My only surviving substantial photo of the club. Some of the MASC club members at a solar eclipse excursion, Beveridge (central Victoria), 23 October 1976. (No, we were NOT looking at the Sun through a telescope, we were using pinhole cameras and other forms of technology to observe the eclipse indirectly.)
I remember this 1976 eclipse. Even the cows in the paddocks around us knew to seek shelter when the sky dimmed, but they returned when the light came back. That day, while the rest of the world was going about its business, we looked up — not just at the eclipse, but at a future that was calling us.
Genesis: From Primary School to the Paddock
They say “show me the child and I’ll show you the adult,” but that’s only half the story…
As children, we sometimes begin something small that echoes across decades, shaping lives in ways we never imagined. I had that chance – or perhaps I created it with friends – and half a century later, I can look back with astonishment at the outcomes.
It all began with a group of free spirits in primary school, role-playing “Thunderbirds” and “Lost in Space” and “H.R. Pufnstuf” while other boys were learning to kick footballs and the girls were playing elastics. While the popular kids were modelling themselves on footballers or beauty pageant queens or whatever gender binary norms were being presented in the 1960s, we looked up to Apollo Moonwalkers, the space family Robinson, and Lady Penelope – bold, confident figures who shaped their worlds. Will Robinson (a child our own age) thrived in alien landscapes, and SHADO’s own Commander Straker built the teams to face them. These weren’t just TV characters. They were our blueprint for adulthood. Later, as an adult, I can see in hindsight that the original club members grew into diverse, independent, self-empowered (sometimes bohemian) agents of their own destiny.
I was jealous of one of the girls – Annie – because she not only had a telescope but she was subscribed to a weekly comic/magazine called “Countdown” that featured graphic art stories of everything from “Thunderbirds” and “UFO” to other British science fiction (which may have inspired one of my earliest efforts at creating a fanzine). I even remember that at the tender age of 10, she filked the song “Blowin’ in the Wind”, rewriting the words to be space-aged:
The answer my friend, is in the vacuum of space
The answer is in the vacuum of space…
My recollection of her song reveals the potential for creativity that we unknowingly captured in those early days. Our gang – our club, simply known as “the club” in those times – would expand and grow as we did. In 1972, the last year of the Apollo Moon landings, we began to develop a fanzine, The Space Age – our own voice.
Drafting the Future
As we drifted off to different high schools, I eventually lost touch with some of those early friends, but made others. Two of my new friends – Peter and Russell – joined the Astronomical Society of Victoria with me in 1973. Becoming inspired by that group’s organisational structure (its general meetings and committee meetings, its Constitution and activities), we decided to remodel our little club to copy this format.
Inspired by the organisation name SHADO (Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation) from the early-1970s TV show “UFO”, we named our club CATSMILK (the Celestial and Terrestrial Scientific Melbourne Interplanetary Link Kommission – “yes with a K” – forgive the juvenile idea, we were only 12 years old!) A couple of years later, hitting puberty, we decided that this name was a bit childish, so we renamed it as MASC (the Melbourne Amateur Science Club) and expanded our club membership to around 13 school kids across two or three schools.
The Melbourne Amateur Science Club (MASC) became a more “mainstream” (ie. “respectable”) and informal group of late primary school and lower secondary school students who ran their own science and technology-based activities. Club meetings were held on a rotating basis at private homes.
From 1973 to 1977, MASC published Club News and The Space Age — this latter being our launch-sequence zine inspired by Countdown magazine and named in part-homage to The Age newspaper. Its spirit-duplicated pages, supplemented by parental photocopies, carried our voices into the great unknown. Few copies survive, but the legacy endures.
MASC was composed of a series of subsections, each run by teenager with a particular interest in that field, for example: Physics, Astronomy, Archaeology, Chemistry, Electronics, even including Astrology and UFOlogy (these last two were intended to scientifically investigate these pseudosciences), with aligned subjects including Music and Photography. Each MASC subsection aimed to produce a report for club meetings, or the newsletter or zine.
Ignition: A Fandom Takes Flight
From CATSMILK (also eventually known as CATSMILC) to MASC, our club evolved from backyard experiments to a fandom that shaped lives.
One of our aligned interests — science fiction — quietly inspired the formation of a new subsection that would become Austrek in October 1975, sparked by Star Trek’s return to Australian television with the advent of colour TV. Teachers supported us: Mr D gave us access to duplicating machines, Mr M offered scientific guidance, and David A (who became more than just a teacher, but also a friend and colleague) stayed on as an Austrek member.
After distributing Austrek flyers at the Melbourne Star Trek Marathon in November 1976, the subsection grew so rapidly it absorbed MASC’s limited resources and became a standalone club. From there, the legacy unfolded.
Austrek touched thousands: inspiring careers, forging marriages, and offering community to those who felt alienated. It seeded other clubs, nurtured lifelong friendships, and — long before it was fashionable — embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion as core values.
Most school clubs are teacher-led, curriculum-bound, and short-lived. MASC was none of those things. It was self-organised, cross-disciplinary, and sustained across years and schools. Where most school clubs dissolve with the end of an academic year, ours evolved, absorbed, and ignited.
