Giving Birth to Science Fiction

 The origins of science fiction are not very clear. Probably because there is a dispute as to what it has to include. At its heart science fiction has to have an element of science to it. It is fiction based on scientific theory or extrapolation. It can either delve deeply into the science or it can push the science to the background and make use of science in a more general sense. If we can determine how much science a story needs at present to be considered science fiction, we can reach back into history to find stories that rely on science to a similar extent and those would be the earliest science fiction stories.

There is competition between hard science fiction and soft science fiction. Many maintain the standards of hard science fiction to be the true standards of real science fiction. In this type of story, there is no extrapolation of what science might lead to in the future, only what modern science has proven and what technology based on that might be. There is no attempt to include theoretical science, though theoretical technology is allowed. This is all well and good, but historically, this is only a very limited slice of the greater genre. Historically (and we only have to look to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, often cited as the first writers of modern science fiction) that has not been the case. Wells in particular imagined time machines, alien life forms, advanced technology well beyond any science of the day, and much more. So from the outset, science fiction has let in a bit of fantastical imagination. As long as it is grounded in science. The golden age of science fiction was full of fictional advances in human understanding and technology. Stories took us to the moon in scientifically plausible vehicles, traveled in time, took us to far away worlds with strange aliens, brought us alien monsters, robots that can pass as human, humans with amazing powers, imaginings of zero gravity generations before the first real traveler in space, and so many more things that were not then or still are not a reality.

And we must draw a clear line between what is science fiction and what is fantasy. Fantasy is not any fantastical story. Fantasy is grounded in magic. The magic may follow rules, but there is no attempt to ground the magic to reality in any way. Arthur C. Clark postulated that a sufficiently advanced society would appear magical to a sufficiently less advanced society. But that is not what fantasy is about. Fantasy is magic. There is no advanced society. It is magic used by members of the society. There may be attempts to make the magic behave in a logical and orderly manner, maybe even a quasi scientific explanation to the magic, but ultimately it is magic and not science.

A few bend the borders between these. Terry Brooks and Mark Lawrence both wrote fantasy based in a future world. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series is set in a world where science and magic have worked together in the past. But it is clear with the way these stories are written that the focus is magic and any science is in support of the magic.

George Lucas muddied the waters by calling Star Wars science fantasy. He also correctly labeled it space opera. Like the paragraph above, the Force in Star Wars, and the occasional tropes borrowed from fantasy, are used in support of the science based, futuristic setting. Star Wars is a direct descendant of the planetary romance genre of the early 20th century. The Force is just an offshoot of the ESP based mental powers so often used in early science fiction literature. The light saber is a sword based on advanced technology that can cut anything. Its very setting swirls with technology. Robots are some of the main characters. The story is taken from myths and legends much like a lot of early science fiction of the golden age. The adventures of Northwest Smith make the adventures of Luke and Han seem tame. Star Wars is based on the mythic hero’s journey and so many early science fiction stories are based on Greek mythology. The problem with the parallel science fiction is that it is soft science fiction. When you listen to George Lucas talk about Star Wars, he is clearly using science fantasy to make a clear break from hard science fiction, not all science fiction.

With these difficulties and with both science fiction and fantasy (and to some extent horror), some group them together in a larger genre called speculative fiction. Most of the truly old stories that get cited as early science fiction are more properly speculative fiction. That is because the science is not clear. They are imagining the future, but it is not always based on technology or science, but just a general speculation. The Wikipedia page on the history of science fiction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_fiction) is full of references that on further examination are more speculative fiction that science fiction. and the Wikipedia page on the history of fantasy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fantasy) makes it clear that the two genres follow distinct lines.

With the advent of some modern subgenres like steam punk, as well as examining older works, it becomes necessary to think of science fiction and fantasy in different terms. Science fiction is about the wonders of technology and science. Fantasy is about the wonders of magic and enchantments. So today you can have a science fiction story set in a medieval setting and a fantasy story set in the future. But it is clear from the lineage to which each belongs (unless the author is deliberately blurring the lines of the genres). And horror is clearly about one of the other of these two gone wrong. Frankenstein and the movie Alien are both horror more than science fiction, though both clearly are filled with the imagined wonders of science and technology. But both are more about the nightmare than the science. But all are speculative fiction. All come from different roots but have become so similar and intertwined in some ways that the lines are blurred and sometimes hard to distinguish.

