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languagelog_feedOn May 9, M. Paul Shore sent this note to me:
A belated thank-you for the April 22nd Galuppi (1706-1785) link*. I’d never heard of him. That whole Baroque-to-Classical transition phase is a fascinating and enjoyable but underappreciated one. The composers from that phase who get the most attention (and deservedly so) are two of J.S. Bach’s sons, J.C. and C.P.E.
*"A bridge between Baroque & Classical"
To my mind, it’s always a sunny day in Scarlatti-land: even the moments of particular seriousness or slight gloom are just the result of swiftly passing clouds.
What blew my mind away about the Scarlatti-Ross album covers is that they prominently feature the dodecahedron. That made me wonder why the cover designer chose that particular complex, abstract figure to illustrate the Scarlatti albums. Was it because of the geometricity or cosmogonic nature of Scarlatti's sonatas?
When I mentioned the dodecahedron to M. Paul, he replied:
Ah, the dodecahedron! I’ve known that cover design for decades (I have the full Scott Ross CD box set of the sonatas), but never gave the dodecahedron in it any fully conscious thought, let alone relate it to the extensive discussion of the shape on Language Log.
I think we will never be done with the dodecahedron. There's something mathematical and ethereal about it.
Selected readings
wychwoodtordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
tordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
Screenshot: MGM
twistedchickoursinHaving spent a fair amount of time last week finally doing some prep for forthcoming talk on condomz - well, at least pulling together existing visuals from former presentations and digging up a few fresh items to create suitable slides - get message that advance bookings are being very laggardly (apparently a problem with event programme generally?) and they may have to cancel.
SIGH, though I feel this is not lost work and may very well come in useful at some time.
And of course they may not have to cancel, bookings may pick up I suppose.
In rather more cheery news, a little while ago I bopped off an enquiry to The Academic Press with which I published The Co-authored Volume, since I have not heard from them for many a year, and in spite of the fact that lo, 'tis over twenty years now since it burst upon the world, it is still in print. (And still getting cited, yay.)
And I must say their website was a bit of a nightmare to navigate and I ended up sending a plaintive message to a very generic enquiry email as I could not find any other relevant one to apply to.
Behold, I have heard from an Accounts person that they sent a cheque to Former Workplace in 2020 (hah!) which was never cashed, surprise - what between lockdown and the various staff upheavals I was not at all astonished to hear this - but they have now sent me a statement of the royalties accruing (a very modest sum) and asking for my bank details.
Which is better than a bat in the eye with a burnt stick, do admit.
(I am not sure whether the royalties match up to the amounts earned for the same work via the Authors' Licensing and Copyright Society over the same period, but I am not sure that I am massively motivated to check.)
james_davis_nicoll
umadoshi
tordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
April was spent entirely in Chicago hanging out with Ada and having fun playing Papal Election of 1492. I read just four books. This is what happens when I don’t spend any time reading. I’ll have more for you in May, I’m sure!
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears — Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (1995)
Another collection of re-told fairytales, by a large range of people. The last story in the book, Delia Sherman’s “The Printer’s Daughter,” is so wonderful that it almost wiped out the rest of the book in my memory. But there were also great stories by Nancy Kress and Susan Palwick and Lisa Goldstein and a really creepy one by Anne Bishop and that’s just the highlights This is a terrific anthology—if you like re-told fairytales at all, I recommend it.
Gelato Forever — Lynn Joseph (2023)
Yes, a romance novel set in Italy! And in Florence, specifically, and it does a fairly good job of the geography. Ava, the oldest sister of an African American family that lost their mom, became the substitute mom when she was still a teenager, and now for the first time she’s getting to do something for herself. She’s fulfilling her dream of going to gelato school in Florence. On the plane she meets her high school crush, who mistakes her for her younger, more popular sister Bridget. She rolls with this, not expecting to have to keep it up for more than the plane ride, but then of course she does, and they fall in love, and he’s a guy who starts out with trust issues.
More realistic than most such plots, even though the ending is one of the most canonical wish-fulfillment ends I’ve ever seen. I sort of want to spoil the end because it’s such a perfect example of a thing, but there might be people out there who read this to get recs for romance novels set in Italy, and this is a good one: good characters, good Italy, solid family and friends, good pacing. And this is the first US romance novel set in Italy I’ve read that hasn’t leaned into the high-end luxury stuff, Ava goes there to work and learn like a normal person, and experiences Italy the way someone who does that would actually experience it.