From Sneakers to Starships
Saint Ignatius of Loyola apparently once said, ‘Show me the child and I’ll show you the adult.’ But in fandom, the child is already the architect: documenting, designing, and dreaming in real time.
While Fanlore and Fancyclopedia trace a broader pattern (teenagers founding clubs, publishing zines, shaping conventions), MASC stood apart for its sustained life, cross-disciplinary visions, and its transformation into Austrek, a fan institution that has contributed to the future. Jin-Shiow Chen reminds us that adolescent authorship is not a phase, but a blueprint. MASC didn’t just imagine a future; it built one – adapted, evolved, but always true to its founding spirit. What began as youthful imagination became lasting reality.
Role-playing Will Robinson on an alien world, or Jimmy on the somewhat fantastical Living Island (home of Pufnstuf), was more than childhood fantasy. It was rehearsal for adulthood in a wondrous world, and it helped a group of schoolkids build something that continues to resonate today. Decades later, the idea remains powerful: dreams can inspire our world and shape the stories still to come.
Sic itur ad astra.
Thus we can journey to the stars — and sometimes, we bring others with us.
Legacy: To Boldly Care
The club didn’t just shape others — it changed my life.
In more than a metaphorical way, I was adopting the heroic qualities I admired in others. I met scientist and explorer astronaut David Scott — commander of Apollo 15 — as a teenager, and later encountered Ed Bishop, the actor who portrayed resilient and determined Commander Straker in UFO. These weren’t just distant icons; they were role models for how I chose to live, lead, and contribute to the community.
Austrek wasn’t just a fandom; it became an extended family. For many of us, it was the first place they felt truly seen, supported, and safe to be themselves. It offered belonging to those who felt alienated, and care to those navigating hardship. Through shared stories, mutual aid, and empowerment to develop their confidence and life skills, Austrek changed lives. It was a sanctuary disguised as a science fiction club.
Even Thunderbirds, with its ethos of rescue and humanitarian action, helped shape my sense of responsibility. The idea that helping others could be a mission — not just a story — stayed with me.
That same spirit of aspiration led me beyond fandom. As well as helping launch Austrek, I volunteered with Amnesty International Australia, where we literally saved lives and helped shape humane laws. After that and most recently, I have worked to assist LGBT+ refugees, some of the most disadvantaged people on Earth.
CATSMILK may be a silly acronym, but it provided sustenance for the growth of ideas that changed lives. The blueprint we drafted as children became a framework for action — not only for others, but also for me.
Introduction:
This poem was written in reflection of my own eviction — an experience shared by countless LGBTIQ+ individuals across the world who are forced from their homes simply for being themselves.
After homophobia, homelessness remains one of the greatest challenges queer refugees and individuals face.
This piece gives voice to that pain, resilience, and the hope that love, even without a roof, can still endure. – Joseph
Rainbow Sanctuary in Ruins (AI art)
They brought knives in the form of eyes,
Whispers that sliced like sharpened sighs.
My humanity — gentle, small, and true —
Branded sin on their wall anew.
The key that once unlocked my door
Now hangs useless, meaning no more.
I stand in the night with memories bare,
The stars my ceiling, the cold my prayer.
Homophobia turned my home to ash,
Hatred cloaked in holy wrath.
They called it “order,” they called it “law,”
But I saw fear, and nothing more.
I am not the only one in this storm-battered street —
There are countless others with tired feet.
Brothers, sisters, souls without a name,
Each carrying love the world has shamed.
No roof for the rainbow, no bed to lie,
Yet still we breathe with defiant chests.
Our hearts will not lose their colour’s shine —
For every colour is holy, blessed.
One day, this earth will build anew:
A world where rainbows shine right through.
Where love is home, and home is kind,
And no one’s truth is left behind.
AI art
Written by Joseph K (He/Him)
If this poem moves you, please consider helping me rebuild what hatred took away.
Your support, even a small contribution toward rent, can give an LGBTIQ+ refugee like me a safe place to call home again.
I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.
From orbit to imagination: October 4 reminds us that progress is not just technological — it is moral. Art by Copilot AI
On 4 October, two moments, separated by three decades, reshaped the human imagination. In 1957, Sputnik 1 pierced the sky, launching not just the Space Age, but a new kind of dreaming. In 1987, just days before that anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered, inviting us to explore not only the stars, but our own moral compass.
But these were not isolated events. They echoed older rituals: quests for justice, tales of resistance, pilgrimages of meaning. From Arthur’s round table to Sherwood Forest, from Chaucer’s road to Canterbury to the corridors of the Liberator, humans have always gathered around stories to ask: Who are we? What do we owe each other? What might we become?
Fandom isn’t an escape; it’s practice for how we live and care. It is where myth becomes mobilization, and we turn ideas into action. Whether in medieval courts or modern convention centres, in fan fiction threads or cosplay-led fundraisers, we dream together. And in dreaming, we begin to build.
Fandom is often dismissed as indulgent: a retreat into nostalgia, fantasy, or self-reference. But such a critique misses the point. Speculative fiction, especially in traditions like Star Trek, offers more than escapism. It helps us practice for real life. It trains moral imagination, civic empathy, and ethics.
