The Intersection: Day of the Dove
“And so we drift in space… with only hatred and bloodshed aboard.” —Captain Kirk, “Day of the Dove,” Star Trek 1968 2017 has been a hard year to be a writer and not only because the Trump administration has been doing its best to remove all options for affordable, effective healthcare—something that freelancers depend upon entirely (and all professional fiction writers are, in fact, freelancers)—but also because with horrific event after horrific threat (Hello, North Korea), fiction writing begins to feel superfluous. Worse, if you’re like me and you enjoy writing stories about people trying to be their best selves in extreme situations like war, then you start to wonder if you’re contributing to the problem. They’ve been daunting, these thoughts. The only ray of light is the knowledge that I’m not the only one. In any case, I needed to stop thinking about the shooting in Las Vegas for a while. Star Trek, particularly original Trek, is comfort viewing. Interestingly enough, the episode I happened upon was one of the particularly fitting ones. It’s titled Day of the Dove.
The Intersection: Imagine
“This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been. This is why history keeps on repeating all the time.” — Terry Pratchett “People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.” ― Terry Pratchett When people ask me why I feel diversity is important in Science Fiction and Fantasy, I direct them to Terry Pratchett. He wrote a great deal about racism, sexism, and classism. He also knew a thing or two about people and story. Mainly, that story has a big effect on how people view the world and themselves.