Concord: Sabotage — Allen M. Trager (2024)
Emma is the only human living on a huge space ship full of aliens, and there’s an attempt on her life which turns out to be part of a plot to get humans banned from Concord, the association of different “tribes” of aliens who have been in space for millions of years. The background is well thought out, the characters (mostly aliens) are pretty good, but the investigation of the mystery that is the plot drags out a little too long. This is a very fun universe, and the layers of density of the aliens who have been around for millions of years feel very real and well thought through. It would have been a very good book if it had been tightened up, and even as it is I mostly enjoyed it.
The Complete Orsinia— Ursula K. Le Guin (2016)
(Listed as 2016 only because I was reading the Library of America edition that includes the two extra stories; the original Orsinian Tales was published in the Seventies.) Gosh these are good. They’re all set in the imaginary central European country of Orsinia, in times between 1640 and 1989, but mostly nineteenth and twentieth century, and they’re just great. I like Malafrena a lot, but I love these. Some of the characters are in more than one story, and the places and the geography are often in more than one story. They are all mimetic fiction stories, not fantastical, just stories about people living.
So, when I was whining about Michael Chabon and Andrew Sean Greer last month, I was already reading this, and it makes me think you can have stories about people packing up the house at the end of summer, or about an industrial accident, or living under tyranny—mimetic fiction doesn’t have to be zero sum, look, here is Le Guin doing it! I could draw a map of Orsinia; I would recognise the different cities; it feels like a place I could take the train to. Indeed, it feels like a place I might have taken the train through, that a train I was on might have stopped at Aisnar or Krasnoy and I looked out of the window and saw the eighteenth-century streets with trees and thought, oh yes, Aisnar, one day I will have time and come back. There are trains in these stories.
I’ve written before about reading books that are too old for me, and recognising this as something about me and not something about the book. I could understand and love The Dispossessed when I was a teenager, and The Lathe of Heaven, but I wasn’t old enough for Orsinia when I first read it. I’ve grown into them. And this read-through I really loved them, and now I’m sad I’ve finished them and I almost want to turn back to the beginning of Malafrena and read them all again.[end-mark]
The post Jo Walton’s Reading List: April 2026 appeared first on Reactor.
tordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
Screenshot: HBO
annathecrow posting in dreamwarsHi,
this is your weekly chat post. Come and share your SW thoughts!
If you missed it, goodbyebird posted a link to a Star Wars icon collection - maybe you'll find something to expand your collection...
~ ~ ~
Inspired by nothing in particular: one of the UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) in my craft stash is these Rebel Alliance Wrist Warmers. I'm maybe a third through the first one and it already looks lovely, but since it's my first ever colorwork it's taking forever. I do most of my knitting as a fidget, either during work meetings or when visiting family, so projects where I have to focus a lot aren't a great fit. Still, I like them. Maybe I'll get them done by winter.
Have you ever tried any Star Wars related crafts?
tordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
tordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
Credit: Warner Bros.
Credit: Warner Bros.
On June 3, 1969, Star Trek (aka Star Trek: The Original Series) aired its final first-run episode, “Turnabout Intruder.” Canceled by NBC after three seasons and 79 episodes, Star Trek was a groundbreaking but expensive show that, while scoring decent ratings, never became the kind of hit that justified the network keeping it on the air. As the cast and crew went their separate ways, as the sets were dismantled, and as the show was seemingly destined to fade into the mists of TV history, one question remained: what would its creator do next?
Star Trek was the brainchild of Gene Roddenberry, a former Los Angeles police officer turned journeyman TV writer. Star Trek was the second series that he created and shepherded to the air (following The Lieutenant, which lasted only a single season), but as a result of the show’s cult success, his name became inextricably tied to the series to the point that it became the dominant part of his personal and professional identity.
But after Star Trek was canceled—and before it blossomed from cult TV show into pop culture phenomenon—Roddenberry still had a career to continue, a living to make, and a family to feed. What did he do during the decade between the end of the original show and the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979? The short answer is that, like any writer or producer working in Hollywood, Roddenberry pursued other projects for both the big and small screens. Yet none of them achieved the kind of success that Star Trek had achieved, and many of them didn’t stray very far from the concepts and ideas that fueled his beloved science fiction series.
