If all art is political, are all artists politicians?
I found out yesterday that Dan Simmons died. I’ve mentioned him many times here, because Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion are favorites of mine. I also enjoyed The Fifth Heart because I’m a sucker for Sherlock Holmes stories.
I never met Dan Simmons, and I never heard him speak. I also didn’t go out of my way to learn anything about him. At the edges of my perception, I could see some news that he might be contemptable, but it was very easy for me not to know much about any of that until he died.
Now that he’s dead, there are folks like Ursula Vernon roasting him.
Dan Simmons, noted racist, has died. He wrote Hyperion, which contained a good short story and then a lot of other words, which many of us read anyway because it was the Nineties and Waldenbooks had a limited science fiction section.
There are other folks online posting celebratory messages, and I think it sucks.
From what I can tell, 9/11 broke him. He embraced Islamophobia, and all of the worst impulses that came out of that tragedy. Things he wrote before 9/11 seem fine. Things he wrote after were bad, if not actually harmful.
I see that as a tragedy, and my wish is that when a person like Dan dies, we celebrate the good, acknowledge the bad, and try to learn something from their life.
“That’s what Ursula is doing, Brian.”
I don’t think so. She’s calling him a racist and bashing his stories, actively diminishing something beautiful because the author eventually acquired reprehensible views. The man’s been dead a day and she’s pissing on his work and his grave, and encouraging others to do the same. It makes me mad.
It’s possible that my love of Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, specifically the stories following Saul and a father’s love and sacrifice for his daughter, is moving me to this position of defending a racist and bad person. I acknowledge that possibility, but I think there’s more to it.
From what I can tell, some of Dan’s stories did active harm. They also seem to be his least popular stories, for good reason. How much harm did Dan do when he became a racist? I don’t know.
I’m certain I did not agree with Dan politically. I probably disagreed with him on a great many things, but I will always appreciate some of the stories he wrote, because they moved me and made me a better writer. Learning he has died makes me sad.
When J. K. Rowling eventually dies, if I’m still around to see it, I’m sure my reaction will be a little bit different because Joann is much more active in the harm she does. I will acknowledge that The Harry Potter series inspired a generation to read, and for a time, did great things for fiction. But Rowling is very active and public in doing harm with her transphobia.
Who am I kidding? If Rowling were to die in a plane crash tomorrow, I would be a little sad, because I’m not a monster. I would probably say what I just said, that Harry Potter changed the landscape, and that it’s a shame she used her fortune and influence from her art to harm people that are already struggling.
As far as I can tell, Dan Simmons wasn’t as bad as J. K. Rowling. I’m not sure his death warrants a celebration. It’s one of the cases in which, if you don’t have something nice to say, it’s probably okay to let his death be quiet.
I used to play Magic: The Gathering (MtG) quite a bit. I started shortly after it released, and I played a lot. I played for fun. I played competitively. And I was good! I came in 3rd at a Pro Tour qualifier, back when the format was Alliances/Ice Age.
Shortly before getting out of the Air Force, I sold all my cards to one of the engineers I worked with and used the money to build a computer. The computer ultimately led to my career, so the time and money were — arguably — well spent.
A few years ago, I thought about getting back into it. I tried playing online and found the experience adequate, but not compelling. Another time, I went to the game store and bought a case of the newly released 13th edition, but after sorting and building a deck, the habit didn’t stick. The cards went into a box and are now collecting dust.
Every now and then, I get exposed to some MtG content and feel like playing again. I don’t want to invest a bunch of money into a habit I kicked a long time ago, but it could be fun to put together an elf deck for Melissa, and have her try to beat some weird off-meta contraption based on a couple of weird cards.
This evening, while listening to a gamer on YouTube talk about MtG, a strange thought crossed my mind: I have a decent printer. If I want to play with my family, I don’t have to buy the cards. Just the sleeves.
Is that theft? That kind of seems like theft, right?
I wound up having a fun and intense conversation about it with Chris, who was of the opinion that it is not theft, and that if I want to print and play, I should just do it. He is convinced that it does no harm.
My arguments are that it isn’t much different from someone illegally downloading a book and reading it. They’re getting the experience of the story without the artist getting any benefit from it.
Historically, playing with proxy cards was common, and no one batted an eye over it. You couldn’t use proxies in tournaments, and obviously proxies have no trade value. But if we were just trying out some decks in order to see if the cards had value, we would grab some old land cards, mark them so we knew what cards they represented, and try it out.
How many proxy cards does it take for it to become an act of theft? Sixty? Thirty? Maybe it’s as few as one.
