Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Politics of Star Trek vol. 1

Rather than doing a typical Star Trek article this week, I'm instead going to announce the release of the first edition of The Politics of Star Trek volume one.

This is the first in what I expect to be seven books that will cover the entire original series. The format is similar to the series we've done here at the site, though each episode is covered in a little more depth. Volume one also has an introduction which talks about the nature of Star Trek and how it came to be conservative. So this is a bit more than you'll get at the blog if you're interested.

The image above is the cover, which was done by our own tryanmax. He also provided eight more illustrations for the book.

Here are the episodes that are covered in volume one:
Episode 3: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
Episode 50: “Patterns of Force”
Episode 14: “Balance of Terror”
Episode 48: “A Private Little War”
Episode 28: “The City on the Edge of Forever”
Episode 13: “The Conscience of the King”
Episode 75: “The Way To Eden”
Episode 24: “This Side of Paradise”
Episode 5: “The Enemy Within”
Episode 23: “A Taste of Armageddon”
I'm hoping to get future additions out every couple of months.

If you're interested in the book or if you know someone who would be, you can find it at Amazon (LINK). Please leave a review!

And hopefully, the Conservative Guide to Films will be ready within a couple weeks as well.

So tell me, what is your favorite conservative moment from Star Trek?

33 comments:

AndrewPrice said...

Again, please leave reviews. You don't even need to buy the books as most of you have read more than enough in articles here to comment on it already.

Also, please hit LIKE.

And spread the word!!

Come on everyone, it's time to help your fellow conservatives! :)

rlaWTX said...

you've been busy!!!!

AndrewPrice said...

rlaWTX, Very! I've also finished the Conservative Guide to films and have been editing that.

Commander Max said...

Like I said before, this is going to drive people nuts.

But what can they do? It's all there.
What would they do, badmouth you.

You want a conservative moment.
"I don't recognize your authority to relieve me."

I'll pass the word around to my fellow conservative Trekkies.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Max!

This will absolutely drive some people nuts. I expect to get flooded with hate-filled reviews from the left. They tend to do that with political books anyway and they will hate this one on principle. But facts are facts.

Thanks for spreading the word! :)

Tennessee Jed said...

bravo!

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Jed!

T-Rav said...

Why do the figures have no faces?

AndrewPrice said...

They're bubblemen. Bubblemen never have faces.

BevfromNYC said...

YEY!!!!! Can't wait to buy it and read it.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I hope you like it! :)

Commander Max said...

The Bubblemen are coming.

AndrewPrice said...

Max, The Bubblemen are indeed coming. It's too late to run! ;)

Unknown said...

I'm looking forward to reading it and making my son read it. Since it's Star Trek focused, my chances of success are high.

AndrewPrice said...

Joe, Thanks! I hope you and your son enjoy it. :)

darski said...

Just bought the Kindle... looking forward to the read.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks darski! I think you'll enjoy it. It's good stuff. :)

Commander Max said...

I was referencing an old 80's song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzUFs9Xx-2s

AndrewPrice said...

Max, I remember that! That was pre-MTV or just around the time MTV got started. I remember a lot of those bands.

Commander Max said...

It came out in 1988, long after MTV was on the air. But it was still in the time when it could have been seen on MTV.

Just a funny aside, I stopped watching MTV when a host stated, "We are all sitting here on the beach doing nothing, yo, yo, yo". All I could think of was, "I'll bet there is something much better on another channel, yo, yo, yo". That was about the mid nineties. It was just as funny they were at lake Havasu, AZ. A big spring break destination at the time, a place that I would say really didn't have any beaches.

Individualist said...

Andrew

I intend to review them this Christmas when I buy the books. I simply can't afford to buy anything right now until then when I get some money coming in.

I am sure they will be great.

BIG MO said...

Looking forward to it!

(By the by, I'm about 1/3 of the way through Without a Hitch. Let me guess: You've had a boss like Kak before? :)

AndrewPrice said...