While the projects he worked on during the ‘70s are interesting to view today as objects of curiosity—and a couple of them now seem either wildly inappropriate or of questionable taste—few of them had the same creative fire or sense of imagination as his greatest concept. In the end, for better or worse, all roads led Gene Roddenberry back to Star Trek.
Roddenberry could not immediately get work after Star Trek was canceled; he felt that he was pigeonholed as a sci-fi writer and now had a reputation for being difficult to work with due to his constant fights with NBC to keep Star Trek on the air. By the dawn of the 1970s, he was badly in need of income. According to Joel Engel’s Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and The Man Behind Star Trek, MGM vice president Herb Solow—who had helped Roddenberry develop Star Trek at Desilu Studios—did Roddenberry a favor by paying him $100,000 to produce and pen the screenplay for a film called Pretty Maids All in a Row.
Based on a novel by Francis Pollini, Pretty Maids starred Rock Hudson as the beloved assistant principal, football coach, and guidance counselor at a California high school, who uses his popularity with the students to sleep with as many of the female students as he can. At the same time, he encourages an attractive, divorced substitute teacher (Angie Dickinson) to seduce an awkward male student he’s mentoring, hoping it will give the boy more confidence with women and himself. Then one of the girls that the Hudson character has bedded threatens to expose their tryst, leading to a series of murders on campus.
Viewed now, Pretty Maids All in a Row is—to say the least—incredibly unseemly. While bolstered by a solid cast (which also included Telly Savalas, Keenan Wynn, Roddy McDowall, and Star Trek holdovers James “Scotty” Doohan and William “Trelane” Campbell), the film’s attitude toward Hudson’s sexual exploits with his students is casual at best. All the girls—costumed in ultra-mini skirts by William Ware Theiss, the same costume designer who put all the female Star Trek officers in short skirts—are seen as none-too-bright but all-too-willing participants in Hudson’s ongoing abuse of his power. Dickinson’s character, meanwhile, is so sexually frustrated that her token reluctance to have sex with a teenage boy is quickly cast aside.
Pretty Maids was directed by Roger Vadim, who sculpted Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda into “sex kittens” in films like And God Created Woman and Barbarella. While Roddenberry expressed disappointment in the finished film, it seems likely that his view of women—one shaped by the prevailing attitudes of the time, the omnipresent “male gaze,” and his own appetites (depending on the account, Roddenberry was either a progressive, a libertine, or a wanton philanderer when it came to sexual relationships)—more or less meshed with that of the director. But the tone of the film, a combination of sex comedy and murder mystery that never gels into anything coherent, doomed it as much as its outdated values.
Pretty Maids was not a success with either critics or moviegoers, and while Roddenberry did develop other feature film scripts (more on that below), he was inevitably forced to return to television and the science fiction genre. While eking out a living as a lecturer at colleges and on the then-nascent Star Trek convention circuit, Roddenberry found himself developing a number of proposed TV series for CBS, ABC, Warner Bros. Television, and even NBC, despite his struggles with the latter network and his overall reputation. Of the ones he actively developed, he produced pilots for four—all of which aired as TV movies but were not picked up as series.
The first of these was Genesis II (1973), in which Alex Cord starred as Dylan Hunt, a scientist who awakens from an experiment in suspended animation some 154 years into the future, where he learns that nuclear war destroyed much of civilization shortly after he went under, and that humankind is only now slowly rebuilding itself, albeit in scattered, often primitive societies. The most advanced of these, called PAX, works to help the other communities, accessing most of what used to be the United States (and, it’s implied, the world) through a high-speed underground railway that was completed shortly before the war.
In the pilot/TV movie, Hunt is initially recruited by a race of mutants called the Tyranians (subtle, eh?), who claim to want to rebuild society but in fact want to enslave the rest of humanity (the Tyranians can be identified by their two navels, an in-joke by Roddenberry since NBC forbade the showing of navels less than a decade earlier on Star Trek). Although Hunt, not really knowing which way is up in this altered world, is torn at first between the two groups, he eventually aligns with PAX, and the movie ends with the promise of further adventures for him and PAX as they encounter the various societies and tribes springing up around the globe.
