In honour of Star Trek's 50th anniversary, I'm writing a series of posts discussing a favorite example of Star Trek related media.

Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas
By John Scalzi

One inescapable part of being a 21st century consumer of popular genre entertainment is the impossibility of ignoring any discussion about the multitude of tropes it generates. Televised science fiction is no exception in this regard. And Star Trek is often credited with inventing, or at the very least popularizing, many sci-fi tropes. As I pointed out in my look at The Physics of Star Trek, the venerable franchise has already generated a considerable amount of discussion from fans possessing differing academic credentials. But the most accessible way to examine the unreality of fiction is through the use of metafictional devices. Irony and self-reflection are the order of the day, especially when dealing with works that are already decades old. What’s the point anymore in denying that one isn’t watching or reading a work of fiction? Named after one of Trek’s most well known conventions, Redshirts begins very much the way most fans would probably expect. But in order to fill over 300 pages, author John Scalzi pushes the conceit to its logical extreme.

That conceit was already touched on in the 1999 comedy Galaxy Quest. In the film, the cast of an old sci-fi show are made to reprise their roles for the benefit of a group of naive aliens who've confused the show for footage of real events. As a result actor Guy Fleegman (played by Sam Rockwell) is filled with fear that he will die at any moment because his role on the show was a redshirt - a random crewmember who looses his life in one episode. Guy’s terror mounts with every dangerous situation they face until he’s eventually convinced by one of the cast regulars that he could be instead playing the plucky comic relief. He undergoes a quick personal transformation, especially after someone else dies dramatically in his place.

In the novel, a group of ensigns working for the intergalactic organization named the Universal Union (affectionately called the Dub U) have just been assigned to the starship Intrepid. The ensigns treat this like any other assignment until they all realize they’re replacing dead crewmembers. In fact, the Intrepid has a notoriously high turnover rate because crewmembers keep getting killed on every away mission. Even odder, every mission is composed of at least one bridge officer. While they might occasionally endure bodily injury, they’re apparently immune to death. The bridge officers are entirely oblivious to this oddity even when it's pointed out to them. But the rest of the crew lives in a state of constant terror, just like Guy. They make themselves scarce whenever one of the officers are nearby. And they’ve developed a bizarre set of superstitious behaviors designed to minimize the body count, based on which officer they’re accompanying on a mission.

If this was the full extent of the novel, it would be nothing more than a clever parody of a famous television show. But these redshirts refuse to be just glorified extras, they want to be the heroes of their own story. So they make a point of getting to the root cause of this enigma. And without giving away too much, they’re eventually confronted with the absurdly fictional nature of their own existence. Scalzi's redshirts are actually competent scientists, which makes their observations about the universe they live in all the more painfully ironic.

This draws attention to the paradox of Star Trek's appeal. Like many science fiction authors, Scalzi is pretty critical about how science is often portrayed on televised sci-fi. It’s rules are often inconsistent and continuosly altered to serve the narrative. The redshirts often give voice this analysis. A bridge officer who’s an obvious analog for Pavel Chekov is exposed to a life threatening disease, but is saved at the last moment by a literal magic box. He’s horribly mangled by killer robots, only to fully recover a few days later. When the redshirts debate about a possible method for time travel, they note that the only reason it could possibly work is if the procedure included one of the bridge officers. And they’re completely mystified by the sheer number of nonsensical deaths suffered by the Intrepid’s crewmembers: Longranian ice sharks, Borgovian land worms, Pornathic crabs. Weirdness piled upon weirdness.

Star Trek’s fanciful vision of space exploration looks more anachronistic today than it would have back in the 1960s. And yet the franchise is often cited as an inspiration that made actual space exploration a reality. The science might be iffy, but its optimistic view of the future proved to be enduring. Even Scalzi’s critique is made from a position of affection for the television show. His protagonists have an unfortunate tendency towards quippishness, but they’re an intelligent and mostly sympathetic bunch who work together just as well as any Starfleet crew. Enough so that when one of them dies, the demise comes across as wasteful.