Is it the printing that makes it theft? One doesn’t have to print the cards in order to proxy them. You can take any old deck of playing cards and make a chart of what each card represents. I have enough cards memorized that I don’t need to see them in order to tell you what they do or how they work. The game is in my head, not on the cards.
Maybe books are the wrong analogy, though. A story is art created by an artist, capturing their thoughts and emotions and voice in a specific away, that is repeated with each reading. A game of MtG is different every time.
Perhaps a closer analogy is music. If I hear a song, then sit at the piano and play it, I’m not really stealing the music, am I? Musicians do covers all the time. As long as I’m not trying to take my cover and sell it, I’m in the clear.
Wizards of the Coast isn’t going to lose money if I print some cards, put them in sleaves, and play a couple games with Melissa. If anything, playing a few games might make me want to go buy some cards again.
What do you think? Let me know if you have fond memories of MtG like I do.
In order for me to describe what happened today, I have to admit some things that are deeply personal and a little bit scary.
It’s not like I’m trying to hide any of this. People ask me how I’m doing, and depending on who it is, I often tell the truth: I’m not doing very well.
“Why, what’s wrong?” they ask, sometimes.
And I gesture to the larger world around us, because that’s very understandable, and it’s true. I’m one man, scared and feeling powerless, looking at a broken world I desperately wish I could fix, but I do not have the tools or strength to do so.
I know how we got here. I know why it continues. I also know that this has all happened before, only a little bit different, and the pain of the now will end. We will make an incremental change forward as a society.
Trump will die. The fascists will be defeated. We will close down the concentration camps. We may even tear down ICE. It’s possible we dismantle Homeland Security, too, eventually. Maybe, just maybe, a little bit of justice will be dispensed.
Will I be alive when that day comes, when things slide back in the right direction?
I’ve talked before about how I probably don’t have a long life expectancy. It was nearly 5 years ago when I wrote that post, and nothing has happened to change my estimation. I don’t think I’m going to make it out of my 50s.
The cause of my death is not really a mystery to me, at this point. I’m going to have a heart attack, a stroke, or organ failure, as a result of high blood pressure. I’ve been checking my numbers more lately, and according to the Mayo Clinic, I should have sought immediate medical help several times the last couple of weeks. I took the cuff of just now after clocking a brisk 168 over 119.
I’m not bringing this up to talk about dying again. I’m establishing where my head is at.
It is very difficult to focus on work, especially when I don’t believe in the tasks I’m given. I fully believe I don’t have that much time left. Why would I want to spend any of it doing bullshit?
I also have a hard time working on stories I don’t think will matter. And, looking around, it’s hard to convince myself that any stories matter at this point.
Some of you like my stories. I will finish The Psychic Out of Time soon. And then I’ll work on the next story. And the one after that, on and on until my time finally comes.
The depression is real, and the dread is ever-present, and it’s difficult for me to remain pleasant when the act of putting on a facade feels like bullshit. I don’t have much of a filter left.
I woke up this morning feeling just as shitty as I felt when I woke up yesterday, and the day before. All three days, I considered calling in sick, because I just didn’t want to do any of it.
In particular, we are working on a new feature for a new product, and I have had a strong disagreement with some of the folks on how we should do it. I spent time thinking it through, and while the other people involved don’t understand what it took for me to summon the strength to spend that time, I know, and I’ll be damned if I let this thing go awry.
My passion reached my throat yesterday, heating my voice. I argued, logically, but also with clear emotion.
This morning, my rival tried to flood the field, which is how he always gets his way. It is the same tactic Trump uses, but I don’t associate my rival with Trump. Seeing the similarity in tactics does piss me off, though.
Again, strength filled me, because fuck that guy but also, if we’re going to do this thing, let’s do it right.
I took every single one of his points and responded. For a full hour this morning, I wrote.
And then, for the next 6 or 7 hours, I was like my old self. I attended multiple meetings and made people laugh. I was laughing.
What I wrote in the morning wasn’t a story in the traditional sense. There was a hero (me) and there was a villain (my rival). I used my voice, trying to be careful not to create personal attacks. No ad hominum, but I did mercilessly attack the ideas my rival presented.
It felt good. I felt good. At least for a little while.
So I’m writing this, to record what happened and pass on something I witnessed.
Writing something with passion give me some of myself back. I’m even considering taking my blood pressure medication, though as I told Melissa earlier in the week, that’s just a different kind of death. The meds add to my depression and make me sleep 12 to 14 hours a day.