To dream of a better world is not to flee the present, but to interrogate it, and to prototype what might come next.
From Quest to Convention: The Mythic Roots of Fandom
Long before fan conventions and cosplay, humans gathered around stories that shaped identity, morality, and belonging. Fandom is not a modern invention, it’s a continuation of ancient communal rituals.
In fandom’s hand, the sword becomes a pen, a protest sign, a donation link. Artwork by Copilot AI
Arthurian Legend: In Erec and Enide and Culhwch and Olwen, we find proto-fandoms: serialized quests, character ensembles, and moral codes. These tales weren’t just entertainment; they were ethical blueprints, practising loyalty, courage, and justice. As paraphrased from the narrative ideas within Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec and Enide: “The heart is tested in the trial of the quest.”
Robin Hood: His legend offered a folk fandom of resistance. His band of outlaws mirrored fan communities: autonomous, loyal, and morally driven. They gathered in Sherwood Forest not just to survive, but to reimagine justice. Kent L. Steckmesser notes that, “Like most outlaws of folklore, Robin Hood is viewed as the champion of the socially and economically oppressed classes.”
Canterbury Pilgrimage: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales framed pilgrimage as a narrative ritual — strangers sharing stories to make sense of suffering, faith, and folly. The road to Canterbury was a proto-convention: diverse voices, shared purpose, and storytelling as communion.
These traditions remind us that fandom is not new — it is ancient. It is the forest, the court, the community, the road. It is where stories become solidarity and communal identity.
Fandom as Cultural Communion
Before fandom became fellowship, it was communion — a ritual of belonging, a shared mythos, a rehearsal for identity. Across centuries, humans have gathered around stories and symbols to affirm who they are and what they value.
Religion: Sacred texts and rituals mirror fan lore and conventions. As scholar Diane Winston explores thematically in her work on religion and media, both religion and fandom offer symbolic frameworks through which people seek meaning, community, and moral orientation
Sport: Stadiums are secular temples. Chants, jerseys, and rivalries create tribal identity. The word fan itself originates from “fanatic,” first used in baseball in the late 19th century — a linguistic echo of devotion and identity.
Epic Myth: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were recited communally — early fan fiction in oral form. As classicist Emily Wilson notes about her translation of the Odyssey: “… the epics were experienced — well into Roman times — not as silent reading material but as texts recited and heard, shared among people.”
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey echoes Homer’s Odyssey not just in title, but in structure: a journey shaped by trials, transformation, and cosmic mystery. But it’s fandom that keeps both epics alive. Whether decoding HAL’s silence or mapping Odysseus’s trials, fans turn ancient and speculative texts into living dialogue, a way to co-author the cosmos, not just consume it. From oral recitations to Reddit threads, the mythic voyage becomes a shared tradition: not just for meaning, but for belonging.
Long before fandom became a practice for justice, it was a practice for belonging: a way to gather, to grieve, to dream together.
Fandom as Fellowship
Fandom is not passive consumption. It’s active creativity. Club meetings and conventions become places of communion, where literally community is forged and strengthened. Clubs become extended family; pen-pal and social media networks become worldwide support conduits.
But fellowship is not just symbolic. It is personal. It is advocacy and activism. It is sanctuary and scaffolding. It is representation, recognition, and rescue. Many stories such as these show that fellowship is not just gathering; it is choosing to care together:
Whoopi Goldberg: The Oracle
As a child, Goldberg saw Uhura and shouted, “Momma! There’s a Black lady on TV and she ain’t no maid!” Years later, she joined The Next Generation as Guinan, a moral anchor aboard the Enterprise. Her journey is a testament to representation as reclamation.
James Doohan: The Engineer
Doohan once received a suicide note from a fan. He responded not with platitudes, but presence—inviting her to conventions, encouraging her for years, and later learning she had earned a master’s degree in engineering. “The best thing I have ever done in my life,” he said of saving her.
John de Lancie: The Trickster
After playing a grieving father in Breaking Bad, de Lancie met a fan struggling with addiction who said, “Now I guess I know what my parents went through.” The fan couldn’t hear his own family—but he could hear the story. “I’m really happy to have played that role,” de Lancie reflected.
Patrick Stewart: The Captain
Stewart, shaped by childhood trauma, became an advocate for domestic violence survivors. At a convention, he embraced a fan who shared her story, turning performance into communion. “Acting helped me understand my father’s violence,” he said. “Picard helped me imagine a better man.”
Fandom is not mindless consumption; it’s active co-authorship. Conventions become secular pilgrimages. Cosplay becomes ritual. Fan fiction becomes culturally appropriated canon. These practices mirror religion, sport, and civic identity.
Women at Warp critiques and reinterprets Trek canon through feminist lenses.
Fellowship is where stories become solidarity… but solidarity does not stand still. Across convention halls and crisis zones, fans move from myth to mobilization, turning shared dreams into civic deeds.