Redshirts runs out of plot before the book ends. The last third of the book is a lengthy meditation on the nature of fiction and its connection to reality, written as 3 lengthy codas. Scalzi explores the intimate relationship between writers and their creations. The fear writers have that the characters they hurt and kill on the page are truly suffering somewhere out there is thematically similar to the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction. The codas are tonally dissonant and focus on a completely different set of characters, so that it’s best to think of them not as the conclusion to the main story, but as a separate, if related, body of work. Unnecessary perhaps, but one that rounds out Scalzi’s own metafictional examination. Overall, he took kind of an awfully crazy journey to get there.

In honour of Star Trek's 50th anniversary, I'm writing a series of posts discussing a favorite example of Star Trek related media.

The Physics of Star Trek
by Lawrence M. Krauss

Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry.

If Trekkies helped spawn the current fashion for fan-themed documentaries, The Physics of Star Trek would inspire the trend of books which blended two kinds of stereotypical nerdery - academia and pop culture. Virtually every successful franchise seems to have been subject to this kind of treatment: comic book superheroes and supervillains, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Harry Potter, even that other, less rational sci-fi series with “Star” in its title. Compared to the era when Carl Sagan or David Attenborough or Fritjof Capra would rarely deign to reference popular entertainment, our current big-brained public figures promoting education such as Michio Kaku or Phil Plait are more likely to  mention the latest film, television show, or graphic novel, if it will help them make a point about how science functions in the real world. If author Lawrence Krauss may have initially treated the idea of a science book based on Star Trek a joke, it almost makes sense in retrospect as the logical start for the trend. When the book was published in 1995, Trek had already been talking about the future for almost 30 years.

The title for the book is somewhat misleading. The first half does cover the history of modern physics in more-or-less chronological order, from the classical mechanics of Isaac Newton, the two theories of relativity by Albert Einstein, atomic theory, to the weirdness that is quantum mechanics. But this is Star Trek after all, so Krauss must venture into the fields of astronomy and cosmology in later chapters. He even gives his two cents about biology, psychology, computer science, and philosophy, because of course he does. Unsurprisingly, it’s that last part where Krauss is at his least sure footed. At barely 175 pages, TPOST is a slim volume. But it’s hardly a quick read because of the nature of its subject matter. Nevertheless, Krauss does his best to cut down on the jargon, and there’s not a single mathematical equation in sight. The most he does to illuminate some of the more complex ideas being discussed is to use several schematic drawings. It’s about as plain-spoken as a physics-based science book written by a Ph.D. can get.

What does become apparent as the book progresses is the enormous difficulty of the task Krauss has set up for himself. Star Trek was already a massive franchise in 1995, which included The Original Series, The Next Generation, seven feature films, the first two seasons of Deep Space Nine, and the first season of Voyager. Given that TNG was the most successful part of the franchise, the book tends to reference it more than any of the other Trek series. Like a later-day positivist version of Capra, or a real world Sheldon Cooper, Krauss has to demonstrate fluency in two different realms, then attempt to draw a connection between them as both a trusted expert in his field, and as a judgemental fan.*

That’s not so simple because like any form of speculative fantasy, Star Trek isn’t just cribbing from the textbook. There’s a lot of artistic license involved in the writing of any episode. Trying to make sense of Trek’s fictional universe is like translating a book from English to Chinese, then into Korean, then French, then back into English. Basically, Krauss is assembling his own head-canon. When examining technologies such as the matter transporter or the holodeck, Krauss has to surmise from multiple episodes which aren’t always consistent with each other just how those technologies function before he can give an explanation on whether they might even be feasible in this universe. Is the matter transporter just transmitting a data-rich signal to the receiving device, or is it sending with it a matter stream as well? Is the holodeck just producing holograms, or is it also manipulating solid matter whenever necessary? When he synthesizes a model for how the warp drive might work, Krauss rather optimistically explains, “This scenario must be what the Star Trek writers intended when they invented warp drive, even if it bears little resemblance to the technical descriptions they have provided.” You don’t say?