Let me close this by spelling out the point, in no uncertain terms. In a world that’s on fire, dominated by rich idiots that are supported by uneducated, stupid racists, I find myself living with a death sentence and the power to extend my life and my time in this shitty world by choosing a different sort of misery. From that perspective, one might understand why when asked the question, “Do you want to live longer?” I might answer, “No.” But one really good moment of writing today makes me want to reconsider my answer, and that’s powerful.
It’s Sunday afternoon, and as I understand it, there’s going to be some spectacular sporting event taking place today. I haven’t followed American football this season, so I have no idea who is playing. I think I heard that the 49ers were plagued with injuries, so they’re not in it. If you’ve got big plans for the big game, I hope they go well!
There are about ten of us at a coffee shop for Shut Up and Write, and as has become my pattern, I’m starting this writing session with a light and breezy blog post. I have a complicated idea in mind. Let’s see if I can get the words out in the right order, so that they make sense and don’t get people too upset with me.
This all starts with an observation I made at work. My boss, who is about the same age as I am, likes to use movies and media as touchstones. But he’s my age. Often, the younger folk on our team have no knowledge of his references, which frustrates both my boss and the younger people alike.
“How can they not have seen these classics?” my boss will say.
“Because these ‘classics’ were released years before they were born,” I reply.
One day, I landed on this short which explained the gulf between my boss and my younger teammates.
It really highlights the differences in the way we consume media. Growing up, I had to either adhere to a schedule for the broadcasts, or miss episodes. There were years between releases of movies, and there wasn’t an internet to go to for finding communities based around these franchises.
I’m not saying this is better. It’s just different than today. I like that I can go to reddit and find people that are eager to talk about the same games or media that I’m into. I like that, if I want to watch an old show, I can find a streaming service and watch it again with older, generally wiser eyes. I really like that I’m no longer bound to a network’s schedule when I want to watch a show.
On the other hand, we have lost something when it comes to how we engage with different stories in a franchise. Fandoms are toxic. There is a level of expectation and entitlement with these so-called fans that is not healthy for the art or the stories.
Furthermore, there is more nostalgia bait than ever before, which further pollutes storytelling.
When you put it all together, I think we no longer live in a culture where franchises are particularly healthy or good. I think franchises should die and make room for new experiences with less baggage.
Let’s re-examine a couple of big franchises, starting with Star Wars. The problem is not how much the storytelling has changed, but the culture into which these stories are released.
The original Star Wars captivated the imaginations of a few generations and became a cultural touchpoint all on its own. It changed what SciFi could look like. It changed everything.
Years after the release of the original, The Empire Strikes Back pushed the envelope a little bit further. It may surprise you to learn that the actual initial reaction was not great. Fans at the time were not into Luke losing a hand, or the rebellion losing, or Darth Vader being Luke’s father. There were many that thought Luke and Leia should have been the romantic coupling, and not Leia and Han. There were fans with specific expectations about how the story should have played out, and their expectations were subverted.
We didn’t have multipage think-pieces dropped digitally into the inboxes of fans, collecting rage around how terrible this sequel was. We had some SciFi-hating critics post nasty reviews, but viewers at the time easily ignored that, and were mostly unaware of the outcries of “fans” for what George Lucas had done with his universe.
Eventually, ESB became regarded as the best film of the franchise. People still say it’s the best, and that nothing compares to it. But if ESB had been released in the same sort of environment that The Last Jedi had been released, I promise that ESB would not have had the chance to become the classic it became, because the “fans” would have dominated the conversation and lambasted anyone that posted something about ESB being pretty good.
This isn’t to say that Lucas can do no wrong, or that the fans are never right. Lucas dropped tons of stinkers. The Christmas episode. The Ewok made-for-TV movies. Many of these Star Wars projects are forgotten, because the audience at the time ignored them. They weren’t good, and we moved on. We still had the original trilogy. We enjoyed the good and ignored the bad.
The idea of canon was not so sacred. It was more vibes than anything, and we didn’t have to be told that the Ewoks stuff didn’t count.
The prequels hit screens around the time that fandom had found its voice and footing on the internet, and it’s when we really started to see criticism not just from critics, but from the fans themselves.
It was a weird time. We were getting new Star Wars, which we always want. But George Lucas sucks at dialog. This was true as far back as Mark Hamill’s casting, and the bad dialog was on full display throughout the prequels.
On the other hand, we had some of the best lightsaber duels we’ve ever seen. The original Star Wars broke ground with what could be done with special effects, and the prequels continued that tradition. The prequels looked visually stunning, though the effects have not aged nearly as well as the originals.