Horror, like fantasy, is not based in reality. Where you could call fantasy a dream, horror is a nightmare. It tends to the occult, demons, murders, and such. Many of the seminal works came out of the 19th century. From Frankenstein to Dracula and so many other tales in between. In many ways the reason that we call the greater genre speculative fiction is that there are so many stories that cross boundaries or at least are clearly neighbors. Frankenstein is also considered science fiction. Dracula is also considered fantasy. The Invisible Man is science fiction and The Picture of Dorian Gray is fantasy. But only if you ignore the horror element.

In many ways all components of speculative fiction have always been historically intertwined. They all require that the writer let their imagination go and dream something into existence that does not exist. Science, legends, nightmares, they all have something to add. But the birth of science fiction is tied to science and reason and extrapolating what those could lead to. The first true science fiction writers were Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. There were writers who came before, but often the science is clouded. Looking to the future does not make a work science fiction. Traveling in space with aliens does not make a work science fiction. It must have that science component. It must have technology that is based on science. It may not delve very deep into science, but it must have that component. Cyrano de Bergerac writing about a voyage to the moon hints at the imaginings that would become science fiction. Frankenstein has our first mad scientist. But are these really science fiction? I challenge you to read them and see for yourself. I challenged myself to read more from the golden age some years ago and stumbled on Northwest Smith. In those stories I could see Han Solo and Captain Kirk. I could see the mix of adventure and scientific based speculation on the future. Mixed with a healthy dose of myths and legends.

I will not say anything is definitively not science fiction. In fact my chief argument is with those proponents of hard science fiction who refuse to acknowledge the wider history of science fiction and claim works that are softer on science and offer more speculation are fantasy rather than science fiction. That is most definitely a false claim. Those works are clearly science fiction. And historical works from before the mid 19th century are harder to categorize. It isn’t until the golden age that we can start to clearly see the genres we know today. Before that the names were different. Tolkien is almost singlehandedly the father of modern epic fantasy, even though there were quite a number of authors with similar tales going back a century before The Lord of the Rings was published. But while they laid the groundwork, their works are not as widely know. Shelly, Poe, Verne, Wells, and Tolkien are the names people will recognize. Speculative fiction would not be the same without them. Before that lies a history of works that led up to modern speculative fiction, but it was a growing period and classifying those older works is problematic. I feel that we should acknowledge the contributions of the past that led to each genre, but not worry too much about how well those old stories fit with the modern genres. They aren’t supposed to. They are what came before - the history and lineage. It is rich and complex and hard to categorize.

I will suggest that speculative fiction as we know it was born in the 19th century. The different varieties were born of different traditions. Their origins are different and they are different today, but they are distinguished from other forms of literature by their speculative nature. It just depends on whether your speculation is about science, magic, or nightmares.

Finding Balance

For me the world is about balance. We have to balance our time on a day to day basis and we need to keep our views balanced. We are hopefully coming off of a period of great inequality and gaining our balance again as we allow people to live their lives without others telling them what to do. I have learned that a great many civilizations around the world used to have this balance, but many have lost it. Some of the Native American tribes saw gender as more fluid than we do today. Parts of the world that today is death to try to live the LGBTQ life used to be haves to those very same people more than a century ago.

An area where I see balance desperately needed is in the process of rectifying the mistakes of the past. I have seen what doing it the wrong way leads to and it really makes the situation worse. We can’t correct the past. We can’t try to right the wrongs by bending the opposite directions. What we need to do is move forward to create the world we want to see. To do otherwise causes a whiplash effect that leads to more suffering.

Native people’s around the world have had it rough. But in studying world history through the many thousands of years of historical and archaeological information, I would say they have come away lucky. So many civilizations have been wiped of the face of the planet with little trace. I was just reading about the waves of immigration into Europe. The Neanderthals were there first, for hundreds of thousands of year. Wiped out by the first wave of modern humans except for the faint 2% trace that is left from interbreeding with modern humans. The second wave lived side by side with the first for a while, bringing farming techniques from the middle east. But the first wave slowly vanished. The third wave, the one we have even more information on since all but a handful of the modern languages of Europe come from them, were the Indo-Europeans from the Steppes of Russia who brought horses and mead. But even though their culture came to dominate, genetically the previous three waves still survive. Modern Europe is a mix of those and others who came later in smaller numbers (such as the Jews in the first centuries of the modern era and the Moors in Spain).

