Alan N. Shapiro
media theory,
science fiction theory,
future design research
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Measure of a Man
Arriving at the brand new Starbase 173 near the Romulan Neutral Zone for crew rotation and offloading of experiment modules, the Enterprise-D is visited by Admiral Nakamura and Commander Bruce Maddox,. Maddox is an Associate Professor of Robotics Science at the Daystrom Technological Institute (named after Dr. Richard Daystrom of the episode The Ultimate Computer).
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The Enemy Within
Captain Kirk, Lt. Sulu, Geological Technician Fisher, and three otherEnterprise crew members are approaching the end of a routine, one-day geological survey and specimen gathering mission on the planet Alpha 177. Helm Officer Sulu is tending to a doglike creature indigenous to the planet.
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The Devil in the Dark
Spock begins to demonstrate his unusual capabilities of empathy towards alien others in his mind meld encounter with the silicon-based Horta life-form on the mining planet Janus VI. The workers of the mineral production station are menaced by a hideous creature they are not sure they have ever seen.
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The City on the Edge of Forever
The City on the Edge of Forever is Star Trek’s most poignant time travel story. The technology of the Guardian of Forever’s Time Portal is not made explicit. Specification of the Vortex’s technoscience would have detracted from the emotion/meaning of Kirk’s fateful choice between his love for Edith Keeler and preservation of the galactic timeline.
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The Cage, The Menagerie
The Cage was the first of two pilot episodes produced for The Original Series. It was filmed at MGM Studios in December 1964 and delivered to NBC’s executive offices in New York in February 1965. It was first shown to the public at the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland.
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Star Trek: First Contact
It is the seventh decade of the twenty-first century, our future and Star Trek’s past. Only an act of great heroism can save a dying civilization. A global nuclear war, the Third World War, instigated by the bellicose Eastern Coalition (ECON), has taken place in the fifties. We are ten years into its aftermath.
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How the Transporter Really Works
Over the decades, the copious science fictional “explanations” of how Star Trek’s beaming technology really works, or might some- day be able to work, have undergone dis- cernable paradigm shifts. The original notion was that of the dematerialization-rematerialization, matter-to-energy conversion and back physical transporter.
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Darmok
After Captains Picard and Dathon are transported to the isolated world’s surface, the Tamarians use an ionospheric particle scattering field to block all attempts by Enterprise-D technicians to beam Picard back from the planet, and to make any communication with the two men impossible.
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Arena
In the pre-Klingon and pre-Borg Original Series episode Arena, Captain Kirk is involved in a one-on-one duel against an antagonistic and radical alien Other, the Gorn commander. The episode is entitled Kaijû Gôn tono Taiketus, or Duel With the Monster Gorn, in Japanese dubbing.
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Amok Time
On their way to Altair VI (in the solar system visited by Forbidden Planet’s United Planets CruiserC57D) to represent the Federation at a postwar presidential inauguration on a rebuilding world, the Enterprise senior officers must contend with an increasingly irritable and violent Mr. Spock.
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