Flash Fandom: Apollo and the Limits of Awe
Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, July 1969 (NASA photo)
In July 1969, the world became fans of Apollo. From Tokyo to Nairobi, millions watched as humans stepped onto the Moon. It was a moment of planetary communion: shared awe, shared pride, shared possibility. But unlike enduring fandoms, Apollo’s following was brief. Why?
No Narrative Continuity: Apollo had heroes, but no evolving story. Once the Moon was reached, the arc was complete. There was no sequel to Mars or beyond, no ongoing stories that keep people emotionally hooked.
Passive Spectatorship: The public watched, but didn’t participate. There were no conventions, no cosplay, no fan fiction. Apollo was a marvel, not a movement.
Geopolitical Framing: The Moon landing was framed as a Cold War victory. It became a national triumph, not a universal myth. The “we” of humanity quickly narrowed to the “us” of the USA.
No Emotional Rehearsal: Apollo offered awe, but not identity. It didn’t help people rehearse justice, belonging, or care. It was a technical feat, not a moral framework.
No Known Direct Outcomes: People complain that Apollo didn’t help reduce the price of groceries, and they overlook (or don’t know) the fact that everything in our space age world – from mobile phone microchips and GPS to modern agriculture and refrigeration, air traffic control and MRI Scanners – is a space spinoff.
No Ongoing Stakes: After Apollo 11, the missions appeared (wrongly) to become routine. The dream plateaued. Without new stakes or evolving meaning, the fandom faded.
Apollo was a short-lived burst of excitement that didn’t build lasting community: a moment of global wonder that lacked the scaffolding to become fellowship. It united us briefly, but didn’t offer the shared traditions, stories, and feelings that sustain long-term communal identity. This was perhaps NASA’s greatest failing: they fulfilled a wondrous, historic scientific purpose and technologically changed the world forever, but failed to communicate that story to their human audience.
The missions reached the Moon but didn’t reach the heart.
The Space Association of Australia reached the people. Born from grassroots passion, the SAA transformed spectatorship into fellowship. Through newsletters like SPAN and radio programs like The Space Show, it didn’t just report on space, it built community around it. Where Apollo gave us a moment, the SAA gave us meaning.
Unlike Apollo, enduring fandoms, from Arthurian legend to Star Trek, offer more than spectacle. They offer rehearsal. They help us practice empathy, rehearse justice, and build community. Where Apollo gave us a moment, fandom gives us meaning. And it’s in that meaning that fellowship begins.
The Fellowship of the Unbelievers
Apollo gave us awe, but not intimacy. It dazzled, but didn’t anchor. And into that emotional vacuum stepped something unexpected: denialism.
Moon hoax theories, flat Earth movements, and anti-science conspiracies don’t just reject facts, they offer fellowship. They replace confusion with consolation, and offer an imitation of intellect to mask ignorance. They borrow fandom’s emotional style:
Shared lore: Intricate narratives with heroes (truth seekers) and villains (NASA, elites).
Community rituals: YouTube exposés, Reddit debates, merch, meetups.
Moral clarity: A sense of rebellion, of being awake while others sleep.
These aren’t just misinformation networks. They’re mythmaking machines. They provide what Apollo didn’t: personal meaning and a sense of belonging, and a feeling of being part of something bigger. In a strange twist, even conspiracy theories act like fandoms… one that fills the void left by real space tech’s failure to connect.
It’s not the truth that binds them; it’s the story. And in that story, they find belonging.
So what gives fandom of the real its advantage?
Fandom of the Real
Star Trek isn’t real. Arthur’s sword never gleamed. Starsky & Hutch never patrolled the streets of Bay City, California. T’Challa never lived in Wakanda. But the fellowship they inspire is as real as the books fundraised by The Harry Potter Alliance. The justice they rehearse is as beneficent as that supported by The Innocence Project. The empathy they cultivate is as authentic as the extended family offered within fan clubs.
Fandom of the real is not about rejecting fiction; it’s about extending its emotional architecture to benefit reality. It’s about building community around truth, not just tales. It’s about turning admiration into action, and wonder into work.
Where denialism offers myth without meaning, real-world fandom gives us purpose and drive. It doesn’t just imagine better worlds; it builds them.
Truth with Texture
Science fiction and real science can co-author a richer mythos — one that’s not just accurate, but emotionally resonant. When fans gather around space tech, climate data, or humanitarian innovation, they’re not just consuming, they’re co-creating.
Fandom of the real invites action rooted in reality. It doesn’t just offer rebellion. It channels emotional energy into civic engagement, mutual aid, and ethical consideration.
Continuity and Care
Unlike flash fandoms or cultic conspiracies, real-world fandoms evolve. They build continuity across generations, platforms, and crises. They offer care that builds from Reddit threads to rescue missions.
To win the emotional war, fandom of the real must do more than inform. It must inspire. It must offer not just facts, but fellowship. Not just data, but dreams. Not criticism but creativity.
Because in the end, the most powerful story is the one we build together, and the most enduring fandom is the one that turns imagination into infrastructure, and possibility into positivity.
