But if Truman relied on [Bess], as he himself also attested, she clearly was extremely dependent on him. Years later, when asked by a friend what she considered the most memorable aspect of their life, Bess answered at once. ‘Harry and I have been sweethearts and married for more than 40 years — and no matter where I was, when I put out my hand Harry’s was there to grasp it.” – TRUMAN, David McCullough
I am over halfway through Truman by David McCullough, and a chapter or so from finishing Heroes by Stephen Fry, his collection of stories about Heracles, Perseus, Oedipus, and other guys whose names end with -s. Also, Atalanta!
(I probably would have gotten closer to finishing Truman were it not for Labor Day weekend. Have been spending time with family and friends and such instead of sinking into the late 1940s.)
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is something to do with indie books, but I’m going to ignore it completely. Today is “Star Trek Day”, so chosen because September 8 marks when Star Trek originally aired in the USA. It technically aired in Canada two days before, but did they do “The O Canada Glory”? No, they did “The Omega Glory”, and as hilarious as I find it I still don’t know why.
“Look at these three words, written larger than the rest, with a special pride never written before, or since — tall words, proudly saying, WE THE PEOPLE! That which you call ‘E Plehbnista’ was not written for the chiefs, or the kings, or the rich, or the powerful, but for ALL THE PEOPLE! They must apply to EVERYONE, or they mean nothing! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!”
No, that episode was not aired in early July 196_. It just exists. Now, this being an indie topic that I am hijacking for a free-for-all, and this being a book blog, you might think I’m going to highlight books. However, I’ve done that before. Instead, I’m going to do……(1960s special effects) Star Trek Memories. These are going to be completely stream-of-consciousness.
(1) The year! Is 1992. The day! Is the night I refused to leave a trampoline during one of my eldest sister’s birthday parties and was bounced off by one of her friends, landing on my elbow with resulting fractures and dislocations. I spent a month in traction. My left arm, my reading arm, was suspended above me, and I could do not much reading. So, I did something I’d never gotten to do before: I watched TV. I was introduced to Batman, The Brady Bunch, Gunsmoke, and most importantly — Star Trek. I don;’t know what it was, but little-kid me LOVED Star Trek. I even got to have the ‘original ST fan’ experience when one evening I asked for Star Trek and they put on what they could find, The Next Generation. I could understand this was trying to be the same thing, but who was the bald guy, and guy wearing a hair barrette on his face? This wasn’t Star Trek!
(2) Finding Star Trek Academy novels at my local library, featuring young-adult friendly introductions to the TNG crew, and starting my “Yeah, I mostly got into Star Trek through novels” path. Relatedly, finding out that my best friend Gil was into Star Trek, starting a ST Fan club with him, and watching DS9 spending the night at his house back in the day.
(3) Starting to develop a small collection of Star Trek action figures and telling stories with them, none of which had any canonical sense because I didn’t really know the TNG characters. Also, some of my Star Trek action figures were also Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I loved TMNT but I still have no idea what was up with that crossover. Also, I accidentally killed Data years before Nemesis after hitting him with a slingshot, Home Alone style, and realizing that my toys were a LOT more fragile than Kevin’s. At least it wasn’t Lieutenant Dax.
(4) Reading my first adult ST novel that would immerse me in the show as thoroughly as an actual show, Vengeance.
(5) Playing Star Trek Elite Force holomatch (multiplayer) back in the day and text-chatting with people in-game about the latest Star Trek Voyager episode. I was on a 56.6k modem, so I couldn’t really compete in a first-person shooter — but I did my best by playing Demolitionist and relying on All the Explosives. More often than not my Worst enemy was listed as myself because I did so many suicide runs. At some point I found out how to do custom text macros and created a custom taunt: “When my mine explodes in your eyes, that’s amore”.
(6) Falling hard for Star Trek Millennium, a massive trilogy that swept DS9’s past, present, and future Trying to play The Fallen, loosely inspired by it, and realizing that graphics card requirements could mean something.
Ah, the days when you could take out a starbase with 12 capital ships. In ARMADA 2 you basically had to haul a bunch of artillery ships up, because even the superweapon suicide ships wouldn’t take them out in one go. )
(7) Enjoying way, way, too many hours playing Star Trek Armada with Jax and Ka’ Cheg, my [SF] besties (I was in a gang, StarFleet — rose to Rear Admiral, even). I still can’t decide our best exploit — the time Jax lured Locutus’ Cube into a mutara nebula where sensors and shields didn’t work, and I waiting in ambush hit Locutus with a full broadside — or the time that Ka’Cheg and I double-teamed the Federation timeship. He fired on it, triggered it to use his superweapon (freezing time) and then I dropped out of warp, de-cloaked, and obliterated the timeship. Good times. (I was flying Martok’s Negh’Var in both instances — my favorite!) Jax and I are still friends, but neither of us knows what happened to Ka’Cheg. Hopefully he’s in Sto-vo-Kor.
(8) Getting really obsessed about the VHS/DVD release of Star Trek Nemesis, changing my away message on AIM and everything, only to be asked by a Star Wars obsessive why I was getting so worked up over a movie that had been out for six months. Because I wasn’t able to SEE it in theaters, dude, watching it on VHS is going to be as exciting to me as the theater release! (Amusingly enough: my first DVD new release was…..Revenge of the Sith.)
(9) Reading the first Relaunch novel, DS9 Avatar, and realizing that HOLY CRAP A NEW THING HAS BEEN BORN. The Relaunch era, largely the product of Marco Palmieri, featured a literary universe like the Star Wars Extended Universe: novels shared new characters and continuities, meaning REAL STUFF could happen and REAL PEOPLE could grow. Then nuTrek came along, festered like a slow-growing cancer for a while, then metastasized and killed it. I refuse to read Coda, the trilogy that ‘officially’ ended the Relaunch books.
(10) Being completely overwhelmed by David Mack as an author during the Relaunch period. Destiny was AMAZING, and in another series he literally made me stand up and walk around because the tension was so good.
Oh! I also watched the shows and had my worldview shaped and such. The Maquis storyline was interesting as hell, forcing the Federation to confront its own ideals; Kira’s growth as a terrorist-turned-leader was amazing, and “Inter Arma Silent Leges” pushed me into the area of being a civil libertarian well before the War on Terror woke me up as a political creature. The theme music for most of the shows, but particularly DS9 and VOY, always soars in my soul, and a part of me — a very important part — will remain there, on Deep Space Nine.
ALSO: at some point in the early 2000s I found the TNG and DS9 companions on CD. These included ALL THE SCRIPTS for those two shows, plus FMV trailers. I basically READ THE SCRIPTS for the TNG shows, watched the trailers, and then applied my imagination to make the episode happen until the mid-late 2000s when I could buy DVD sets and watch them properly. (Reading those scripts and then the book companions is why I refer to A-plots, B-plots, beats, and “N.D.”s or nondescript characters sometimes.)
( also Deep Space Nine introduced me to the music of Frank Sinatra. 22+ years later a Frank poster still greets me when I wake up.)
I don’t know that anyone or anything can kill me as a Star Trek fan. I thought nuTrek might; it just made me flee to the books. I thought the death of the Relaunch era would do it, and…well, it did make my Trekdom rather comatose. But Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks bought it to life again, so much so that I started thinking about the old ST fanfic I used to write (inspired by Star Trek Away Team, my hand to Spock), and it has survived despite dinosaurs and soap operas and….muppets.. Perhaps it’s mostly fueled by nostalgia these days; I recently re-read some of my favorite Trek novels from high school and then started replaying Star Trek Elite Force, and the aesthetics and sound snap me back to those olden, golden days.
Reading Freely 