Today we are trying to honor the displaced cultures and help them flourish in our mixed up modern world. The days of suppressing native languages and cultural practices is over. We do our best to live in a diverse nation. Prior to certain recent political occurrences I thought we had made more progress than we evidently have. But that is not unique. I think of England and the plight of those with red hair. Almost worse than being from the Indian subcontinent. Old animosities and prejudices still linger. To gain proper balance these must be dealt with.

I carry that over to my writing. I don’t care to divulge just exactly when my stories are set, but they are well over 5000 years in the future I have envisioned a very unified human race without care of race. Not only that but without care for species. Not a perfect world - I’m not trying to recreate Star Trek after all - but relatable and minus bigotry except in rare instances.

But back to restitution. There is an area that I think this can be done. We signed on to many treaties with the native peoples in the US and over time we have failed to honor those. But many of those lands are now in the hands of the Federal or State governments. I think those lands should be returned in some form. Not paid for, but returned. Perhaps maintain a management system. I admit it is not a well thought out idea, but that is where community discourse comes in.

But another situation has arisen in the last few years. One where I can’t seem to side with the native people. In Hawaii on Mauna Kea there exists an observatory complex. They have been trying to build a new 30 meter telescope there to peer deeper into the blackness of space to peel back the billions of years of time to the earliest light. The native Hawaiians have been protesting and have delayed the construction for the last 6 years. I have researched it and it appears that the Hawaiians have a blanket claim to the entire mountain being sacred. But modern Hawaii is not just Hawaiians. It is the most diverse state in the nation and one of the most diverse places I’ve ever visited. Immigrants from American, Japan, China, and many other places have give it a very diverse modern culture. It has been those voters who have elected leaders who have made the decisions that have finally approved the telescope to go ahead. Everything is in place for the lands on the mountain not in the observatory area to be preserved and protected in terms of being sacred and in terms of the environment.

What seems to have happened is your typical bureaucratic nonsense. In other words a total failure to do what was promised. Probably due to lack of funding. I haven’t fully researched all areas of this yet. But what it boils down to is that many native Hawaiians are of the mind that they have had enough promises not kept and they want the observatory gone and definitely no new telescope. I have an issue with this. This is not balance. This is a whiplash effect due to years of broken promises. Balance is taking stock of the situation and making sure that funding is tied to telescope time (making all the researchers who use them pay equally) to hire the people to do what is needed to properly conserve the environment and any sacred sites on the mountain. And the people hired should be native Hawaiian. But those who want to see the observatory removed I feel have taken a far from balanced approach. The observatory benefits all of us and it doesn’t make a profit. No one is getting rich off those telescopes except in terms of the amazing discoveries that they have led to (and hopefully more discoveries to come).

We cannot rewrite the past. We cannot erase things that have happened. We must move forward and build the world we want to see and avoid doing things that lead to bad feelings. Yes, some groups have oppressed others (I’m not just talking the US here so I’m not being specific) and restitution needs to be made. We going so far that the former oppressors feel oppressed in return, while it feels good in the short term to get revenge, results in the oppressors becoming more entrenched in their bigotry and teaching new generations rather than new generations learning to live in a proper, balanced world. Everyone, regardless of race, gender, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other meaningless label, should be treated equally. They should get equal pay for the same job. The should get equal consideration for any job. We are all human and we should all be equal to each other. We need to let the past go and move forward to the future. Dwelling on the past is a curse that will eat your soul until you become that which you hate. Don’t try to oppress your former oppressors. Live with them as equals. That is the best revenge of all. That is balance.