Fandom As Resistance and Hope
Fandom isn’t frivolous; it’s formative. It’s how we figure out who we are, and who we want to be. Whether it’s swapping theories on Reddit or organizing a cosplay-led fundraiser, fans build real community. These stories help us dream big, but they also help us show up for each other.
Not all dreams are bright. Some are forged in rebellion, in exile, in the quiet defiance of those who refuse to surrender. Blake’s 7 offers a darker mythos, one where fellowship is not utopian, but urgent. Like Robin Hood’s band in Sherwood Forest, Blake’s crew aboard the Liberator gathers not for glory, but for justice.
Holt’s framing of Robin Hood as a figure of moral protest finds new resonance in Blake’s world. His crew is a fellowship of outlaws: decentralized, loyal, and ethically driven. They don’t flee injustice; they confront it. Their myth is not one of triumph, but of resistance. And in fandom, we rehearse this myth together.
This is not escapism. It’s strategy. It’s solidarity. In the quiet glow of a screen, across oceans and time zones, we dream together—not of perfect worlds, but of better ones. Fandom becomes a rehearsal space for courage, care, and communal defiance. Because dreaming together is not just imagining utopia, it’s building it, even in the dark.
“May the Force Be With You”
Both Blake’s 7 and Star Wars both revisit the rebellion of Robin Hood; not as spectacle, but as moral architecture, fellowships forged in resistance. Blake’s crew aboard the Liberator confronts tyranny with decentralized urgency, refusing heroism in favour of ethical defiance. Similarly, Star Wars threads its mythos through ordinary rebels who risk everything to resist authoritarianism. As Jyn Erso declares in Rogue One: “Rebellions are built on hope”. This rallying cry, echoed across the galaxy, mirrors Blake’s refusal to surrender to the Federation’s machinery.
Both stories remind us that fellowship is not passive—it is chosen, built in the shadow of empire, and sustained by the audacity to imagine justice. Fandoms built around these narratives don’t just celebrate characters, they make resistance something you can take part in. It’s not just about loving a show, it’s about standing for something. Fandom becomes a way to join in, not just watch.
Because fandom is resistance, it’s where we gather to imagine beyond the limits of injustice, exclusion, and despair. Afrofuturism, Indigenous futurisms, and queer speculative fiction offer not just escape, but strategy. Online fandoms become mutual aid hubs, trauma support networks, and engines of advocacy. This is not passive entertainment… it’s active solidarity.
In the quiet glow of a screen, across oceans and time zones, we dream together. Stories become bridges. Fan fiction becomes lifelines. A Reddit thread becomes a sanctuary. Fandom is not just a mirror but a map. It shows us how to care, how to imagine, how to build. Because dreaming together is the first step toward belonging — and belonging is the first step toward justice.
From Dream to Action
Stories that help us care and connect.
Artwork by Copilot AI
From Tracy Island to the USS Enterprise, speculative fiction has rehearsed a humanist ideal: that rescue is not just response, it is responsibility. Whether through the stealth missions of International Rescue or the diplomatic interventions of Starfleet, these stories teach us that care must be engineered, scaled, and chosen. ‘Make it so’ is not just a line, it is a lifestyle.
“Fantasy is not about escaping our world. It’s an invitation to go deeper into it.”
— Andrew Slack, Harry Potter Alliance
Across convention halls and crisis zones, fans move from myth to mobilization, turning shared dreams into civic deeds.
Fans are not just consumers — they’re moral co-authors. They extend the Federation’s dream into real-world ethics, inclusion, and solidarity.
Roddenberry’s Federation wasn’t just post-scarcity — it was post-anthropocentric. It imagined dignity for all sentient beings, not just humans. This shift toward sentientism anticipated today’s debates on AI rights, animal ethics, and planetary stewardship.
Dreaming Forward
Imagination is civic architecture. Fandom is fellowship. Utopia isn’t where we arrive; it’s how we travel.
Because the future we dream together is the only one worth building.
Fanthropology 101: Dreaming and Doing in the Real World
A four-part journey through how fandom helps us imagine better futures, and build them.
Part One: Forgotten Futures How two dreamers imagined a better world, and gave us tools to build it
Published: 8 September 2025 Read Part One
Edward Bellamy and Gene Roddenberry didn’t just write stories, they sketched blueprints for justice, dignity, and shared humanity. Their utopias still shape how fans rehearse better futures.
Part Two: Dream It Forward Why fandom isn’t just fun, it’s how we practice empathy
Published: 4 October 2025 Read Part Two
From Arthurian quests to Star Trek conventions, this chapter shows how fandom helps us rehearse courage, community, and care—turning stories into solidarity, and imagination into action.
Part Three: Fandom’s Humanitarian Legacy How fans built real-world networks of care, long before hashtags and headlines
Published: 25 November 2025 Read Part Three
Ficathons, charity drives, and survivor support groups—this essay documents how fandom became a lifeline for many, offering help where institutions failed.
Part Four: From Fic to Future Fan fiction isn’t just storytelling, it’s ethical and pragmatic life guidance
Published: 31 December 2025 Read Part Four
Honouring Diane Marchant and the legacy of fan creators, this chapter explores how fandom helps us rewrite injustice, rehearse empathy, and build continuity across generations.
