Star Trek Reminds Us We Can Do Better: Thoughts on Star Trek's 60th Anniversary

 

My 60th anniversary popcorn bucket from AMC Theaters

The first time I realized I loved Star Trek was while watching Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, a memory I relived yesterday at my local theater for Star Trek's 60th anniversary. 

Captain Kirk and crew go back in time from the 23rd century to 1986 San Francisco to bring some whales back to the future in order to avert a cataclysm via mysterious whale-song aliens (most Star Trek fans refer to this as The One With The Whales!). When they arrive in 1986 and Starfleet-out-of-water shenanigans unfold, Kirk remembers, "they're still using money."

My ten-year-old mind reeled! They don't have money in the future? What? How could something that caused so much drama and heartache in the lives of all the adults in my life simply .... not exist?

ConNooga 2026!

 

This weekend I'm heading to ConNooga! With the recent end of Chattacon (RIP), ConNooga is now one of the longer running local cons here in Chattanooga, TN. Some of the friends I met at Chattacon are even coming to ConNooga this year. It will be great to introduce them to a different kind of con in Chattanooga.

Last year the ConNooga Deep Thought track made its glorious return (I forgot to do a ConNooga post last year, but here's the 2024 post). This year I'm once again participating in some Deep Thought (I mean, how embarrassing would it be for a philosophy professor and fan of Douglas Adams to not participate in Deep Thought?). 

Holiday Review of Reviews 2025

 

Dear reader, I haven't been posting book reviews here on the blog as much as I would like the last few months. I've still been writing some reviews over on Goodreads, but I haven't even been keeping up over there. It has been a busy few months, and the energy for blogging has often been elusive.

I could keep castigating myself, or I could just post the reviews! 

After I post this, I have two more reviews to finish of Death's End by Cixin Liu and Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King. I may also return to a holiday tradition from my past: reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings! I may even read A Christmas Carol, which I've been thinking about the last few years in line with my tradition of watching holiday horror movies.

Anyway, here are my reviews of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, Books of Blood, Vol. 3 by Clive Barker, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, Speculative Whiteness by Jordan S. Carroll, The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, The Fall of Gilead (graphic novel inspired by Stephen King's Dark Tower), and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

Happy Holidays to you and all sentient beings! May all beings be jolly!

Random Thoughts, Part 28: Super Sized and Super Random

 

Dear reader, I have been remiss. I have not posted in my Random Thoughts series in almost seven months. I have been doing a lot of random thinking since then. And I have collected even more random funny images. So without further ado, enjoy this Super Sized and Super Random collection of my Random Thoughts!

Utopias, Dystopias, and Somewheres In Between: Utopia, The Blazing World, We, The Hunger Games, Divergent, and More

 

I've been reading more dystopian stuff than usual lately, not just in the news, but because I'm currently teaching a class on Utopias and Dystopias. I'm also teaching my Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy class, and depending on who you ask, Plato's Republic is a utopia, dystopia, or both.

What's the point of utopias and dystopias? Utopias seem, well, utopian and unobtainable. And boring, but I think the "boring" label is more a result of lack of imagination than anything inherent to utopias. I think we'd still have plenty to keep us busy if everyone's basic needs were met--we could finally go about figuring out what this whole human experience is supposed to be. But I digress.

Dystopias are either never going to happen, or depending on where and when you look, have been or are already happening. Especially as I write this on Indigenous Peoples Day, I'm reminded of a comment from Indigenous creator Dale Deforest at a panel at Worldcon in August that a lot of Native Americans have been living in various states of dystopia for hundreds of years and still today (I'm hoping for a swift and effective response to a typhoon in Alaska that has affected mostly Indigenous people).

But I think the "could it happen?" question is the wrong question, or at least not the most interesting question to ask. (Not that this stopped me from asking this last week when I showed my students an episode of The Handmaid's Tale). Sure, dystopias might remind us that things could get worse, and utopias might remind us that we could do better, but I think they do something even deeper.

