Star Trekkin'

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers. -- Joan Didion

Saturday, May 10, 1997

Saturday is DS9 night, and sometimes I'll catch Voyager as well.

I am an original fan of Star Trek. I started watching during the original run of the original show (TOS). Indeed, it was a problem for me in the third season, when the time slot was changed to 10 PM. This was past my bedtime!

I don't need to watch TOS much anymore, since the episodes are all ingrained in my memory and subconscious. But I do still enjoy it. I still do like Mr Spock! I liked TNG as well, but DS9 is even better. The political dealings and alliances fascinate me. Voyager is a misfire, I think. Maybe the next Trek series will focus on the Starfleet Academy.

I got started reading science fiction at a very early age, perhaps because my father had read it as a young man and had some old hardback anthologies and novels around. I have one still, called The Treasury of Science Fiction Classics, edited by Harold Kuebler and dating from 1954. It starts with Edgar Allen Poe and even includes "R.U.R"! That's the play by Karel Capek that the very word "robot" came from. It's a Czech word meaning "worker."

In fifth grade I remember trying to explain the concept of science fiction to a teacher (she probably knew what it was), and trying to get her to read my hardback copy of Dune. "Well, you see, there's this planet, but it isn't a planet in this solar system...." My favorite writer currently is C.J. Cherryh. Fast pace, great aliens, interesting concepts. Definitely on the "hard" side of SF.

Since moving to Seattle and getting involved in Seattle fandom, I have met many aspiring writers. But creating and telling the stories must not be for me. I think if one is truly a writer, one will be driven to write, and I haven't felt that call.

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In the morning I drove around with my sister, getting things for my nephew B---'s birthday party next Saturday. He is turning four, and expressed a desire to have at the party little bird whistles that you put water in. M--- wanted to satisfy this request, since she didn't think the odds of fulfilling his other specific request were too good. He wanted a french horn toy, made of red plastic, that used batteries. He inferred the possiblity of this toy's existence because of the presence in the household of a red plastic violin. Unfortunately, such a french horn has never been made.

So we went to Champion Party Supply near Seattle Center, then on up to Greenwood to Top Ten Toys. Seattle has great neighborhoods, and Greenwood is a nice one. Over lunch at McDonalds I told M--- about this journal project, and described some other web journals that I read. It was at her suggestion that I decided to make some of the names here use the X---- format. It reminds me of that Woody Allen piece. "Should I marry S---- ? Not if she won't tell me the rest of her name."

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