As with several of the other projects he developed during the course of the ’70s, Genesis II incorporates ideas that had first prospered on Star Trek. The “man out of the past” concept was best exemplified by the classic “Space Seed” episode, in which 20th century dictator Khan is reawakened by the crew of the Enterprise. In fact, in his book The World of Star Trek, David Gerrold described the premise of Genesis II as “Star Trek without the Enterprise.” Had Genesis II gone forward as a series, Hunt and his team would venture every week to a new society and solve whatever problems they encountered there. The subway was a combination of the Enterprise and the transporter, getting the heroes in and out of situations on a rapid basis.
As an earthbound version of Star Trek, Genesis II certainly showed promise. But the movie itself hasn’t aged well: the costumes (again by Theiss) are all flowing robes and peekaboo dresses, while Hunt is both a brilliant scientist and a fountain of double entendres (it doesn’t help that the female villain, a Tyranian spy played by Mariette Hartley, uses sex to snap him out of his post-slumber fog). It’s got some scale by 1970s TV movie standards, although it’s tough to imagine the network not reusing the same old sets and locations to keep the budget in line.
We never got a chance to find out whether the series would have worked; although CBS encouraged Roddenberry to develop the series—with half a dozen scripts ordered—the network had a change of heart and abruptly pulled the plug thanks to another iconic sci-fi property: Planet of the Apes. Stunned by the high ratings generated from the original movie’s network premiere on CBS, the execs decided to scrap Genesis II and forge ahead with a Planet of the Apes program (debuting in 1974, it lasted for 14 episodes).
Undaunted, Roddenberry reconfigured the concept as Planet Earth and took it to ABC, which commissioned a new pilot (shades of NBC ordering a second Star Trek pilot after rejecting the first one) with a revamped cast. John Saxon starred as Hunt in this version, in which he’s already established as a member of PAX and leader of a team tasked with bringing civilization and peace to the different societies they discover via the underground subway. The new pilot, which was also aired as a TV film, was far more action-oriented than Genesis II, with the Saxon version of Hunt much more of a conventional action hero prone to fisticuffs—like a certain starship captain—than the previous version’s more conflicted protagonist.
Unfortunately, the society that Roddenberry (with the help of co-writer Juanita Bartlett) had Hunt and his team infiltrate was a matriarchal one, in which the women were the rulers and the men were treated as slaves, pets, or sexual playthings. “Women’s lib gone mad,” as Hunt utters in the show—an example of Roddenberry’s ham-fisted approach—and the costumes again don’t do the women any favors in multiple fight or action scenes.
Planet Earth was not greenlit as a series either, but the idea refused to die: a new variation, called Strange New World and once again starring Saxon, aired on ABC in 1975. Roddenberry quit early in the development process for this version, and is not credited as either a writer or producer on the film, which—like the first two attempts—did not yield an ongoing series. Yet Roddenberry’s idea of a human from one time period being reawakened in the future to lead a societal restoration kept resurfacing: in the series Andromeda (2000-2005), which was based on unused material left behind by Roddenberry after his death, the main character is “frozen in time” for 300 years. His name? Dylan Hunt.
The first inklings of a Star Trek revival began to surface around 1973. Roddenberry was hired as an “executive consultant” on the short-lived Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974), where his job was basically reading the scripts and giving notes. Yet the success of the original show’s reruns in syndication and the growing fandom prompted discussions between NBC, Paramount, and Roddenberry about either a movie or a new series. Roddenberry also employed many members of the original Star Trek cast and crew on his other projects during this time, including James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Diana Muldaur, Mariette Hartley, his wife Majel Barrett, director Marc Daniels, and writers Samuel A. Peeples and Gene L. Coon.
Among the other series he developed during these years, which never got to the screen, was a futuristic police show called The Tribunes, a bizarre semi-autobiographical script called The Nine (in which the creator of a 1960s sci-fi TV show is hired to write a film that will prepare humanity for the arrival of a superior alien race), and a screenplay titled Magna 1, in which a future Earth is divided between those who live on the land and those who live in the water. Another proposed series, Battleground: Earth, in which seemingly benevolent alien visitors infiltrate human civilization, also went nowhere, but some of the material was repurposed years later for the show Earth: Final Conflict, which ran for five seasons between 1997 and 2002.