Time Marches On

I guess writing is a discouraging business. I just tried to peruse a bunch of fellow writer blogs to see if they had Instagram (since I am new on there - https://www.instagram.com/srseldon/) and I found that virtually none of them are still around. One moved so the others might have also, but they left no trace. It's kind of depressing. Nearly everyone I encountered as I was forging my world and writing my first 6 novels (sorry that number 6 isn't out yet - it is written, but not edited) has not continued. I may have been on hiatus for the last few years, but I have not quit and have plans for more books, life has not been kind with time so planning, much less writing and editing, has been sparse. I look to get back in the swing of things in the near future. I hope I can get to my next project before George R.R. Martin finishes his Song of Ice and Fire series.

How many others out there have seen old compadres in writing hang it up and vanish? While being self-published has been hard, the reviews have been good and at some point I may still find a way to reach a wider audience. I think of a line from one of my favorite movies, Galaxy Quest - Never give up, never surrender. I didn't start writing to tell just a couple of stories. I started because I have far too many stories to every get written. And I'm not done with Ven yet.

So never fear, my blog and my site will stay up as long as my host exists. At some point I should buy a domain, but for now, this works.

Until next time....

Missing Things

My sporadic posts create an incomplete picture. I've skipped writing about a few things even though life has not stopped.

I completed the sixth installment of the Zaran Journals. It was such a relief to reach that point and I didn't have another project in mind that I just started coasting and once coasting, as Newtonian Physics teaches us, I just kept coasting. I have been working a bit. I feel some of my early work is a bit rough and needs some cleaning up and updating, but that is hard work. Harder than writing it in the first place. I have gotten some good feedback and have made some good progress on the first book, but nothing else has been going on. I have a few ideas for new projects, but I have been engrossed in some non writing projects that have taken what little creative energy I have. I hope to get back to writing new stuff soon.

The world has not stopped turning and movies and TV have continued to roll on and I have kept up with them, though not kept up writing about them. I did not stop watching Doctor Who or Star Wars.

In brief, here are my thoughts. Disney bought Star Wars. All well and good. They hired J.J. Abrams to do the first film. Not so good. The end results is full of Abrams worst faults. The plot is derivative and the ending is weak. He inserted his mystery box nonsense. He created some good characters and wrote some great scenes and dialog, but the story for The Force Awakens feels more like a prologue than a full story.

Then we have the animated series, Rebels. A great feast of storytelling. Great characters, great cast, great writers. For the first time we get to see badass Vader in action. Darth Maul living is resolved. It came and ended with four seasons of great stories.

Then there is Rogue One. The long mystery about the spies who stole the Death Star plans is revealed and it is marvelous. So much better than The Force Awakens on so many levels. And very different for a Star Wars film. While the story is uniquely Star Wars and doesn't feel derivative of anything, the feel of the movie is that of a hopeless mission in WWII, which has been done many times. Yet that idea in the Star Wars universe comes off as fresh and full of unexpected twists.

The Last Jedi caused controversy. Why, I still am not sure. I found it to be superior to The Force Awakens and a proper continuation from Return of the Jedi. Leia shined and finally got to use the Force and Luke had fallen back to his bad habits (as is common after a tragedy of that magnitude) and had to be pulled up again. While in some beats it is similar to The Empire Strikes Back, the story went in its own direction and grew the characters and put them on the road to complete the saga. I was totally engrossed the first time I watched it and I still have found no flaws, the first time since Return of the Jedi that I can say that about a saga film.

Solo came out too soon after The Last Jedi. At the box office it suffered from backlash, timing, competition, and a feeling that only Harrison Ford can play Solo. But when I went to the film, I found a movie that was true to the spirit of the old Expanded Universe. Brain Daley penned three Han Solo books and then later Ann C. Crispin dived even deeper. This story stays true to that character even though it goes in a different direction. Some points are repeated and some new things are added. Lando has a different droid, but has been on the same adventures that L. Neil Smith wrote about. Han is burned in love and is setup to be the person we meet in A New Hope, even if he isn't there yet. It was just the Han Solo film I have been waiting for since Brian Daley wrote his books.

So Star Wars started out rocky but has had 3 roaring successes as far as I'm concerned. I have yet to get into the new animated series, Resistance, but from the premier, it has the same potential Rebels did. But with a more Anime feel to the animation.