As Mary Midgley said in her essay "Practical Utopianism," utopias and dystopias show us possibilities, often quite exaggerated, of where we could go, roadmaps of roads we may never travel, all to change our sense of the terrain. And I'd like to think this type of story can also expand our sense of possibility as what Ursula Le Guin called "realists of a larger reality."

Exploring the terrain of dystopias and utopias helps us to explore what we think about ourselves, our societies, and more, to find the many utopias, dystopias, and somewheres in between.

Toward that end, here are my reviews of some of the terrain of utopias and dystopias that I've been exploring lately: Utopia by Thomas More, The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins, Divergent by Veronica Roth, and Authority by Jeff VanderMeer.

If you are ever stuck in a dystopia or an ambiguous utopia, dear reader, may the odds be ever in your favor!

Birthday Reflections 2025: Death, Love, and Birthdays

 

In my birthday blog posts, I always mention that birthdays are both a good reason to celebrate life as well as a reminder of our mortality. Birthdays eventually lead to a deathday for us all. None of us are here forever. 

Since my previous birthday, this fact has become even more exigent for me. Last October I lost two friends within two days of one another. One acquaintance died a few months ago. We lost my wife's aunt as well. I lost another friend just last week. 

I miss them all deeply. I’m no stranger to grief. I’ve written a lot about losing my mom 25 years ago. That grief is with me every day and always will be. 

Still, this year I can’t help but think that the friends I lost in the last year were close to my age. And my mom was only two years older than I am now when she died. Every year, my age provides less and less insulation from the realization that none of us are here forever, and I am no exception. 

First Contact Day, Hands Off, and the Fruitfully Inscrutable Effects of Protest

 

A shot of the Hands Off Protest in Chattanooga, TN, April 5, 2025.
You can see me in the street on duty as a crossing guard. (Credit: Sophia Cowan)

Yesterday, April 5, 2025, saw the the confluence of two events. For Star Trek fans, it was First Contact Day, a day that celebrates first contact between humans and Vulcans, which in most Star Trek timelines will take place on April 5, 2063 (a mere 38 years from now!). Yesterday was also a Hands-Off protest with over 1000 individual events around the US, including here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Millions of Americans nationwide protested the recent dramatic actions of the Trump administration and his ally Elon Musk.

How on Earth (or any other planet) could these two events be connected?

A Long-Overdue Review of Reviews: Le Guin, Said, Howey, St. Clair, Herbert/Anderson, and Shea/Wilson

 

Dear reader, I have been somewhat remiss in recent months about posting book reviews. To be completely honest, I have been a bit remiss in writing them at all. I mark them "read" intending to write reviews later and then... just sort of run out of steam or get busy or whatever. I've had Goodreads tabs open for months... At last the time has come to remedy this self-inflicted promise to myself. So here are some short-ish reviews of Almost Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, Orientalism by Edward Said, Wool by Hugh Howey, A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair, The Machine Crusade by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and The Golden Apple by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

Thoughts on Our Fifth Pandemiversary

The masks I carry with me everywhere, even though I rarely wear them these days.

 

Five years ago today, the world changed with one press conference. The World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 health crisis was officially a pandemic. I was traveling at the time. I cut my trip short and rented a car to drive home instead of flying. And everything changed.

Or did it?

I've been writing these pandemiversary posts since 2021. I often use it as a chance to reflect on how this experience has changed myself and others--and whether any of us have learned anything through our collective trauma.

Random Thoughts, Part 24: Opinions, Generations, AI, Ambition, 666, Doppelgängers, Noticing the Beauty of the Universe, etc.

 

My long-running Random Thoughts series has continued, randomly. Here we are at Part 24, which I'm happy to announce includes Random Thought 666! And there are also memes, because why not? Enjoy!

Favorite Utopias New and Old: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers and The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

 

I was recently in the mood for some unabashed utopian science fiction. I had been saving the second volume of Becky Chambers's Monk and Robot series for the right moment. And I've been meaning to reread all of Iain M. Banks's Culture series ever since I frequently gushed about it so much on this very blog back in the mid-2010's.