Roddenberry did get two more projects onto television screens before Star Trek returned for good and essentially ate up the rest of his career, and both were arguably an improvement over the Genesis II/Planet Earth films. The first—and almost undoubtedly the best—was The Questor Tapes, a pilot that aired on NBC in January 1974. Directed by Richard Colla and co-written by Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon—who had written and produced many of Star Trek’s finest episodes—the film starred Robert Foxworth as Questor, an android created by a mysterious scientist named Vaslovik, whose disappearance has left Questor’s memory banks and programming incomplete. With the help of Vaslovik’s assistant, a brilliant engineer named Jerry Robinson (Mike Farrell), Questor sets out to find his creator—with the organization that funded the entire project hot on their heels to capture Questor for their own ends.
Roddenberry wrote the part of the unemotional Questor for Leonard Nimoy, but Robert Foxworth (who was cast without Roddenberry’s input) does an excellent job as the synthetic, whose combination of logic, strength, and child-like innocence can be seen in retrospect as the template for Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Farrell is equally empathetic as Robinson, who teaches Questor human values and emotions on their journey together—a relationship that in some ways was similar to that of Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy on Star Trek. The film ends with Questor discovering the fate of Vaslovik and his own true purpose—a solid science fictional concept that could have provided the groundwork for a thought-provoking series.
But again, it was not to be: Although the pilot sold, the series was scheduled, and work started on the first dozen episodes, the executives at the network began to request changes. They wanted the ending of the film—where Questor meets Vaslovik and learns they are both androids, created by an ancient race to subtly guide humankind—ignored completely, and they wanted the Mike Farrell character eliminated, removing the logic/emotion dynamic that was supposed to power the series. Roddenberry walked and the series collapsed.
The last project he created before the return of Star Trek, called Spectre, was yet another unsold pilot that was broadcast by NBC (which seemed to have a love/hate relationship with the man) in May 1977 and released theatrically in the U.K. A horror-occult outing, it starred Robert Culp (The Outer Limits) and Gig Young as a pair of paranormal detectives investigating cases involving the supernatural. With Culp as the “scientist” and Young as his medical counterpart, the story in some ways reflected the same Spock-McCoy relationship that The Questor Tapes also tapped, while the “occult investigators” angle foreshadowed the arrival of shows like The X-Files.
By the time Spectre aired, the revival of Star Trek—a labyrinthine journey that could easily warrant its own article—was in full swing. Paramount, which co-owned the property with Roddenberry, initially proposed a modestly-budgeted feature film; after two years of rejecting one story pitch after another, the studio pivoted, deciding in 1977 that a new Star Trek series would serve as the anchor for a fourth broadcast television network. The show, called Star Trek: Phase II, was weeks away from production, with all the original cast except Leonard Nimoy, when the success of a little movie called Star Wars convinced the powers-that-be that the future of Star Trek did in fact lay on the big screen—as a blockbuster major motion picture.
That process resulted in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the sole Star Trek movie that Roddenberry produced. Nearly capsized by budget overruns and creative conflicts, the movie was nevertheless a hit that jumpstarted the resurrection of the franchise. Roddenberry acted as only a “consultant” on succeeding Trek films, but did create Star Trek: The Next Generation for television in the mid-1980s, his last significant project until his death in 1991. While Roddenberry had tried to diversify himself as a writer and producer, he could never escape the shadow of his most famous creation, nor did many of its concepts ever seem very far from his mind. Star Trek—which continues to this day through movies, hundreds of hours of television, books, comics, merchandise, games, and more—became his singular legacy.[end-mark]
Sources
The post The “Lost Years” That Led Gene Roddenberry Back To Star Trek appeared first on Reactor.
tordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
When I began the SFF Bestiary, one of the editors’ first requests was that I talk about talking animals. I’ve been circling around the subject ever since. Touching on it here and there, sometimes very tangentially.
I dipped a foot in the water with cats, notably Tailchaser’s Song, along with Warriors and Princess Donut. It was an easy transition from those to Rita Mae Brown’s world of cats and dogs and horses and foxes, all doing their best to get through to oblivious humans.
Brown’s humans never quite catch on to the fact that animals are talking to each other all the time. Fluently, in full sentences, expressing complex concepts. These concepts, like many of the animals’ names (Reynard the fox, Athena the owl, Lafayette the horse), are ultimately human-centric. They live their own lives and are presented as superior beings, but everything comes back, sooner or later, to human ideas and preoccupations.