Published 12:01am on 4 October 2025 at 12:01am.
UPDATED 11:50am on 4 October 2025 to correct/clarify some material, and to add exploration of Blake’s 7, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey
FINAL UPDATE at 11:30am on 5 October 2025 to edit/remove two portions of repetition.
Both the January 6 US Capitol insurrection and the August 1991 Soviet coup attempt were acts of internal sabotage aimed at halting democratic transition and preserving fading regimes.
In the USA, partisan actors stormed the Capitol to disrupt electoral certification, exposing deep fractures in civic trust and institutional resilience.
In the USSR, Communist hardliners attempted to seize power from reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, deploying tanks and censoring media, but the coup collapsed within days due to mass resistance and Boris Yeltsin’s defiance. Crucially, the Soviet coup didn’t just fail, it accelerated the collapse of the USSR itself: the Communist Party was banned, republics declared independence, and the Soviet flag was lowered by year’s end.
In both cases, ceremonial centres of legitimacy — the Capitol and the Kremlin — became contested terrain, revealing that empire was no longer protected by ritual alone. These events did not mark the end of empire, but they foreshadowed its unravelling: when succession is sabotaged from within, collapse becomes imminent.
Empires do not vanish. They enact their unravelling through inherited scripts.
Across centuries and continents, imperial systems have expanded, consolidated, fragmented, and memorialized themselves through architecture, bureaucracy, and myth. Their collapses are rarely sudden; they are ceremonial, recursive, and often incomplete. This reflection draws together the threads of ten empires—Rome, Britain, the United States, Austria-Hungary, Russia, China, Japan, Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt—each offering a distinct motif of imperial logic and historical resonance.
Empires do not disappear. They sediment. Their ruins become archives, their rituals become templates, and their contradictions become inherited. These legacy threads are not merely historical; they are infrastructural, ceremonial, and cognitive.
Both Ming China’s suppression of the 15th-century treasure voyages and modern US denialism of its own scientific achievements reflect a shared motif: intellectual retreat as imperial self-sabotage.
In China, the Yongle Emperor commissioned Admiral Zheng He to lead vast naval expeditions across the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa. These voyages showcased technological prowess, diplomatic reach, and cosmopolitan ambition. Yet after Yongle’s death, Confucian scholar-officials dismantled the shipyards, banned maritime exploration, and erased records, reframing global engagement as ideological threat. In the United States, fringe movements have rejected the Moon landing and vaccine science, not due to evidence, but as resistance to institutional authority and civic truth.
In both cases, denialism did not emerge from ignorance. It was cultivated to restore ideological control. Ming officials feared the destabilizing implications of maritime diplomacy; modern denialists fear the civic implications of scientific coordination. The consequences were profound: China’s inward turn forfeited maritime dominance, weakened adaptive capacity, and foreshadowed the collapse of a corrupt and inequitable empire. The USA, facing polarization and breakdown in shared truth, now rehearses a similar retreat. These are not simply failures of knowledge, they are denials of legacy. When empires suppress their own achievements, collapse is no longer hypothetical, it is underway.
Institutional Fragility and Structural Exhaustion
Empires often collapse not from external invasion, but from internal disintegration. Edward Gibbon, surveying Rome’s ruins from the Capitoline Hill, writes of its downfall:
“…A revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.”
He attributes its downfall not to external forces such as invading armies, but to internal factors:
“Neither time nor the Barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons.”
He identifies four interlocking causes of destruction: injuries of nature, fires and inundations, hostile attacks, and the use and abuse of materials. These pressures did not strike from without; they accumulated within. Rome’s grandeur became its own undoing, repurposed by elites and factions as scaffolding for civic siege. The echoes of that collapse can still be heard today much closer to home.
Both the assassination of Germanicus in 19 CE and the killing of Charlie Kirk in 2025 became ceremonial ruptures: moments when contested figures were elevated into civic saints to stabilize fragile regimes.
Germanicus, heir to Emperor Tiberius and beloved by the Roman people, died mysteriously while commanding in Syria. His death triggered mass mourning, public rites, and posthumous deification. Tiberius, accused of complicity, allowed the sanctification to proceed, transforming Germanicus into a dynastic ideal invoked by later emperors to legitimize succession. But this sacralization masked deeper instability: Rome’s reliance on ritual mourning over institutional resilience foreshadowed dynastic erosion and elite paranoia.
In the United States, Charlie Kirk’s assassination during a campus event was immediately ritualized by evangelical and nationalist leaders. Cardinal Dolan called him “a modern-day St. Paul,” and memorials framed his death as martyrdom. His image now anchors youth rallies, sermons, and ideological succession. Like Germanicus, Kirk was polarizing in life but sanctified in death, his elevation serving not theological purity but political utility.
When empires outsource legitimacy to posthumous sanctity, governance becomes mythic, and collapse becomes ceremonial.
Bureaucratic Inertia and Ritual Governance
Empires often preserve legitimacy through ceremony rather than responsiveness. Egypt’s dynastic priesthood, Qing China’s Confucian bureaucracy, and Austria-Hungary’s multilingual administration all relied on ritual to maintain cohesion. Pieter Judson describes the Habsburg Empire effectively as being a top-heavy bureaucracy, where governance was performed through documentation and symbolic inclusion, even as real power eroded.