Unfortunately, with all these fancy new effects and visuals, Lucas upstaged his actors in every scene with complicated backgrounds and weird action. It drew focus away from the things we should have been focusing on. That’s bad storytelling.
The prequels weren’t as bad as the Ewok stuff, but for the most part, they weren’t as good the original movies. The fans tore it apart. Much of the prequels are held in higher regard today, but the feedback pattern was set. Some of the feedback itself was held in higher regard than the movies being critiqued.
By the time we made it to the sequel trilogy, fandoms hardened their expectations, and any deviation from those plans were a sin. For the most part, The Force Awakens worked because it was a retread of A New Hope. The Last Jedi failed because it had some genuinely stupid parts in it, but it made the unforgiveable sin of doing something different, including humanizing Luke. And Rise of Skywalker pissed almost everyone off because it tried to please the fans without knowing how. It was just hot, liquid garbage from beginning to end.
I see fans blame Kathleen Kennedy for the fall of Star Wars. I wish I could hold up a mirror to them and show them who the real villains are.
Now, I’m seeing the same thing with Star Trek. Not all new Trek is good, but it’s not as bad as many make it out to be.
Like Star Wars, we have had terrible Star Trek from the very beginning. If not for Lucille Ball stepping in and saving the series from the very beginning, we wouldn’t have any of it today. There were great episodes of The Original Series, and there were many, many terrible ones. Same with Next Gen.
And the movies! The running joke, which had some truth to it, was that only the even numbered movies are any good.
The original motion picture was ambitious. It had terrible pacing issues, was confusing to many audience members, and — in my opinion — isn’t that good. It’s okay, and not great. I never have a hankering to rewatch The Original Motion Picture.
The Wrath of Kahn… really good! Idealized by fans a bit more than it deserves, probably. Talking to Star Trek “fans” they’ll tell you that The Wrath of Kahn is the best Star Trek movie and nothing else comes close, and I think that they really just like to say that without actually disengaging the nostalgia parts of their brain.
Try talking to those fans about Starfleet Academy and they’ll repeat talking points they read from somewhere else online. Maybe they’ll say something about swallowing a com badge.
I think it would be best for us all if these franchises just died, entirely. The companies that own them won’t let that happen, because they really, really like money. But these franchises are the connective tissue between two sets of terrible people.
First, there is the toxic fandoms that demand regurgitation of prechewed story bits. They insist on consuming what they’ve consumed before. Change is bad. The old is always better. These people will never be satisfied, and they are loud and intolerable.
Then there are profit-over-all-else executives that are all too happy to pull the arm of the nostalgia slot machine and see what happens. These are the business people that prioritize making money over making good art, and they tend to be cowards when it comes to trying something new.
Show runners and storytellers are caught in the middle. A good storyteller knows the power of subverting expectations. A good storyteller is looking for emotional throughlines, themes, and elements that expand on existing material, rather than remain constrained by the past.
Stories are about change. Characters change over time. They may revert back to some baseline, like comic book characters coming back to life, or healing grievous injuries, or having new life partners taken away from them. In between resets, the story is about how those characters handle adversity and change to meet the moment.
Stories are about the setup and the payoff. They should include elements that are both surprising and inevitable. They should have a beginning, middle, and end. They should make us feel something.
That brings us to the unfortunate feedback loop. A storyteller, working in a franchise, tries to tell a good story. They take a chance, swing for the fences, and see what happens. This could be in Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Who… it doesn’t matter. They seize the opportunity and try something.
Because it is different, the fandom will reject it. They will say it breaks canon or something. They will criticize it for being different, and they will be loud about it. Loud enough that some cowardly execs will interfere and curtail the changes, disallowing the story from continuing in any unexpected direction. We cultivate stagnation. The next Empire Strikes Back is disallowed from happening.
For existing franchises to take a chance and make a change, the new thing has to be spectacular enough that it attracts an audience bigger than the existing fandom. But when was the last time something like that has happened for any of the franchises I mentioned 2 paragraphs ago?
I believe the larger audience desires new stories. That’s why the biggest movies of the summer a couple years ago (2023) were Barbie and Oppenheimer.
— One moment —
I paused to go look at box office numbers for the last couple of years. Barbie was #1 in 2023, with Oppenheimer coming in at #5. The rest of the years and top tens have mostly been sequels and franchise movies. Last year, the top ten were all franchise movies except for Sinners, coming in at #7.
I stand by what I said before, though. I think the audience is hungry for new stories. I also think the top ten looks the way it does because it’s what we’re getting fed.
That’s probably enough Old Man Yell’s At Cloud for the day. Let me know what you think. Should we just keep retreading the same old stories, or should we take more chances?