Humans all over the world tell stories and sing songs of animals who talk to each other like humans, act like humans, think like humans. The world is a mirror. Everywhere we look, we see ourselves.
The technical term is anthropomorphism. Imputing human traits to nonhuman things. When that thing is an animal, the animal talks, because humans do. Human language, human ideas, human ways of doing things.
In folklore and oral storytelling, animals talk to each other. They talk to humans. Humans talk to them. Everyone communicates on the same level, in the same words.
Literary animals may be their natural selves—rabbits, lions, horses, cats—or they may be fully anthropomorphized. Peter Rabbit and his family wear human clothes and do human things. So do Toad and his friends in The Wind in the Willows. And then there’s Winnie the Pooh, who begins his life as a child’s toy, inhabiting a world of toys based on living animals: a bear, a donkey, a tiger, a kangaroo. (And let’s not forget Paddington Bear and Calvin’s inimitable Hobbes.)
Animals rule the world of animated comedy. Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Felix the cat, Sylvester the cat and his arch-foe Tweety Bird, Foghorn Leghorn (whose accent inspires a human avatar, Benoit Blanc), Yogi Bear, Rocky the flying squirrel and Bullwinkle the moose, the list goes on and on.
These animals and their stories are often consigned to the children’s section. Adults are expected to grow out of them. Grownup stories are “real” stories, stories about humans doing “real” things, in a world in which animals stay strictly in their lane. They may make sounds, but they’re not talking. Talking is a human thing.
And yet, humans of all ages keep right on loving their talking animals. Cartoons are grand entertainment for kids, but there are whole levels and layers of wit and satire that the grown-up kid will catch. Bugs Bunny’s riff on Wagnerian opera is central to my childhood; the older I get, the more I appreciate the gloriously cracked genius of a wiseass rabbit in a brass bra and a winged helmet (and that horse) .
This is going to be an epic chapter of the Bestiary. I’ve got a list, a very long list. Watership Down is on it. The Wind in the Willows. The first volume of Redwall. Bambi. The Lion King. And that’s just the beginning.
What are your favorite talking animals in books and films? What’s classic? What’s new? What should I most definitely not miss?[end-mark]
The post The Universal Appeal of the Talking Animal appeared first on Reactor.
tordotcom_feedPublished on May 11, 2026
Art by Rick Guidice (Credit: ARC / NASA)
Art by Rick Guidice (Credit: ARC / NASA)
You may not worry about the best way to govern generation ships, but I do1. Because I often read SF novels about generation ships (and have written about various approaches to telling stories set on generation ships over the years)—as you may not. But if this is your territory, read on.
Generation ships, by definition, take enough time to get from one star system to another that whole generations will live and die during the voyage. Will their governing systems keep on working over such extended voyages?
Human history teaches us (or at least some of us) that governments and their societies can fail catastrophically. Thus the marked lack of Hittites on the UN Security Council, not to mention the absence of the Harappans in the G8. Societal collapse can be devastating; there are estimates that populations fell by half or more in the regions affected by the Late Bronze Age Collapse. That’s on Earth, where people can at least count on the air to be breathable2 and where possible refugia are just a desperate march or sail away.
Generation ships traverse barren gulfs. No resources, no refuge. They are more isolated than any previous human culture. Societal collapse will probably ensure extinction.
So: I recently realized that there are at least two ways in which authors can configure plot-friendly settings. One is Watsonian (from the perspective of the characters). One is Doylist (from the perspective of the author).
While the motivation for boarding a generation ship can vary wildly from “what a cool thing to do!” to “those men with the bayonets were very insistent I get on board,” likely most people on generation ships want to live long and happy (at least, as happy as possible under the circumstances) lives. They hope the vessel and their descendants will reach their destination. They will want to live under a government that maximizes happiness and sustainability, one that will be able to weather foreseen and unforeseen challenges.
The goal here is not to have a perfect government. Rather, it is to have one whose failure modes are not collapses, because a collapse is a death sentence. Failing that, you probably want a government whose average intervals between collapses is at least twice as long as the duration of the journey3.
There are at least two ways to tackle the problem. The first is to embrace some novel, idealistic approach crafted with great thought to suit the unprecedented situation. The second is to turn to history to see if this is a solved problem4. Mix and combine to taste.
Wait, no. There is a third solution, which is ignore the issue and hope for the best. Good luck with that.
