Nasa/Trek Book

Three stars for divisiveness

the first half I found brilliant, if a little batshit (not a bad thing!) and all over the place. the way it both conveyed history and engaged with it in various productive ways was interesting on even just a formal level, and while it seemed to lose threads every so often (eg popular science, the concept of NASA/TREK, both of which surprised me when they popped back up in the little conclusion chapter), the overall argument is generative if nothing else.

the second, I mean, eh. it was probably just that it felt like a lot of summarizing to get to the good stuff (which, I get it, but felt uneven given how the first half was very good at covering the basics while getting into more nuance and detail) and carries the same assertions that I have always felt are insane premises in fan studies, even early on, which is the characterization (& binarism) of transformational (vs affirmational, and again, ik, predates the terms specifically but does v much frame things in that light) fans as uniformly women.* towards the end when it introduced more specifics (eg the section on literary homosocial mythos) it got better, but even then they seemed here and gone in a minute.

I think it's an issue of balance, mainly; the amount of depth and specificity in the /NASA half set an expectation that /TREK didn't quite meet. obviously just looking at it, the first part is MUCH longer than the second, and there were many points where I was expecting more. (the redefinition of technology in fiction was SO interesting & something I could see many more offshoots of. how does it actually compare to commercial SF, etc.) and sure, there were parts that dropped off suddenly, or reverted on earlier ambivalences (the sudden turn at the end to say slashers have "eliminated its racism" and "avoided the misogyny"** etc really threw me lmao), or were just wildly opinionated in a way that presented itself as fact, but it was fun, it was engaging, it was informative and well-grounded in criticism while also broadening horizons.

(THAT BEING SAID: if you find it hard to slash TNG that is on YOU. like, at the very least, Q is RIGHT there.)


*especially when it gets into bodies and gender ' trans people existed in the 60s and certainly in the 90s, when this was written. come on, guys.

**another thing that very much bugged me: penley states a number of times that slash writers generally don't bother with women characters, for a variety of given reasons ("future men", especially 126) but mostly in response to the sexism inherent in their canonical representations but like... one, I hear this all the time still, and even if you're so concerned with canonicity you're already rewriting things, recontextualize/expand/whatever'there are other options. two, avoiding women entirely isn't avoiding misogyny.