What is a drabble, you ask? A drabble is a short story of precisely one hundred words. No more. No less. I write drabbles for fun. Usually as a writing warm-up exercise. Occasionally for profit, when for Pocket’s Strange New Worlds VI contest two years ago I submitted many drabbles for consideration. (Come to thinkContinue reading “Drabble-y Goodness”
Tag Archives: Star Trek
On Future Evolution
In Greg Benford’s Foundation’s Fear there’s mention of a planet in the days before the fall of the Galactic Empire where humans are green. I don’t know the hows or whys–Benford doesn’t explain. It seems to me that it would be an adaptation to their environment, and a green pigmentation provided a protection against unusualContinue reading “On Future Evolution”
On Energy Weapons and Kinetic Weapons in Star Trek
This has been playing on my mind for a few days. There’s a problem with Star Trek. It’s a little too high tech. It’s like how everything hovers, when wheels are perfectly good ways of getting around. It bothers me that energy weapons seem to be the rule of the day in the 24th-century. InContinue reading “On Energy Weapons and Kinetic Weapons in Star Trek”
On Star Trek Commodores
Commodore is, in naval history, a title rather than a rank, held by a captain who commands a fleet, essentially like an admiral, but without the promotion, and for a limited period of time. What we’ve seen in Star Trek is that Commodore is a rank. Bob Wesley, in “The Ulimate Computer,” was acting inContinue reading “On Star Trek Commodores”
On The Case of the Colonist's Corpse
I have to give mad props to Pocket for the red dye on the edge of Colonist’s Corpse‘s pages. That really does evoke the memory of haunting used bookshops looking for vintage 1950s/60s paperbacks. Maybe it would have been asking too much for the book to be printed in microtype, in a taller-than-standard size, andContinue reading “On The Case of the Colonist's Corpse”
On Star Trek Hybrids
I have long held that in saying that Spock is half-human, half-Vulcan, a person is verbalizing imperfectly a rather complicated concept in a manner that is accurate in the general but not in the particular. In general, because Spock’s father is Vulcan and his mother is human, then Spock is half-and-half. In particular, though, itContinue reading “On Star Trek Hybrids”
On Star Trek Comics Crossovers
Comic book crossovers. They happen all the time. Fans love ’em. Why not for Star Trek? We’ve had two–the two X-Men crossovers by Marvel in the mid-90s. But what of other possibilities? I’ve wanted to read a Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes comic crossover since the Giffen/Bierbaum era of the Legion, which would put us somewhere aroundContinue reading “On Star Trek Comics Crossovers”
On the Mirror Universe Pike
I toyed with the idea a few years ago, purely as a thought experiment, of reworking “The Cage” as a Mirror Universe adventure. My thinking went something like this– Suppose that the vision the Talosians gave Pike of himself as an Orion slave trader was, roughly, the person Pike was in the Mirror Universe. ThenContinue reading “On the Mirror Universe Pike”
Alternity! Federation/Romulan War?
Going to the mailbags. Ryan wanted to know: What if the Romulans had somehow successfully invaded Vulcan in early 2368 during the TNG episodes Unification I and II? While war between the Federation and the Romulans would have almost certainly occured, what would have happened next? I think the Romulans erred badly, in mistaking theContinue reading “Alternity! Federation/Romulan War?”
Relaunch?
I hate to be pedantic, but a “relaunch” for TOS or TNG in the same sense as was used with DS9 for Avatar in 2001 isn’t likely. Avatar represented a new beginning for Deep Space Nine fiction, a new jumping-on point for an ongoing story. Because DS9 fiction had been historically the lowest-selling Trek fiction,Continue reading “Relaunch?”