As previously stated, I have thought about this a lot. My conclusion is that the best form of government under these circumstances is the sort that doesn’t suddenly implode, whereas the worst is the sort that does. The rest is mere detail.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the worst enemy of a protagonist is likely to be their author. The primary goal for an author is an interesting story. “Interesting story” and “protagonist’s happiness and well-being” are sets that do overlap… but not by much. In fact, they overlap so little you might need a powerful visual assistive device to spot the overlap.
From the author’s point of view, the best form of government for a generation ship is the one that facilitates the story they want to tell.
Does the author want to highlight the ability of a government based on Society of Friends protocols to deal with trying circumstances? In that case, expect a government in which Quakers or Quaker analogs calmly discuss things until they reach a consensus5.
Does the author want a state of tension between officers and mutinous crew to complicate first contact with intelligent carnivorous plants? Expect high-handed command staff little interested in feedback from the rank and file.
Does the author want the protagonist to discover that everything they know is wrong, and that the ship is not the whole universe? Expect government by ignorant, doctrinaire fools.
Does the author want to force on the three protagonists the need to visit ship section after ship section in weekly episodes, questing for the knowledge needed to prevent the semi-derelict ship from flying into a star? Expect a total lack of government, thanks to an ill-timed catastrophe.
Does the author want to write cozy mysteries? Then the government will be largely functional and onstage just enough to sufficiently establish that there is a desirable normalcy which the protagonist’s keen insight can restore.
While Watsonian and Doylist reasoning may seem unrelated or even opposed, they are united by the author’s need to avoid breaking the reader’s suspension of disbelief. Humans being humans, the ship’s government seems certain to make some bad decisions. Those bad decisions need to be ones that readers will believe those characters and societies could plausibly make under their particular circumstances. Otherwise, readers and reviewers will mutter phrases like “idiot plot” and “Dorothy Heydt’s Eight Deadly Words.”
How best to do that? Well, that is for each individual author to solve. Tackling problems like the above are why authors are paid the big bucks6.[end-mark]
︎︎︎︎︎︎The post Two Plot-Friendly Approaches to Generation Ships appeared first on Reactor.
james_davis_nicoll
cakewrecks_feedEverybody loves getting a cake, right?
Well, unless it's one of these.
Hah! Wait, you are joking, right? Uh, yeah, I think maybe I'll pass - thanks, though. Really.
No, seriously; now you just seem too eager. Keep your stinkin' cake, alright?
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Back off, Chucky-boy!
No!
Well, I should think so! You're supposed to be sweet little confections, not all threatening and...
...eek! Uh, no problem, mister Cake, sir - not a word from me, nuh-uh!
Kelly, Moxie, Michele H., Ashley C., and Nikki P., I've been trying to cut down on sugar lately, and I think it's getting to me. If you'll excuse me, I'm just going to go lay down for a spell...
*****
P.S. For folks who appreciate a good linguistics lol:
"Just like grammar used to make," hehehe. More colors at the link.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
slacktivist_feedcase in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #7066 ]languagelog_feed - Scarlatti and dodecahedronswychwood - johohe! hallajo! hohoha! hallojo! ho! ha! ha! ja! hallajo! hallaha! hallahoja!tordotcom_feed - The Long Game Continues: James S.A. Corey’s The Faith of Beaststordotcom_feed - Westworld Remake in the Works From Jurassic Park Screenwriter David Koepptwistedchick - huh?oursin - Well, minuses and pluses I supposejames_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Atomic Robo (from 2021) & Atomic Robo New Eraumadoshi - Last week's media, a bit belatedlytordotcom_feed - Jo Walton’s Reading List: April 2026tordotcom_feed - Steve Buscemi Is Going to Be a Totally Normal Guest Star on Ryan Coogler’s X-Filesannathecrow in dreamwars - Yes, this is indeed a chat cornertordotcom_feed - Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Phoenix Rising”tordotcom_feed - The “Lost Years” That Led Gene Roddenberry Back To Star Trektordotcom_feed - The Universal Appeal of the Talking Animaltordotcom_feed - Two Plot-Friendly Approaches to Generation Shipsjames_davis_nicoll - Two Plot-Friendly Approaches to Generation Shipscakewrecks_feed - Passive Aggressive Cakesdaily_otter_feed - Snacking in the Bathslacktivist_feed - The truth is out thereregna
