Hypothetical:
Emphasis added. Tolkien’s “derivatives” in particular are absolutely legion - they may have still happened, but Skald just eliminated all of them and left vague memories of loss behind. Tomato, tomahto - you’re not altering history before it happened, but you are largely erasing it after the fact.
Yes, but if we sacrifice Star Trek, we will be rid of Voyager, Enterprise, about half of TNG, at least a quarter of the original series, and a good ten out of twelve Star Trek movies. So, I’d call that a wash.
Deep Space 9 would be a bit of a loss, but we’d likely still have Babylon 5, so that’s not too big of a deal.
I’d say it depends on how loose a definition of “derivatives” Skald is going with. You could make an argument that without Star Trek paving the way, there wouldn’t have been Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5 or Firefly or StarGate.
I voted to lose Star Trek. I love it, but science fiction as a genre would be just as awesome if it had never existed. Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, practically invented high fantasy as we know it. We can’t give that up.
Then I read the thread, and the comments about fan communities reminded me that I met my beloved through Star Trek. Crap. I should have thought this through.
Right, SF conventions before ST had attendance figures that mounted up into the dozens. Without the fan push of ST, they’d still be there, IMHO.
Trek? Gone. I watched the original Trek in reruns when I was a kid, and Next Generation as a teen.
I read mostly SF&F, heavily weighted toward the SF side of things lately, and I’d still axe Trek in a nanosecond. There were some really good things about it, but some of it was hokey even at the time and hasn’t aged well. For all the Trekkie talk about how it’s more sciency than Star Wars, most of the tech seemed to have been powered by phlogiston, and made out of unobtanium-plated handwavium. As I pointed out in another thread recently, you could swap most of the technobabble with Harry Potter terminology without much ancillary rewriting necessary.
Tolkien’s work is just as timeless now as it was the day it was published. If I had to bet on which of the two would be preserved and read 200 years from now, I would have no doubt where to place my money.
Have you seen this? It certainly lends credence to your theory:
I don’t know what that is, but it crashed my browser. Proof of some grand evil, I’m sure ;).
Aaand…without Star Trek to reboot and screw up, Abrams likely wouldn’t have gotten the gig to further screw up Star Wars.
No reboot alone makes it worth flipping my vote.
Not as many as one might think. Arthurian legend and mythology from various cultures predate Tolkien, as do the Middle Ages. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, trolls, giants, goblins, dragons, undead, angels, demons, etc…all known Pre-Tolkien. Armor and weapon types–Pre-Tolkien. Notions of spellcasters of various types–Pre-Tolkien.
I think D&D still happens even if Tolkien doesn’t, and the game would be largely recognizable to current players, but certain levels of flavor/context would be missing or different.
The plan is to make the world WORSE.
But anyway, I am a sadist, not a nihilist. The Elder Gods want to destroy the universe. The universe is where I keep all my stuff. Therefore simple logic (not to mention the will of Athena) impels me to oppose them.
Where and when in the TrekVerse would you wish to live? I need somebody to go rescue Jadzia Dax from Gul Dukat (while depositing a hookerbot to die in her place). You don’t need to know the reasons beyond Because Pallas says so.
Quite right. YOu’ll never be able to watch TOS, DS9, Wrath of Khan, and so forth again, or remember any details about them (or read Silmarillion, Hobbit, etc), but you’ll recall that you once loved them.
If you can reprogram a Rhymer Enterprises satellite without being killed, obviously we’ll be offering you a job. If you get killed by one of the booby-traps–well, that is obviously your problem, not mine.
Beardpig says lose Tolkien. The greatest fantasy novel ever written was The Once and Future King, anyway, and the world of tabletop games will still have Tekumel and Traveller.
As much as I have enjoyed works of fantasy in my life, I have to say that science fiction is more significant, on a social and cultural scale. Science fiction is the means by which people think about and explore possibilities for where we are going and what we will do. As much as can be done with fantasy, in terms of telling stories about human beings and human motivations, it’s nothing that couldn’t be done in a conventional work of literary fiction, set in the present day or in some historical venue.
Even accepting that argument, what about the idea that science fiction as a genre is far, far, FAR less dependent on Star Trek than modern fantasy is on Tolkien?
Are you sure?
:mad: Hey, I got somethin’ seminal right here . . .
You’ve got that just backwards. Tolkein was merely doing a prose update of medieval heroic sagas. ST – high-quality interstellar space opera on the little screen – was a new concept for its day.
Then ST remains more valuable than Tolkein, as representing a far more valuable genre. Better run-of-the-mill SF than seminal fantasy.
Anyway, the division that matters is not between Star Trek fans and Tolkein fans.
The division that matters is between Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans.
Completely delusional fanboys worshiping an imaginary world that could never be?
But then how to describe the Star Wars fans?