As for the answers Krauss provides for Star Trek’s three key technologies (warp drive, time travel, matter transporter), here’s the (spoiler alert!) Cliff Notes version of his analysis. All of these technologies would generate stupendous energy requirements that make them virtually unfeasible. And while general relativity does make warp drive and travel to the past at least theoretically possible if not practical, matter transporters run into the theoretical limits of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which puts an absolute limit on the precision for measuring the fundamental properties of a subatomic particle. So no one’s beaming up any time soon.

Science has naturally moved on since 1995, though so far not in a direction that would change any of Krauss’ basic answers. The development of quantum teleportation uses particles for encoding and transmitting information, but still won’t allow us to transport a living person. Newer measurements about the fate of the Universe have led cosmologists to speculate about dark energy. The long hypothesized Higgs Boson particle was found in 2013. Another hypothesized phenomena, gravitational waves, was finally detected earlier this year. The discovery of thousands of exoplanets has only deepened the mystery of why we have not yet found new life and new civilization outside of the Earth. Even our own solar system has gotten so complicated that astronomers reclassified Pluto as a “dwarf planet”, whatever the hell that means. And as for exploring strange new worlds, NASA now faces competition from the private sector. But these companies arguably wouldn't exist in the first place without Stat Trek serving as inspiration.

However cleverly organized, TPOST utilizes only a very narrow set of tools to study the franchise. So it comes as no great shock that the book has galvanized other experts to give their own interpretations based on their particular field of knowledge. To date, this has included biology, computer science, ethics, business management, history, metaphysics, and religious studies. But I suspect that the book which will resonate most with the current market is the one that tackles how the Federation managed to build a post-scarcity society from a post-apocalyptic setting. If Lawrence Krauss has succeeded, however accidentally, in proving one thing, it’s that Star Trek can be viewed to be just about anything.
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*Krauss prefers the label "Trekker" when talking about Star Trek fans.

In honour of Star Trek's 50th anniversary, I'll be writing a series of posts discussing a favorite example of Star Trek related media.

Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry.

Just a Geek 
by Wil Wheaton

Former child actor Wil Wheaton once came to a fateful decision during a 1989 Star Trek cruise. After observing the apparently unhappy state of the original series cast members in attendance, he chose to leave the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation and jump start a film acting career. This looked like a good idea, when considering the circumstances. Wesley Crusher was an unpopular character often perceived by fans as a Mary Sue standing in for Gene Roddenberry. His presence on the show was greatly diminished. And Wil wasn't getting along with new executive producer Rick Berman. So it seemed like as good a time as any to jump ship and try something new. But instead of leading to bigger and better things, his acting career would stutter and then come to a complete standstill. Wil would spend the next 15 years ruing his decision to leave the legendary franchise at the height of its popularity. Two byproducts of this rocky period were a popular blog he began in 2001, and a memoir published in 2004 called Just a Geek.

Wil’s connection to TNG was initially the obvious draw when I first discovered his blog. But it soon became clear that unlike most other actor’s websites, which usually function as a vehicle for self-promotion, Wil was more than willing to discuss his many failed efforts to land an acting gig. His early blog posts often attempted to be glib about these experiences, but over time would increasingly express anger, disappointment, desperation, and self-recrimination. This is carried over into JAG. Roughly half the book’s content is material reprinted from his blog posts. But unlike most bloggers, Wil developed a true command of story structure. His best posts are typically written as well-crafted anecdotes usually conveying some kind of point, or at least an amusing punchline.

