media doesnt exist to teach you moral lessons it exists so you can learn about a fucked up guy in a fucked up situation and go “woah thats so fucked up”
StarTrek.com: For my last question, what has been your favorite or one of your favorite memories of interacting with the Star Trek fandom?
Nana Visitor: I’ll tell you my favorite, and I’m flexing a little bit. No, actually, I’m flexing a lot. My favorite interaction was speaking to astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, six months ago, while she was at ISA [International Space Station], and I was at ESA [European Space Agency], and when I heard [the person connecting us] say, “Open a channel to the space station,” it almost blew me apart because that was a phrase I’ve said over and over, "Open a channel. Open a channel.“ And yet now, because Samantha watched the shows, because they were important to her, there was a channel being opened to an actual space station and I was talking to this astronaut. That almost blew me apart and I didn’t exist after that.
(Cristoforetti is definitely a huge trekkie, on her previous stint on the International Space Station in 2015 she actually wore a Voyager-era Starfleet uniform. And, perhaps more importantly, she’s currently in command of the ISS!)
“The Door” by Ann R. Loverock (2020) “It looked the same as it had in the winter: standing alone, unfixed to the landscape.”
I love this one for that particular short fiction quality of just getting started immediately and then cutting off the story before a traditional ending. It’s creepy and the implication of these events in this environment calls back to that ancient fear of forbidden knowledge or advancement. We want it but there is a price to be paid. (Also, colonialism.)
===
“Rainbow Sprinkles” by W. Maxwell Prince, Chris O’Halloran, Martín Morazzo, Nimit Malavia (2018) “Arizona like in the movies of our dreams”
My first reaction was this isn’t horror (particularly after a more straightforward horror story in the first issue), but I think this is going to happen many times throughout the month. I’ve made the effort to seek out a more expansive range of voices and backgrounds in my horror selections and it’s going to require a broader acceptance of horror as a genre and medium for storytellers. All that said, this second issue of Ice Cream Man is more tragic and real, and horror fiction is, after all, a reflection of the horrors we face as real people.
First: I thought I’d watched a Almodóvar movie before but apparently I hadn’t watched a one before this. Second: my cynical side thinks any male director with power will absolutely leverage it to make an attractive woman be naked a lot in his movie and linger on it. Third: I am a very uptight American. Fourth: holy shit.
ALT