I told one of my friends about watching the 4th episode of Starfleet Academy tonight, and based on what I said, he made this:
I might be more generous with the stars, but that’s not too far off.
Before I give my review, I’ll give my Star Trek bonafides, as it were.
I’m almost 53 years old, so I watched TOS in syndication whenever it was on. It was one of my favorite shows, though some of the episodes were real stinkers. When TNG came out, I went into it very hopeful, and it was only sort of okay. It eventually became the best SciFi on television, and I watch it as a comfort show to this day.
I loved Deep Space Nine, though I didn’t see all of it. Built on the lessons learned from TNG, it was consistently very strong, though there were a few episodes that were stinkers. I’ve seen most of Voyager, and while it had a few genuinely good episodes, it was mostly not good.
I liked Enterprise. I like the even numbered Star Trek movie. I kind of hated Star Trek: Generations, but absolutely loved First Contact. The rest of the TNG movies were kind of meh.
I thought the J.J. Abrams movies were fine, though it didn’t feel like Star Trek. I liked the performances and the casting, but it was full of things Abrams does that I do not like.
Star Trek: Discovery took some big swings, and not all of them landed. I didn’t see all of it. I’ve only seen a few episodes of Brave New World. Star Trek: Picard had some outstanding moments, but for the most part, wasn’t that great and missed the point of the Picard character.
If people are divided into Star Trek versus Star Wars people, I would be pigeon-holed as a Star Wars person. But I do really like Star Trek, and I feel like I understand it, in terms of storytelling, philosophy, intention, and history.
With all of that out of the way, how do I really feel about Starfleet Academy, and where do I rank it with the Treks that came before?
It’s better than I thought it was going to be. The advertising made me think it was going to be a teen melodrama, and while the main ensemble of characters are young, the themes are timeless: lost family, found family, fish-out-of-water, and finding our strengths through our differences.
The first two episodes focus primarily on Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta), and we follow his story as he is separated as a child from his mother by a dysfunctional Starfleet, then later given the choice of either going to jail or going to Starfleet Academy. The actor does a fine job, but the character can be hard to like.
The third episode opens up a bit more, giving us more time with the rest of the ensemble, with a heavy focus on Genesis Lyle (Bella Shepard) and Daren Reymi (George Hawkins). This last episode spent most of the time with the Klingon student, Jay-Dem Kraag (Karim Diane).
Holly Hunter does a fine job as Nahla Ake, and it’s nice to see Robert Picardo as The Doctor from Voyager.
The actors are doing great. If I were to complain about any of them, I don’t really get Sam (Karrice Brooks) yet, but maybe that’ll change in a future episode.
So far, the show is fine. I’m enjoying it, and I’m not bored. I know there are people online bashing it, saying that it breaks canon every five minutes or something. I don’t get that. I think if you really hated Star Trek: Discovery, you’ll probably hate this. Like I said, I didn’t see all of Discovery, but I recognize several characters reprising their roles in this show, which is set as far into the future as we’ve seen a Star Trek go.
Starfleet Academy is a Star Trek, in every sense. All of them take at least a season to find their footing, and this show is no exception.
I think one of the things people will struggle with is The Burn, which is some event that takes place before Starfleet Academy begins. It destroyed The Federation and set things back. I suspect some of this was covered in Discovery.
It is a violation of the idea of Star Trek. Roddenberry’s vision was that things get better. We put away our greed, our racism, our tribalism, and come together as one people, and beyond that, join with other peoples across the galaxy, to go on adventures and advance science and technology. To boldly go places, as it were.
Later writers have approached Star Trek with less reverence for that vision, and many of them try to break the status quo in order to tell a story more to their liking. It’s why Abrams destroyed Vulcan. It’s why Star Trek: Picard starts with the destruction of Romulus. New Trek has swear words now, too, and I’m not sure why.
Either Discovery or Academy went all the way, and destroyed The Federation itself. Academy appears to be where we watch The Federation rebuilt, which is at least a little bit hopeful, but the future has already been tarnished, especially for us viewers living way, way in the past.
I think Star Trek: Academy is better than Voyager and better than the movies from J.J. Abrams. In my opinion, it has the potential to become something very good.
From what I’ve seen online, Star Trek “fans” are a lot like Star Wars “fans” in that they mostly want retreads of the things that came before. I’m not holding my breath that Starfleet Academy will have the same chance previous Treks have had, to work things out in the first season and find their voice in the second.
If you’ve been watching Starfleet Academy, let me know what you think of my assessment.