But the meat of the book is found in the original content, designed to connect the disparate blog posts into a unified narrative. Wil’s blog was often praised for its candid and personal quality. But he admits here that there’s an element of public performance to his blogging. Wil initially tries to convince himself and his audience that his career didn’t take a nosedive after he left TNG. His narcissistic inner struggle is displaced and divided into two anthropomorphized duelling voices: "Prove To Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn't A Mistake” and the “The Voice of Self Doubt.” But numerous failed auditions grind down whatever optimism he once possessed, and Will begins to express frustration towards the industry. He bitterly complains about Hollywood’s preference for “edgy” actors and pursuit of all things popular. And like many has-beens, his fragile ego takes a further beating as he’s reduced to dependency on the convention circuit, desperately hawking autographs, reminding fans (and even fellow cast members he’s fallen out of touch with) that he still exists, appearing on game shows or any event that would have him, and selling personal items on eBay. That’s when he hits rock bottom and starts reconsidering whether he even still wants to be an actor.

One remedy to Wil’s downward spiral of depression and denial is his love of Star Trek. Virtually all of the book’s emotional highs are about his intermittent involvement with the Star Trek franchise. Wil’s unusual position is that he blurs the line between  celebrity and fan due to his being a lot younger than the rest of the TNG cast, a factor that inevitably colors Wil’s personal interactions with them. He’s never quite their equal in terms of experience or maturity. So he ends up playing the role of the callow youth who looks up to his smarter, wiser, and more well-adjusted colleagues. This has the benefit of making him into a POV character for the reader whenever the cast convenes at a convention, or most memorably during the filming of the wedding scene in Star Trek: Nemesis.

But Star Trek is also a source of great ambivalence, which isn't surprising given the book’s premise. Wil’s pop culture legacy already includes an internet meme sometimes called “The Wesley.” Things come to a head in a famous blog post describing Wil having an imaginary conversation with a beloved Wesley Crusher action figure. The post is included in the book to document the author finally exorcising his personal demons. It’s an uplifting story about how Wil learned to see the character he’s most known for playing in its proper perspective. But whatever inner peace Wil achieves is later shaken when he receives news that not only was all his dialogue in Nemesis left on the cutting room floor, he was also snubbed from receiving any invitation to attend the film’s premiere.

12 years after JAG was published, Wil’s informal writing style remains just as engaging. It's a precursor to the uncomplicated, chatty tone now prevalent on the Web, minus the emojis. The book makes for a quick read. But a few things also stick out. Because JAG is based on blog posts revolving around Wil’s own quest for self-validation, none of the other characters ever come into proper focus. Not even his faithful wife who puts up with a lot of his sh__. No doubt this was a decision on Wil’s part not to reveal too much about his private life. But this does mean that the reader is stuck in Wil’s head for the duration of the entire book. The effect of this myopia isn't entirely satisfactory as it can at times leave the impression that a few crucial elements might have been left out of the story.

Another source of annoyance (at least to me) is the uneven quality of Wil’s authorial voice. Wil has a habit of switching back and forth from a more flippant attitude to one that's more confessional. He isn’t afraid to being a little sentimental when he’s being serious. But then Wil tries to inject some humor, and the effect can be a little dissonant. This is especially cumbersome when he juxtaposes very juvenile and crass statements with more doleful insights. An early example in the book is when he visits a Hooters restaurant, spends time ogling the waitress and talking about her boobs, only to be reminded of his status as a failed actor. His transition from leering fratboy to morose artist can be quite awkward.

JAG was fashioned to chronicle the experiences of a struggling young actor who transitions into a writer. But 12 years on, it’s become more than apparent that the internet has facilitated a new kind of fame, one which Wil just happens to be an early manifestation. His blogging would anticipate how today’s celebrities have become heavily engaged with social media. While many of them work hard to connect with their fans, Wil has already convinced his fans that he’s just one of them. He may not have fulfilled his ambitions for the silver screen, but Wil’s newfound popularity has helped to revive his acting career. And no matter what, Wil has still managed to preserve his brand of geek identity. Only now, he’s joined during the rapidly burgeoning convention season by a new generation of web-savvy nerdlebrities such as Adam Savage, Jonathan Coulton, and Felicia Day. Wil Wheaton isn't alone.