sequence for a non-existent sitcom, but for all that it was created in the service of a Secondary World (to use Tolkien’s term), it has the ring of old truth, and is well worth remembering.
Have you ever wondered whether it was wise of Elrond to commit the Elves to the coalition fighting the Global War on Sauron? Given the results for the Elves, might it not have been better to hold themselves back from the GWOS and seek a negotiated peace? After all, unlike those hasty, testosterone-poisoned Men and militaristic Dwarves, the Elves had the historical perspective to understand Sauron’s rightful grievances; shouldn’t they have accepted their duty to meet with Sauron without preconditions in an effort to hear his concerns and reach a solution with which everyone could be happy? Certainly, the Elves had the historical perspective to see the longstanding racism and other deep-seated sins of their coalition partners, and of their own community as well; how could they commit themselves to such bloodshed for the sake of such a thoroughly flawed set of societies when the path of peace was available to them?If these considerations have ever bothered you, or if you’re sufficiently open-minded to give them their proper weight, know that you are not alone; a distinguished panel of geopolitical experts recently sat down to discuss them. Their conversation merits serious attention from all thoughtful students of international relations and the history of warfare.
“Oh, but you did. You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me. But since that’s a concept you can’t seem to wrap your head around, then you got no place here.
You did it to me, Jayne. And that’s a fact.”—Malcolm Reynolds to Jayne Cobb, “Ariel,” Episode 9, FireflyThis is from the crowning scene of perhaps the best of the handful of episodes we got of Firefly, one of the best scenes I’ve ever been fortunate enough to watch on TV. To explain this line to those not familiar with the show: during the episode, during a raid on an Alliance hospital, Jayne tried to sell out Simon and River Tam, the ship’s two fugitive passengers (Simon, a doctor, is also the ship’s medic, and the one who inspired the raid), to the Alliance. Unfortunately for him, the Alliance officials don’t honor the deal and he gets taken as well, at which point he starts fighting to save himself (and the Tams). They make it back to the ship, and Jayne thinks he’s gotten away with his attempted betrayal; but Mal’s too smart for him, resulting in this (note: there are a few errors in the captioning):
(For a transcript of the episode, go here.)I’ve always been struck by two things in this scene. The first is Mal’s statement to Jayne which I’ve quoted above, which is strikingly reminiscent of the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:40 (though Jayne did evil instead of good). The point is of course different, since Mal isn’t (and doesn’t claim to be) God—but it’s related. From Mal’s point of view, it isn’t enough to show loyalty to him alone: you have to be loyal as well to all those to whom he’s committed himself. Any violation of loyalty to any of them—any betrayal of the crew bond—is a betrayal which he takes personally, and which therefore brings inevitable judgment.The other is what saves Jayne: repentance, as evidenced by the stirring of shame. Jayne’s not much of one to be ashamed of anything—if you don’t count his reaction at the end of “Jaynestown,” the show’s seventh episode, this might be the first time in his life he’s felt shame—so this is a significant moment; and at that sign that Jayne is truly repentant, Mal spares his life (though he doesn’t let him out of the airlock right away—perhaps to encourage further self-examination on Jayne’s part). In the face of repentance, mercy triumphs over judgment.