I have kept on top of Doctor Who. I last reported on Clara's last season. Wonderful. Capaldi's third and last season culminated with our first multiple Master story as the last two incarnations of the Master kill each other. Typical of the modern era, Capaldi lasted 4 years and 3 seasons with only a Christmas special in the skipped year. Capaldi's Doctor sends off River Song on their final encounter before she goes off to her first appearance and death. We get a superhero story. A season with Bill. A wonderful and complex character who is totally different from Clara. And Nardole. The glimpse from his first appearance wasn't enough and we get him for a whole season. A wonderful addition.

And then came the triumph of Capaldi's era - Twice Upon a Time. The First and Twelfth Doctors meet. We get two Tardis's and two Doctor, and the return of Bill. And if this outstanding story wasn't enough, the Doctor regenerated into something new. My feelings on that probably should be a post of its own, but suffice it to say that after 6 episodes of this new Doctor, she has nailed the part and is the Doctor. I'll leave a review of her first season until it is finished. But so far it has a couple of history based episodes that are among the best of the revived series.

I've already covered Star Trek and The Orville, so that about covers the things I've been thinking about.

I've also read some incredible stories. The Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor is outstanding. But the best thing I have read in years has been the new trilogy by Ann Leckie. Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy form one of the best space opera trilogies I have ever read. She took a unique tack that doesn't detract from the story. She only uses the female pronoun as the society she is writing about only uses one pronoun for everyone. It creates a unique perspective on humanity. But the story is that good on top of it. Completely new and fresh and outstanding. So pick up both series and enjoy. They are my type of science fiction.

Well, that covers a lot of what I missed. I hope to keep up again and get back into gear. Time to turn my creativity to words again.

A War Among The Stars

It is sad when people claiming to be fans of a property instead tear it apart. In the last 7 months, we have had two Star Wars movies. The first, The Force Awakens, was Episode 8 in the greater Star Wars Saga. The second, Solo: A Star Wars Story, took on the origin story for Han Solo. Both have caused great controversy.

The Force Awakens was written and directed by Rian Johnson and he put pen to paper (or whatever process he uses) during the post production phase of The Force Awakens. He took the story and where each character was left at and crafted a story to carry them further and see them grow to prepare them for the final installment. Between when he wrote it and when it came out, fans went nuts with theories and ideas. Even myself. And when The Force Awakens delivered something different, some called it the worst Star Wars movie ever made. In reality it just didn't fit what they had imagined the next chapter to be. Many cited Luke as the big issue. But Rian Johnson showed genius in tapping into that whiny farm boy from A New Hope in how Luke ended up in self imposed exile on this tiny island on a remote world. The thing is, George Lucas put him there and J.J. Abrams left him there for the first movie leaving it to Rian Johnson to pick up the story. Luke wants to be the hero, but what happens when the hero becomes that greatest threat to the galaxy. That is where Luke is at when the story picks up. It takes both Rey and Yoda to wake him up.

And worse yet, some did not like the new character of Rose. While story wise she is exactly what Finn needed to get him in the right place to be the hero the finale of this saga needs, some pick on her and the actress who played her because they think she did something wrong. Some of it I'm sure is her race and gender. That has become a real problem lately. But most of it is just rude fans. The same thing happened to Jake Lloyd. Neither one is being treated fairly. Any perceived flaws in the movie are not the fault of the actors. If you truly love the Star Wars franchise, respect the actors and their work even if you don't like the character they create. Ultimately the flaws of any movie lie with the director.

For Solo, the issues are different. Han Solo has a long history of his own spin-off stories. Yet some thought this was not grand enough for him. Not exciting enough. Too full of call backs to other areas of the Star Wars universe. Yet everything smoothly tied in to craft a story that was true to the character and in keeping with the spirit of those spin-off stories. The production was troubled with the Directors fired near the end of filming. Reports are that 70% of the film was reshot. Considering what we got was vintage Han Solo, I'd say they did the right thing, but the Box Office is not what was expected and there may be fallout for that. But had the original directors had their way, they were trying for a comedy and that would have flopped big time and the fans would have rebelled at such a beloved character being treated that way.

