Found Poetry in The Star Trek Encyclopedia

Tuesday, 4 November 1997

(Actually, this is a belated entry for Friday, October 31, 1997.)

Last Friday, Halloween, Pocket Books held a luncheon for the people who worked on the new edition of The Star Trek Encyclopedia. Bernadette Bosky and Arthur Hlavaty were copyeditors on the project, and back in the spring they asked me to help out, so I got my name in the acknowledgements on page IV, and a free copy. There are a few things I noted at the time that I meant to work in a Natter entry, but never got around to.

"A Reference Guide to the Future"

The subtitle of the encyclopedia is "A Reference Guide to the Future," which sems pretty odd considering that the only accurate material in it pertains to things that have already happened. For example, Data played poker with a holographic replica of Isaac Newton in one episode, so there's an entry on Newton.

(Newton sticks out in my mind because I was checking the dates in the N section, and the birthdate listed for Newton differred from that given in the mundane encyclopedia I was using for reference, because Isaac Newton's birthday was close enough to a year boundery that it got bumped in the transition from Julian to Gregorian calendars. This sort of anal-retentive detail is what copyediting's all about, folks.)

And it's not as if there's a single future. The previously published Star Trek Chronology against which we were checking the fictional stardates lists a number of split timelines and alternate histories that have popped up in various episodes. Lisa and I still shudder over checking some of those alternate history stardates.

Found Poetry

While checking over the T section, I was struck by some of the names that various Trek writers have come up with for alien races. All of the following terms are used as either the names of actual races or as adjectives attached to some animal, food, disease, or object:

Takaran, Takarian,
Talavian, Talaxian, Tallonian, Talosian, Tellarite,
Tarkalean, Tarkalian,
Tarkannan, Tarkassian,
Tamarian, Tarvokian, Tavnian,
Talarian, Tellurian, Telurian,
Tarellian, Terellian, Terrellian.

No, those aren't typos (at least I hope not; I know I queried them in the manuscript). Terellians and Terrellians are described in the Encyclopedia as distinct alien races. I imagine that somewhere in the Federation is a large simulation of pre-first-contact Earth where members of the diplomatic corps can go during their inevitable nervous breakdowns to forget that they might ever need to know the difference between a Tarkalean and a Tarkalian.

Star Trek: Cultural Revolution

While Kevin was driving me back home from his place after the editing, we got to talking about the Star Trek universe, and the lack of continutity between the old and new series. For example, the old show portrayed a capitalist Federation in which Uhura could barter with Cyrano Jones over the price of a tribble in credits, while an episode of ST:TNG had Captain Picard boasting to someone from an earlier, less enlightened time that the Federation had progressed beyond the need for money, and the necessities of life were simply made available to whoever needed them.

We figured out an easy explanation for the difference: At some point between the old and new series, the Federation underwent a Socialist revolution of the proletariat. This explains not only the differences in the economies, but also in clothing. On the old series, red shirts were worn by Security and Engineering personnel, the lowest rung on Starfleet's ladder of authority, the folks who were most likely to get killed. On the new shows, red shirts are worn by command personnel. Not only that, but the symbol worn only by Enterprise crew on the old show is used Starfleet-wide on the new, probably indicating that the Revolution probably took place on the very ship Kirk once commanded.

I pitched the idea for a couple of books (Star Trek: Cultural Revolution and Star Trek: The Great Leap Forward) about this unmentioned part of the Federation's history to John Ordover at Pocket Books, but for some odd reason he didn't seem to think the company would be interested.