I need some time to mull it over, but I think Chambers's Monk and Robot series may be one of my all-time favorites. I’d say I want to give it a million stars if that sort of hyperbole didn’t feel contrary to its entire ethos.

I loved it so much that I couldn't think of how to review it properly. So instead I wrote this weird... review? Or whatever this is...

Movie and TV Mini-Reviews: The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, and More

As the prophecy of a recent post foretold, I'm back with some short reviews of movies and TV I've been watching lately. I'm including The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, John Wick 4, Sinister, Insidious, and X. These reviews get weirdly impressionistic, so if you're looking for elaborate plot summaries and the like, you may be disappointed. Just the mood I'm in these days, I guess. Enjoy!

Ghost Grandma Goes Interstellar: On the Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds

 

I really enjoyed Blue Remembered Earth, and I really enjoyed this sequel, too. Both at times feel a bit overly long, I didn't always 100% understand what was going on (Reynolds has a tendency to focus on weird details while mentioning major plot points in passing), and sometimes there are so many balls in the air it's hard to say that Reynolds managed to juggle them all into a cohesive narrative. 

Expanding the Expanse: Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey

 

I read the first two books of The Expanse book series around 2013 and 2014. I meant to read the third book soon... and then I didn't. Instead, I watched the entire TV show The Expanse, which just ended recently. Occasionally while watching the TV series over the years, I would think, "I should read the rest of the books someday." And then I didn't. Until now!

Melancholy Utopianism: The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

The Ministry of the Future is up there with Kim Stanley Robinson's best work. Given how much I love his work, this counts as high praise from me.

If you're familiar with Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR), you'll have some idea of what to expect. A lot of wonky, nerdy details delivered in what his critics would call "info dumps," a lot of cool Big Ideas, a delightful thrashing of the "show don't tell" rule that's sure to give nightmares many creative writing teachers, and oh yeah, some characters and plot and stuff, too. (Indeed, I sometimes wonder if a writer like KSR would get published today given how he cuts against the grain.)

What would Gene Roddenberry think about William Shatner’s Blue Origin flight?

 

Today William Shatner took a trip on a Blue Origin rocket, and I had some thoughts about it and wrote some of them down in my pandemic journal as I was procrastinating doing the stuff I was supposed to be doing this morning. To be more honest than you're supposed to be at the beginning of a post like this, I have to admit I'm not sure what Gene Roddenberry would think about today's events. I never met him while he was alive, and I'm not as familiar with his biography as I'd like to be, but he did create Star Trek as an unabashed post-scarcity socialist utopia, so that's in the background of my thoughts. This question seemed to me like a catchy way to think about space travel, Star Trek, the Overview Effect, where we are as a global society, and where we're going. So here you have it...

Election Eve Thoughts, 2020

 

My early voting selfie from Oct. 15, 2020

It's the day before the 2020 US election. I’m not sure I can explain everything I’m thinking and feeling right now, but here it goes.

Bill and Ted's Most Triumphant Return: Bill and Ted Face the Music

 

Bill & Ted Face the Music was released yesterday, and it gave me a chance to do something I haven't done in several months: review a newly-released movie.

Random Thoughts, Part 10 (Now Randomer and Thoughtier)

Made at: https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/

My series of collections of my random thoughts started in December 2018 and shows no sign of letting up. With my previous entry, Part 9 (Pandemic Edition), I noticed that I had almost reached the milestone of 200 random thoughts presented in posts of 20-ish thoughts per post. I decided to wait for one of my most random thoughts to serve as number 200. I'm not sure I succeeded, but it is about a weird random thing I've been doing for decades that may be randomly philosophical and then goes meta- ... so it seems like a good candidate. Enjoy!

Looking Forward to Seeing Con Nooga 2020!

I just realized two things that precipitated this post. One, we're several weeks into the year, and I have yet to make a silly joke about seeing 2020. Two, Con Nooga is tomorrow! If you're not in the know, Con Nooga is a great multi-fandom con that happens every February here in Chattanooga, TN. This year it takes place Feb. 21-23, 2020.