I had the privilege of being a guest on the Church of the Geek podcast. We recorded the episode just a few days ago, and it went live yesterday morning. Have a listen. I’ll embed the episode at the bottom of this post for those who cannot conveniently click through to listen on another site I’ve linked to. Meanwhile, here are some links related to Star Trek, the intersection of religion and science fiction in general, and other things that come up in the conversation.
First, I mention sexism on Star Trek: The Original Series and IO9 recently had an article about the sexist legacy in Star Trek’s progressive vision. There was also news about the Star Trek Role Playing Game being expanded to allow players to play Klingon characters.
Octavia Tried to Tell Us: Parable for Today’s Pandemic by Monica Coleman
Take a look at the SolSeed movement which seeks to turn Octavia Butler’s (or if you prefer, her character Lauren Olamina’s) Earthseed religion into a real-life one
A deleted scene from Star Wars: A New Hope depicted Luke Skywalker’s political naivete in ways that have striking contemporary relevance when we consider how often rural constituencies vote for the Empire. Another IO9 article has made me want to watch Solo again. The official Star Wars website had a range of interesting things, as always, but particularly noteworthy for my intersecting interests was the series on Teaching with Star Wars. See the articles on Rey, Leia, Lando, and Anakin and Obi-Wan. There is also a new guide to real-world mindfulness based on Jedi techniques.
Matt Brake wrote about his work on popular culture
There was an astonishing amount of blogging about Dune and in particular religion in the franchise a while back:
Should there be a religion based on Dune?
A guide to Dune’s strange and intense religions
Likes and dislikes about the Dune miniseries
The contemporary relevance of Jodorowsky’s Dune
The story of David Lynch’s Dune
See also this older resource if you haven’t previously: Arabic and Islamic themes in Frank Herbert’s “Dune”
There is a call for papers (actually book chapters) on the films of Denis Villeneuve.
I’ve said before that I’ve long wanted to have a science fiction club at Butler University called the “Butlerian Jihad” as a nod to Frank Herbert’s Dune series. But I doubt anyone would get the reference, and as a result most would assume it to be a very different sort of organization. Be that as it may, for those who are interested in technology and human freedom, you’ll enjoy this very short story by Bill Adler called “Ketchup.”
On the other type of canon, Brandon Hawk has resumed blogging:
Finally, here’s the episode embedded from Church of the Geek:
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