From the (Archive e-)Bookshelf: Net Trek
May. 25th, 2021 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerI’ve been poking my way through the books to be borrowed from the Internet Archive for a while now, just perhaps still concerned about the trouble kicked up when its borrowing limits were removed “for the emergency” last year. In the process of that, I stumbled across a title that brought me back quite a few years. In the first flush of general kicked-up interest about the Internet that got me to the point of being able to connect as well, I’d happened on a “online resources guide” titled Net Trek (although I had to look past its front cover to find that particular capitalization). Its particular narrowing focus did happen to sit well with me, and I did page through it a few times in bookstores at university and elsewhere, although having been pointed to actual online directories through my family’s “how to get your Mac online” book I’d never thought I needed to actually buy this particular volume. Having another chance after so many years to revisit it, though, did amuse me.
As soon as I’d dipped into the online book, however, I did realise that for all the interest I’d taken back then in just where its “general science fiction” coverage had got to, its title wasn’t misleading. It was very much focused on “Star Trek online.” That could have been where I had to keep a closer eye on the threatening second edge of “nostalgia.” In the mid-1990s Star Trek had seemed big, but as the millennium got closer the “fan reactions” the book had pointed towards did seem to sour, and then the TV series had ended, years had passed, a new movie showed up to acclaim only for reactions to go awry with its sequel, more years passed, and TV series started again only to wind up in the wearying, troubling mire of performative offensiveness over “updated properties” that can make online communications seem rather less appealing now than when the book had first been published. Still, I did come across a comment in the book about early reactions to The Next Generation with a first resemblance to “how dare they update things for the time I’m stuck in,” even if this had been before warnings about “amplified negativity.”
On a more amusing note of surprise, I also ran into a two-page feature introducing MSTings, using the example of an early instalment in Stephen Ratliff’s fanfiction cycle. Ratliff, a university student whose early prose might have raised unfortunate thoughts about the primary and secondary education system, was interviewed (“by email”) and mentioned “I am plotting out a Star Trek/Star Wars crossover with my brother doing the Star Wars side.” If that story was actually written, it wasn’t MSTed. On the other hand, in the last few Ratliff stories that did get “riffed” on, when the MSTing authors were getting more amusedly tolerant of that particular source material, Ratliff was starting to show an interest in anime.
After all the Star Trek coverage (and a short chapter on “real space”), I was interested in getting to the chapter on “other science fiction.” It had a decent number of Mystery Science Theater 3000 resources, more pages devoted to Star Wars resources than to any other title (although with the J. Michael Straczynski interview added to the Babylon 5 resources, that title had more pages in general), and the two Robotech resources I remembered from all those years before. However, the first pages of the chapter were missing from the Internet Archive. Aware they’d have been the most general resources (presumably including written science fiction, which back then at least seemed to hold itself far above anything visual attempting to claim the name), I wound up searching out the far wider-ranging Net Guide editions also in the Archive, which were also a bit interesting. The very first Net Guide predated the World Wide Web, although after nodding at Net Trek including Robotech without a specific mention of anime I was a little surprised to see the earlier book had several anime resources in its “Comics & Cartoons” section, even if I understood why the subject might have been filed there regardless of where “anime conventions” emerged from.
As soon as I’d dipped into the online book, however, I did realise that for all the interest I’d taken back then in just where its “general science fiction” coverage had got to, its title wasn’t misleading. It was very much focused on “Star Trek online.” That could have been where I had to keep a closer eye on the threatening second edge of “nostalgia.” In the mid-1990s Star Trek had seemed big, but as the millennium got closer the “fan reactions” the book had pointed towards did seem to sour, and then the TV series had ended, years had passed, a new movie showed up to acclaim only for reactions to go awry with its sequel, more years passed, and TV series started again only to wind up in the wearying, troubling mire of performative offensiveness over “updated properties” that can make online communications seem rather less appealing now than when the book had first been published. Still, I did come across a comment in the book about early reactions to The Next Generation with a first resemblance to “how dare they update things for the time I’m stuck in,” even if this had been before warnings about “amplified negativity.”
On a more amusing note of surprise, I also ran into a two-page feature introducing MSTings, using the example of an early instalment in Stephen Ratliff’s fanfiction cycle. Ratliff, a university student whose early prose might have raised unfortunate thoughts about the primary and secondary education system, was interviewed (“by email”) and mentioned “I am plotting out a Star Trek/Star Wars crossover with my brother doing the Star Wars side.” If that story was actually written, it wasn’t MSTed. On the other hand, in the last few Ratliff stories that did get “riffed” on, when the MSTing authors were getting more amusedly tolerant of that particular source material, Ratliff was starting to show an interest in anime.
After all the Star Trek coverage (and a short chapter on “real space”), I was interested in getting to the chapter on “other science fiction.” It had a decent number of Mystery Science Theater 3000 resources, more pages devoted to Star Wars resources than to any other title (although with the J. Michael Straczynski interview added to the Babylon 5 resources, that title had more pages in general), and the two Robotech resources I remembered from all those years before. However, the first pages of the chapter were missing from the Internet Archive. Aware they’d have been the most general resources (presumably including written science fiction, which back then at least seemed to hold itself far above anything visual attempting to claim the name), I wound up searching out the far wider-ranging Net Guide editions also in the Archive, which were also a bit interesting. The very first Net Guide predated the World Wide Web, although after nodding at Net Trek including Robotech without a specific mention of anime I was a little surprised to see the earlier book had several anime resources in its “Comics & Cartoons” section, even if I understood why the subject might have been filed there regardless of where “anime conventions” emerged from.