Some empires drown in documentation. Others burn it. And some make a spectacle of the flames.
Austria-Hungary preserved legitimacy through bureaucratic excess: multilingual decrees, ethnic censuses, and ceremonial paperwork filled imperial archives. Governance was performed through documentation, not responsiveness. In contrast, the United States now rehearses collapse through archival erasure—banning books, censoring websites, and purging digital memory. One empire masked fragmentation with paper. The other performs unity by destroying it.
The Habsburg census system exemplified bureaucratic saturation within the Austro-Hungarian empire. As Pieter Judson details, imperial officials demanded precise ethnic and linguistic data across regions like Galicia, Bohemia, and Transylvania. Census forms were printed in multiple languages, archived redundantly, and used to enforce symbolic inclusion. This ritualized classification created massive administrative burdens, often stalling local governance under the weight of compliance and ceremonial oversight.
The United States now enacts the reverse: archival violence. Federal websites on climate and reproductive health were scrubbed. School boards banned titles on race, gender, and history, while Museums withdrew public information on slavery. Freedom of Information access was restricted, and civil servants purged. These acts echo Nazi Germany’s book burnings, where censorship was not just policy but performance: ritual purification through destruction. Austria-Hungary drowned in paper. Nazi Germany incinerated dissent. The United States deletes itself.
Human Rights Abandonment
Some empires collapse not through war or bureaucracy, but through deliberate cruelty. Britain’s liberal rhetoric masked slavery and concentration camps. Russia rehearsed collapse through gulags and purges. Japan’s imperial decline was preceded by forced labour and wartime atrocities. Trump’s United States slashes foreign aid, defunds healthcare, and ritualizes neglect. These empires do not collapse in silence; they collapse in censored textbooks, defunded clinics, and ceremonial cruelty.
Some empires collapse not through war or bureaucracy, but through deliberate cruelty. Their decline is rehearsed in concentration camps, censored memory, and systematic abandonment. Human rights are not protected; they are performed, postponed, or purged.
Britain masked slavery, famine, and concentration camps beneath liberal rhetoric. Collapse came not from invasion, but from contradiction: a moral empire that commodified suffering and curated nostalgia.
Imperial Russia exiled dissidents, ignored mass poverty, and staged pogroms. The Soviet Union systematized cruelty through gulags and purges. Collapse was not sudden; it was curated through repression, silence, and recycled ideology.
Japan foreshadowed collapse through wartime atrocities: forced labor, comfort stations, and imperial conquest. Postwar transformation did not erase the cruelty—it reframed it through pacifist reconstruction and selective memory.
Trump’s United States slashes foreign aid, condemning millions to starvation. Domestically, healthcare, education, and welfare are defunded. Poverty is entrenched, not addressed. Collapse is not denied, it is budgeted, televised, and performed through underlying cruelty.
These empires do not collapse in silence. They collapse in censored textbooks, defunded clinics, and ceremonial neglect. Their cruelty is not accidental — it is foundational.
Ceremonial Permanence and Inscribed Memory
Some empires collapse not through revolution, but through ritual saturation and curated erasure. Their leaders are not overthrown; they are embalmed, engraved, or posterized. Egypt sanctified its rulers through mummification and monumental architecture. Assyria staged conquest as civic theatre, carving domination into stone. North Korea renders its leaders as mythic icons, immortalized in murals and mass choreography. Trump mimics all three, recasting himself in statuary, posters, and symbolic control of cultural infrastructure, while scrubbing trans, enslaved, queer, and reproductive histories from the civic archive. These empires do not vanish. They sediment. Collapse becomes a form of achievement. Erasure becomes an unintentional goal.
In Egypt, pharaohs wore the Atef, Nemes, or Khepresh—crowns of linen and gold, sanctifying divine authority. Assyrian kings donned winged crowns and diadems, staging conquest as sacred theatre. North Korean leaders are immortalized in murals and statuary, their power posterized into myth. Trump wears a MAGA hat. These headpieces, whether woven from linen, gold, or Chinese polyester, are not mere accessories. They are symbols of control and ceremonial self-branding.
Empires have long sanctified power through statuary: Egypt immortalized pharaohs as gods, Assyria carved kings as divine conquerors, North Korea posterizes its leaders into mythic permanence. Trump mimics all three, not through temples or reliefs, but through golden statuary, ceremonial posters, and symbolic control of cultural infrastructure.
Egypt sculpted its rulers as deities, embedding divine legitimacy into stone. These statues were not decorative—they were governance incarnate. Collapse came when ritual ossified and adaptability vanished.
Assyria engraved domination into palace walls. Kings were shown slaying lions, conquering cities, and receiving tribute. Collapse came when spectacle lost its audience—when visual propaganda could no longer mask exhaustion.
North Korea renders its leaders as immortal icons. Murals, statuary, and mass choreography transform governance into myth. Collapse is not denied—it is postponed through performance and suppression.