Max, Was it that late? Wow, I thought it was a few years earlier. Oh well, memory is the first thing to go!

AndrewPrice said...

Inid, No rush. :)

AndrewPrice said...

Mo, Uh... yep. What is it they say... only the names have been changed to protect the guilty?

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Hi Andrew. Man, you have been busy!
Sorry it took so long but I got a review up at Amazon. I hope your book catches on and Trekkers give it a chance.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Ben! I appreciate that! :)

Anonymous said...

Read the sample pages on Amazon, found them interesting and informative to the fact that Gene Roddenberry knew what he was doing as a writer. He was teaching and entertaining in every episode of Star Trek. I can't see how Lost in Space was chosen over Star Trek, but the second 'pilot' did the job in getting the series on the air. I remember the writing blitz that Roddenberry + instigated when the rumor "got out" that the network was going to cancel Star Trek - I wrote - it worked. Nonetheless, The Politics of Star Trek Vol 1. is great as far as I'm concerned even though I read only the introduction. Price knows what to write to hold your interest so as Arnold S. and Gen. MacArthur said, "I'll be back ..."

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Anon! I hope you enjoy it. I'm hoping to finish the rest of the series as soon as possible, but I'm trying to complete a conservative film guide first.

Anonymous said...

I have enjoyed your essays in this series very much.
I would like to see you comment on the episode where Kirk & company find themselves on a planet where they wage war by proxy. They draw names by lot and, when the enemy electronically "bombs" a target, someone must go into a disintegration chamber and die. It is discovered in the course of the show, that the rich and important are never drawn and at some point, the leader's daughter arranges to go into the chamber to die so that everyuone could be seen to be equal in this way. I see this episode as not only a commetary at the time of the fact that the poor were disproportionately sent to Viet Nam, but also about modern use of drone strikes and bombings today. Kirk felt that war was serious enough to be waged personally and hands on so people will choose not to wage it in order to solve their problems. Is this an episode you are planning to write about?

AndrewPrice said...

Anon, Thanks! That episode is A Taste of Armageddon and I've written about it here: A Taste of Armageddon.

That's an interesting point that the episode might say a lot about things like drones and privilege today. Nice thinking!

Eric M. Blake said...

I'd like to know what your thoughts are on Deep Space Nine.

For me, I always loved DS9 as a Conservative deconstruction of the Liberal premises of NextGen. DS9 is set in the same time as NextGen...and yet, we're on a station, not a ship. As such, we're forced to look at the consequences of actions...and the things taken for granted in the Utopia of NextGen is picked apart and challenged constantly.

It's famously summed up when Sisko says to Kira, "You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see...paradise. Well, it's easy to be a saint in paradise." In other words, humanity HASN'T changed...and over the course of the show, Sisko and crew have to face a LOT of hard, dark choices--weigh the consequences...and eventually, take part in a three-season-long interstellar war in order to defend freedom.

AndrewPrice said...

Eric, I haven't written about DS-9, but I see it as you describe it. It turned out to have a surprisingly conservative world view. It wasn't utopian. It believed in right and wrong and accepted that freedom is better but with freedom comes personal responsibility. It was opposed to strong, controlling government. It was very much in favor of private markets. It didn't believe in peace through weakness. It didn't believe that people were prisoners of their personalities, i.e. we are responsible for our actions.

In terms of humanity, you are absolutely right -- it made it clear that human nature cannot be reprogrammed unlike what TNG said repeatedly, but it also firmly held that we are capable of choosing what our actions will be and therefore we are responsible for the consequences of our actions. Again, that flies in the face of the idea that our actions are the result of root causes.

It was also a much more realistic show because it showed that you can't solve every problem by saying "we surrender" and thereby warming the heart of your enemy. In DS-9, they faced some really ugly choices and they had to make good decision in light of that. Good show!

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