Instead we got two beautifully crafted stories that I feel time will treat well and will become beloved pieces of the franchise. I think in time people will come to love The Last Jedi as they did The Empire Strikes Back (at the time considered the worst of the original trilogy and now considered the best). I don't think any movies in the franchise will ever compare to the original three, but what is being produced today is quality work that will stand the test of time.

So lets be civil and not treat each other or the cast badly. Let's rise above this and follow the lead of our departed princess and respect each other even if we don't agree. Let's put this war among the stars to bed and be a community.

Discovery vs. Orville - which trek to take

This television season has brought us two new series. They are very different.

I came late to Star Trek fandom, but when I arrived, I arrived big time. I would say the first inkling of my fandom came with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the Enterprise cutaway poster hung on my wall for years), but it didn't reach full force until we moved and I had daily reruns of the original series. I also found conventions. I was always big on the tech side and the story side. My first ever completed story was Star Trek related and I lived for plans, blueprints, and technical manuals.

When they announced Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was excited. New stories in series format. I was not disappointed. The series got better and better until they split the writing team to start Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Babylon 5 also started at about the same time. It is really telling that I could ignore some of the lower production values of Babylon 5 in favor of its superior writing. Also telling were how many classic Star Trek writers who wandered over to that series. I finally gave up on Deep Space Nine and Voyager when Trials and Tibbleations aired. I found it sad that the best episode of Deep Space Nine was one that revisited a classic story. They had fallen that far. Even the movies made about that time were lacking. I liked them, but they did not sing like some of the original cast movies. And I still remember Patrick Stewart praising the series finale and being more cautious about commenting on Generations.

So we come to 2017. Star Trek is 51, The Next Generation is 30. Babylon 5 is 24. New on TV is Star Trek Discovery and The Orville. Being a fan of Star Trek for more than 35 years, and being a writer myself, I am aware of what made Star Trek great. Some give sole claim to Gene Roddenberry, but without NBC's input, his creation would not have been nearly so successful. They were right, they public wanted action. The turned down his original pilot, The Cage, and when he made the first movie, he again returned to that format and while it was a hit in its day, that film pales next to the others. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a great film and the story is far better than many in the original series or even the later series, but it fails to capture both aspects of what is Star Trek.

The good movies manage to capture both. Gene wanted a Utopian future where we had gotten past money, bigotry, petty squabbles, etc. NBC wanted action adventure. Put them together and you have success. Gene's vision alone is too cerebral. NBC's vision is just your average science fiction. When J.J. Abrams came in to do the new Star Trek movies, he got the cast right and then failed three times on the writing. All three of those movies are NBC's vision only. Nothing of Gene's vision can be found. When you look at Star Trek Discovery, that is what you find. And the worst part is they claim to have returned to the original timeline while at the same time rewriting things like they were doing a reboot. On the other hand, The Orville is a reboot that manages to capture both Gene's vision and NBC's action adventure to create the closest thing to Star Trek in years. And it manages to do it with some humor thrown in.

So if you are a fan of Star Trek as Gene Roddenberry, Gene Coon, Robert Justman, Nicholas Meyer, or Rick Berman made it, then you need to watch The Orville. If you like the J.J. Abrams films, watch Star Trek Discovery. Discovery is good science fiction and a nice reboot of Trek in an action adventure sense, but The Orville is the trek you are looking for, hitting deep issues and currently relevant questions in the way Star Trek should.

Comparative Technology

I feel the need to be nerdier than usual.

A video on YouTube has sparked a topic that I think about from time to time. Many fans wonder, seriously or in jest, how the technology of various science fiction universes compares. I thought I might delve into four of my favorites. Oh, and when it comes to who would win, the answer is always the Doctor. But technology is a different matter.

I'll tackle Star Trek first. They set out from the beginning to have a higher level of technology so you have phasers and photon torpedoes for weapons. The ships carry a variety of deflector and shield systems designed to go from avoiding space debris to protecting from weapons. This elevates the level of damage these weapons can do to a different level.

Then came Star Wars. While Lucas refers to lasers and laser swords, in universe they are rarely referred to in that way. Also, the effects do not correspond to the way lasers works leading me to have a different explanation. The weapons are called basters or turbo lasers and we can see the beam travel leading me to believe they are a plasma based weapon very similar in effect to a laser, but more powerful. We do get some description of deflectors and shields but don't really get to see much of them. There is also armor plating. What you do get is a sense that the larger ships are heavily built.

