Author: Alan N. Shapiro

  • Jean Baudrillard and America

    America is no mere impressionistic travelogue, but rather a witty and serious interpretation of American democracy and capitalism today, based on a synthesis of political ideas drawn from many different currents of contemporary thought, notably including left-wing neo-Marxism and right-wing entrepreneurial libertarianism.

  • Total War Meets Pure War

    This was one of the very first pieces of writing that I did in my life. I wrote it during the first two weeks of the Gulf War in 1991. I was living in New York City at the time. I tried to balance the perspectives of Chomsky and Baudrillard/Virilio.

  • Year of Hell (Star Trek: Voyager)

    Janeway and Voyager lock in a course correction to avoid a rogue comet, and accidentally enter a region of space rich in Class-M planets that is in dispute between the Zahl and the Krenim. Data from the newly upgraded Astrometrics Lab indicate that the Zahl are preeminent in this Delta Quadrant sector designated as Spatial Grid 005.

  • The Physics of Wormholes

    According to Lawrence M. Krauss in The Physics of Star Trek, “a surprising amount of modern theo- retical physics research,” clustered in the area of astrophysical wormhole studies, is directed towards establishing the scientific and mathematical prerequisites for timetravel.  “Wormhole time machines are easy to design,” explains Krauss.

  • The Physics of Warp Drive

    Although light from the moon reaches us in about two seconds, and light from Mars in a few minutes, light from Proxima Centauri or Alpha Centauri takes about four years to reach us. A spaceship traveling at current rocketry technology speed would take about ten thousand years to reach any possible Class-M planet.

  • The Offspring

    After attending a cybernetics conference, Data spends all his off-duty hours in a locked laboratory, at work on a secretive project. Data learned of a breakthrough in submicron matrix transfer technology. La Forge, Troi, and Wesley are startled to hear that he has built an android clone of himself, endowed with a like positronic brain.