Okay, #Trekkies.
Here's the last of the #SNW reviews for Season 2.
This was a challenging episode, because it definitely does what it's supposed to do as a cliffhanger of a season finale... but that also leaves open the question of whether it's done *enough*.
Hegemony isn't just a political state of being. Here, it also refers to the emotions - like fear of loss, or prejudice - that sometimes dominate and dictate our actions.
Can they be overcome?
#StarTrek #Humanism
https://onlysky.media/mclark/how-do-we-reckon-with-hegemony-without-imposing-our-own/
@MLClark I realize the Gorn were established long ago, but still it bothers me that SF has a trope presenting the "other" typically as a repulsive narcissistic killer species. It plays on our base programming to be attracted by beauty, i.e. arbitrary desirable characteristics.
Some day I'll write a SF novel that flips that -- the protagonist species is something like the Gorn, invaded and slaughtered by predatory humans.
I'm guessing you read my note in the last section about fearing for the Gorn with La'an and M'Benga in town, and wanting a horror story written from their point of view? :)
It'sa common problem in #SFF. Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time does a beautiful job countering the stereotype. Have you read or heard of it?
@MLClark I haven't read "Children of Time" ... I haven't read any SF for quite awhile, alas.
Speaking of reading what you've written ... Have you done any columns about your views on fan fiction? I would very much like to know your thoughts.
I don't think fanfic is as much the taboo as it used to be; I know a prolific writer (she worked at TNG for a while) who loves writing Star Wars fanfic.
Short answer? Fanfic is "canon" in the history of lit. :)
Long answer: I wrote a deep dive a few months ago in response to AI panic in SFF. In the eagerness of many writers to call users of AI scum, many also started coming out against fanfiction.
It was such a tediously ahistoric bit of moral outrage even in recent SFF that I decided to write an essay reminding folks of the long, complex history of authorship and the use of prior work in storytelling.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/on-artists-artisans-art-and-ai
@MLClark Okay, the column already is raising thoughts in my mind ...
"Plagiarism" takes many forms. Passing off someone else's work as one's own obviously is wrong, legally and morally.
But the practice of storytelling over the centuries has built on others' work. Joseph Campbell, for example, pioneered comparative mythology by documenting the similarities in storytelling across cultures ... (1/x)
@MLClark Fanfic -- for love, not profit -- is storytelling, just not creating the universe or the characters. Some fanfic writers went on to sell Trek novels and even scripts, so in a way it's a breeding ground.
But what about when the property owner abandons it, as Disney did with "Tomorrowland"? They hold the rights, but refuse to do anything with it. It's their property, of course, but if fans write stories for free then legally in the U.S. it's legal ... (2/x)
@MLClark Here's another scenario ... JMS had lots of B5 ideas, but a WB studio executive put the block on them. For 20 years, he couldn't any B5 projects. As you know, in TV typically creators have to sell the rights to the studio to get the show produced. The new animated movie happened only because that suit has left WB ... (3/x)
@MLClark You've written in many columns about the problems of the starving artist ... In a capitalist society, how is the value of "art" determined?
Mira Furlan once told me about theatre in Yugoslavia. The government funded the arts and, so long as you didn't criticize the government, they were quite patient with the creative process. The tick-tock of U.S. filmmaking was quite alien to her ... (4/x)
@MLClark If we had a socialist approach to art, where all artists are compensated by the government to a certain minimum so they don't starve, what happens then to intellectual property? If the government underwrites, e.g. George Lucas as he pens the first draft of Star Wars, should the government (we the people) expect the IP to be in the commons?
Anyway, back to homework ... (5/x)
@MLClark Okay, finished the column ...
I think AI inevitably fails because it has no personal "voice."
Anyone could do a B5 movie, but there's no way AI could replicate JMS's unique "voice" (much less "Joe humor").
Trek outgrew Roddenberry who, to be honest, wasn't that great a writer. Like Lucas, he had the vision but was a hack writer. People like Gene Coon and Dorothy Fontana made Trek what it became ... (6/x)
@MLClark Ron Moore and David Eick "reimagined" BSG. It wasn't Glen Larson's voice, and a lot of people hated it for that reason, but others loved seeing a different voice find more realism in that story.
If one asks AI ten times to "write a story in the Beowulf universe," ten times you get the same output, unless you specify additional parameters.
If I ask M.L. Clark to write a Trek story, what I get today will be different from tomorrow or the next day. That's how humans work. (7/7)
Fin.
Oh, AI/LLM is a grift. The output decays if not relentlessly curated by humans.
But the humans - especially in SFF - who have lost their darned minds over it, and let themselves become distracted from the real (corporate) threat to livelihood are a real challenge today. Attacking fanfic out of AI panic is just a sign of how little proper class consciousness exists.
You raise *so* many other lovely thoughts here! I have to start evening classes now, but thank you for them all!
@MLClark Always happy to chat with you.
@MLClark Homework! Thank you. I shall go read.
AI and fanfic are entirely different. A human being had to think about the latter.
I got very frustrated that Disney abandoned the "Tomorrowland" universe, so I started writing a fanfic novel online. I was about one-third done but stopped because no one was reading it.
I knew lots of "Tomorrownauts" who wanted more, but if they weren'tt going to read, then why bother?! Rhetorical question.
Off to do homework ...