Okay, #Trekkie CoSo. 🖖 It's #SNW time!
Today for #OnlySky, we talk about Strange New Worlds' time travel episode, which takes place more or less now in Canuckistan 🍁, and raises the classic Would You Kill Baby Hitler question around La'an's past.
Does it work? Does *any* time travel episode in #StarTrek? What does this #SFF trope actually do - and does the romance help or hinder?
Come for the morality play! Stay for the poutine & Carol Kane!
#CoSoTV #ScienceFiction
https://onlysky.media/mclark/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-how-time-travel-creeps-into-trek-today/
@MLClark I'm glad someone else picked up on the "Would you kill baby Hitler" trope.
I'm glad the time travel went somewhere else other then Los Angeles for a change. Of course, they're filming in Toronto ... The early intent was to pass off Toronto as New York City, but then they decided to just call it Toronto.
Time travel episodes by definition make no sense, unless it's to "close the loop" and fulfill what was intended to happen.
Exactly that, Stephen. I talk about the contrived nature of the trope in the article. Even shows like DEVS, which *expressly* acknowledge infinite time streams, still ultimately have to contrive reasons we should care about certain timelines in particular.
It's a problem that attests to human limits to fully understanding what life in a multiverse would entail--let alone to building a coherent ethics from that view of reality. We are small, fleeting critters in a big, big cosmos.
@MLClark My writing mentor, Sheila Finch, won an award for her first novel, "Infinity's Web." It explored these timeline stories. It's rather devious at one point.
https://www.amazon.com/Infinitys-Web-Sheila-Finch/dp/1434401588
@WordsmithFL @MLClark
Thanks for this mention, just purchased.
Greg Benford published "Timescape" in 1980, back when tachyons were a fad. He won a Nebula Award for it.
Greg was an astrophysicist at my hometown university, so yay for the home team. 😊
https://www.amazon.com/Timescape-Novel-Gregory-Benford/dp/0553297090
@WordsmithFL @MLClark
I've read that one, as well as most everything by "the Gregs" (Benford/Bear). In honor of your comment, here is a joke:
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The bartender says "We don't serve your kind here"
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Two tachyons walk into a bar.
@codeWhisperer @MLClark Sheila FInch was my mentor. The Gregs were in her inner circle, so I met them often.
M.L., I saw you're active in SFWA. Sheila is longtime SFWA, so you may have run across her at one time or another.
@WordsmithFL @MLClark
ISO Advice: An earnest question for both of you: How does one go about seeking a writing mentor or a good developmental writing group? I've been trying various exercises with others to hone my writing, but with little success. The other party gives up or loses interest after only a few weeks. I've tried nanowrimo meetings but they seem to be more about socializing than doing the work.
Is there a good website out there to pair up with someone and help each other grow?
I didn't follow a writing mentor path, and I'm not big on writing groups. I've tried them, and even ran one for a bit, but my local community wasn't well suited for the task. I find folks tend to want more from me than they can offer in turn. So, I mostly work alone. (And I was a SFWA mentor twice; that's a nice annual program.)
Some folks today use Codex to help get started as they professionalize. Wasn't for me, but it might be for you!
@MLClark Let me ask you this ... Do you consider yourself an introvert? I know I am. I've found that working alone usually is best for me.
I don't think introversion is the issue here. I like my solitude and I'm also excellent around people. But as a writer I know what I'm doing, and collaboration is difficult to pull off well--in screenwriting, dramaturgy, fiction, and other creative realms.
What I have is a lot of projects, and no time to waste on folks who grow resentful of my interest in continuing my work when they think I've "published enough" & should be focused on helping them become pub'd & famous instead.
@MLClark You raise an interesting point about collaboration ... I was around "Babylon 5" when Joe Straczynski was producing that. He had this five-year arc in mind. Originally he farmed out a few scripts, but eventually decided it was easier to do it himself, so he wrote 100 out of 110 scripts plus the four movies. All that was while he was showrunner. It was an amazing feat I don't think will ever be duplicated.
@MLClark A long story, but I was on set when that whole TNT Season 5 negotiation was reaching its climax. I knew a little of what was going on, but not how critical it really was to saving the show.
Don't get me started on "Crusade" ... 🤬
@WordsmithFL
Yep, JMS was a standard-bearer in that regard: not just with his five-year arc at a time of episodic TV series, but also in how he managed both to compress that story when the network screwed him over twice: once by pushing for a fourth-season closer, *and again* by then giving him back his fifth season.
Amazing feat as a writer and showrunner, even if tons of the worldbuilding in B5 doesn't hold up as well today. Londo and G'Kar were and always will be a gift to the genre. 👍