Battlestar Galactica (the original - the only one I've seen) basically copied Star Wars for the level of technology, omitting lightsabers. But basically the same effects as Star Wars and the same solid designs. Not surprising since Ralph MacQuarrie was behind the conceptual design of both. This places Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars on nearly equal footing.

Then there is Babylon 5. This gets more dicey because we aren't dealing with just one technology. There are really three levels. first you have the Earth Alliance. These are lower level weapons solidly built ships. Then you have the Centari, Narn, and Mimbari at the mid level. They are pretty equally matched in most ways and superior to the Earth Alliance. But they are inferior to the Vorlons and Shadows. They represent an entirely new level, one that has more firepower at their fingertips than anyone else.

When you start to pit these various technologies against each other you get some pretty varied results depending on who is doing it. My outlook is to take the level of damage into account and the size of the ships and the damage weapons do. Then I look for parallels. One parallel is the merchant ship at the start of Star Trek III and the Millennium Falcon. They are similar in size, both appear to land on planets. The Falcon has armor plating and deflectors. The other ship seems to have been caught with its guard down. The Klingon Bird of Prey destroys the ship with one volley of fire from its phaser-like weapons (often called disruptors but that name doesn't always seem to fit the effect). So, what would a Bird of Prey do to the Falcon? I think the results would be similar, but it would take more shots to cut through the armor plating. Now, in Star Wars we see the Falcon take a lot of hits on the deflectors and suffer no real damage (other than some overloaded systems) so if the deflectors were up, it would take the Klingon ship some work. But the Falcon's weapons are no match for the Bird of Prey's shields.

As I continue to put the pieces together, I come to realize that the Star Wars weapons are almost as powerful as the Star Trek ones. Similarly compatible to the Mimbari weapons from Babylon 5. So in terms of dealing out damage, they are all quite similar. But it is when you get to shields that things become more clear. The Star Wars ships seem to rely on ruggedness and armor rather than shields. Their shields are weaker than the Star Trek or Mimbari ones. And Battlestar Galactica doesn't seem to have any shields except around the bridge. So when it comes to damage they are almost all equal. But when it comes to the ability to sustain damage, they are not.

I would put the Earth Alliance as the weakest. They've got the spirit and tactics, but not the equipment. They need luck and skill to even hold their own with the others and a hell of a lot of both to beat them.

Then Battlestar Galactica. They have no defensive systems. Their capital ships have missiles that can blow the others away, but bringing them to bear would be difficult.

The Mimbari, Star Trek, and Star Wars all seem to be pretty equivalent. Star Trek ships have stronger shields, but they rely on those shields for most of their defense. The ships can't take much damage. the Star Wars ships are hearty and can take a pounding. The Mimbari seem to have the best technology and make use of fighters. That seems to be a key difference in Star Trek and Star Wars tactics. Star Trek lacks fighters. If those ships focus too much on the fighters they could put to much effort into the small targets and neglect he larger targets and lose the battle. All things considered, I think the Mimbari would come out on top.

But then there is something else to consider. The Death Star is an order of magnitude higher than the rest. But so are the Vorlons and Shadows. The Death Star can blow apart a planet, something the Vorlons and Shadows can't quite match. But the Death Star is easy to take out. Since the Vorlons and Shadows were loathe to act unless things became serious and really were only in the mood to fight each other, this pretty much negates any need to really consider them (they'd win if you did).

What it boils down to is what ships could take the pounding from the others and still dish it out. The Galactica took more hits than any Star Destroyer we witnessed so for capital ships, I'd vote her the winner for endurance. But Star Trek ships have pretty powerful weapons and advanced shields. Unless an enemy can take such a pounding and still dish it out, the Star Trek universe would have to win as the most powerful. It would be a tough battle between them and a fleet of Battlestars, but I think a TNG era Federation fleet would win. They are fast, maneuverable, with the firepower to do the job. The Battlestars and Baseships would have a hard time dealing out any damage, but they could take a huge amount and that might give them the time to get in shots to take down the Federation shields. After that the Federation ships wouldn't stand a chance, but I don't think it would go that far.