There were two poems, one of which was at least half in a language I don’t speak, so I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
I think the most interesting part of this issue was an article by Erin Horakova, called Freshly Remember’d: Kirk Drift. It was a multi-part essay, discussing popular ideas of Captain Kirk and how they are so pervasive that one ceases to be able to see the actual character through the stereotype. There was a really interesting and thorough investigation of Kirk’s character and relationships with women, and how ideas about masculinity – oh, let’s just call it toxic masculinity, because that’s what it is – have kind of retconned his character into something different from what t is. Very thought provoking, especially in pointing out the ways in which the discourse around masculinity has actually changed for the worse in recent years, and how current perceptions change how we see the original Star Trek, as well as the ways in which we form false memories and the difficulties of overcoming them. I’ve seen maybe two episodes of the original Trek (or maybe one), and this was compelling enough to make me want to watch a lot more.
There was a roundtable on indigenous futurism and recolonising science fiction, which was good, but I don’t know what to pull out of it to write about. The thing that struck me most was when they were talking about how First Nations people in the US don’t really have exist in the present in modern fiction – they are missing from works set in the current era, and only appear as historical figures, so they have no place in the now, let alone in the future worlds of speculative fiction. This is an aspect of representation that had not occurred to me and bears thinking about.
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