Five Works of SF That Undermine Their Own Thesis

[james_davis_nicoll]

Stories that lead to different conclusions than the author intended...

Five Works of SF That Undermine Their Own Thesis

Comments

[patrick_morris_miller]

The Probability Broach

A Bear walks into a Libertoonian universe?

install fascist governments in the belief that these are efficient

I don't see how anyone could think that post-1945.

(awkward Troy McClure grimace)

[(Anonymous)]

There was a brief discussion of Professor Nazi's opinions in that episode, "Patterns of Force". Besides allowing the story to be the Enterprise crew vs. Nazis.

Capt. Kirk: Gill. Gill, why did you abandon your mission? Why did you interfere with this culture?

John Gill: Planet... fragmented... divided. Took lesson from... Earth history.

Capt. Kirk: But why Nazi Germany? You studied history. You knew what the Nazis were.

John Gill: Most efficient state... Earth ever knew.

Spock: Quite true, Captain. That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated; rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.

Capt. Kirk: But it was brutal, perverted; had to be destroyed at a terrible cost. Why that example?

Spock: Perhaps Gill felt that such a state, run benignly, could accomplish its efficiency without sadism.

They don't say that "efficiency" was partly achieved by murdering and robbing a lot of the population, including but not only the underproductive disabled. Apparently, racial eugenics has returned in the program of action by the United States of America in 2025, our time line. Kirk does say at the end that anybody who accepts the absolute power of a Fuhrer won't live up to the requirement that the society is "run benignly". You'll mess up. One way that Gill specifically messed up is that his less benign deputy took over absolute power and kept Gill drugged and used to make "inspiring" speeches. Like Big Brother or the Wizard of Oz.

Robert Carnegie

[(Anonymous)]

They also don't say that "efficiency" was _total bullshit_, which I feel is an important point.

[(Anonymous)]

I suppose in the 1960s, the sheer chaos of the German regime during that period wasn't as well known as it is today. It was ferociously inefficient

[(Anonymous)]

"We're from the Federation, and we're here to help." 😉

The premise that Star Trek most undermined was the 'sacred' Prime Directive of non-interferance.

-Awesome Aud