Trump stages governance through iconography. From golden toilets to mass-produced posters, his image is ritualized, not debated. The civic archive is not expanded, it is curated around him. Collapse is not anticipated or avoided: it is rehearsed through the practice of destructive methodologies.
These other empires did not fall in silence. They collapsed in gold leaf, carved stone, and curated memory. Their statuary outlives their responsiveness. Their spectacle outlasts their sovereignty. What of the USA?
Cultural Nostalgia and Post-Imperial Memory
Post-imperial Britain, post-Soviet Russia, and post-colonial identities often rehearse empire through curated nostalgia. As David Lowenthal observes, heritage is not an inquiry into the past but a celebration of it—promoting identity, solidarity, and stability rather than historical precision
Some empires rehearse collapse when ritual objects replace responsive governance, and curated memory substitutes for civic cohesion.
In post-imperial Britain, legitimacy was ritualized through heritage: royal pageantry, war memorials, and curated nostalgia transformed colonial rupture into aesthetic continuity. The empire became a museum of itself, where governance was no longer adaptive but commemorative. David Lowenthal describes heritage as “a celebration of selected pasts,” not history but performance.
In the United States, civic legitimacy is increasingly outsourced to symbolic possession; most visibly through gun culture. Firearms are no longer just tools or rights; they are ritual objects, invoked to perform sovereignty, identity, and resistance. Legislative paralysis and administrative erosion have hollowed out governance. In that vacuum, the gun becomes a proxy for agency. Open carry, armed protest, and Second Amendment absolutism rehearse a mythic version of citizenship—where power is not negotiated, but brandished.
Japan offers a contrasting motif: postwar identity was built not on nostalgia for samurai conquest, but on pacifist reconstruction and technological ascendancy. Memory was curated forward, not backward. Babylonia, by contrast, ritualized legitimacy through monumental inscription and archival astrology. Its archival impulse preserved identity through cosmic order, not civic responsiveness.
The United States does not archive empire; it performs it. Guns are not historical artifacts but ceremonial instruments. Britain curates its ruins. Babylonia inscribed its cosmos. Japan rebuilt its future. The United States loads its past.
Empire as Choice, Collapse as Legacy
Empires do not collapse in silence. They collapse in chorus—rehearsed by agents, voters, bureaucrats, and bystanders who choose cruelty, spectacle, or erasure over responsiveness. Collapse is not a solo act. It is budgeted, televised, and sanctified through infrastructural neglect.
When foreign aid is slashed, when famine relief is defunded, when global health programs are abandoned, the empire is not just retreating; it is choosing what kind of legacy it will leave. Collapse is a choice of legacy, personality and morality.
Trump’s United States nearly defunded PEPFAR, slashed USAID, and abandoned famine relief. These were not fiscal accidents; they were ideological performances. Cruelty was built into social infrastructure until collapse became likely.
Ottoman Empire – Hamidian Massacres (1894–1896): Amid rising violence against Armenians, European powers pressured Sultan Abdul Hamid II to intervene. He refused. Provincial aid was withheld, protection denied, and massacres ensued. Bureaucrats and paramilitaries enacted cruelty while the empire ritualized its retreat from humanitarian responsibility.
Spanish Empire – Post-Pueblo Retaliation (1680s): After Indigenous uprisings, Spain withdrew civic and missionary support, replacing aid with forced labor and religious reassertion. Hospitals became instruments of assimilation. Collapse rehearsed through punitive governance.
The USA has engaged in nearly 400 international military interventions across 70 nations since 1776. Imagine if this interventionism had been peacekeeping and the building of civic infrastructure instead of militarism. By contrast, the current move towards isolationism is implicitly genocidal when millions of human beings risk starvation or denial or basic services.
What sort of empire do its citizens want? And what does this say about their morality?
Globally, the decline of US hegemony will not be quiet. Allies may recalibrate their security arrangements; adversaries may exploit the vacuum. The dollar’s status as global reserve currency is under scrutiny. Climate diplomacy, human rights enforcement, and international aid, all historically US-led, may shatter.
Collapse is not disappearance. It is transformation. The British Empire gave way to the Commonwealth. Rome became Byzantium. The United States may fragment, reconstitute, or recede, but its cultural, technological, and institutional imprint will endure. The question is not whether the empire will fall, but how it will be remembered… and by whom.
References/Further Reading:
Niall Ferguson (2011). Civilization: The West and the Rest. Penguin Books.
Orlando Figes (2007). The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. Penguin Books.
Edward Gibbon (1776–1789). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Strahan & Cadell.
Sarah Gibbens (2018). “8 Reasons Why Rome Fell.” National Geographic.
Theo Gobbens et al. (2010). “Frailty Is a Complex Concept.” Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 336–344.
Pieter M. Judson (2016). The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Harvard University Press.
David Lowenthal (1998). The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge University Press.
Karen Radner (2015). “Assyrian Empire Studies.” British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan.
Timothy Snyder (2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Bodley Head.
Joseph Tainter (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press.
Marc Van De Mieroop (2020). A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–123 BC. 3rd ed., Wiley-Blackwell.
