“These are the voyages of our ‘starship’ enterprise. Its ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no-one has gone before!”
Creating A Future History
Art by CoPilot AI
Decades later, the church building is still there, but the adjoining church hall, where Austrek held its first public meetings – forty-nine years ago today – has long since been demolished and replaced with shop fronts. The infrastructure may change, but its echo endures. In this busy street in a northern suburb of Melbourne, traces remain of past times, when a sanctuary for those seeking shelter in the past also offered shelter for those seeking consolation in the future. Of the six main public spaces where Austrek has met over the last five decades, four of them have been church halls, demonstrating the intersection between community spaces and collective belonging.
The World That Was
You may be old enough to remember a world before the digital age, when connection meant conversation, not clicks. This was a world without the Internet, mobile phones or streaming services. No instant communication or digital information. If you wanted social media, you went out and met others in real life. Instead of googling, you read a book, or headed to the library to consult encyclopaedias.
For news, you relied on the evening TV news bulletin or picked up a newspaper, knowing that the headlines were already at least a day old. I recall the Apollo 13 Moon mission, when the front page of a Melbourne newspaper was overprinted with a daily 3am “Stop Press” notice in red ink – an otherwise unthinkable notion for something as inviolate and sacrosanct as a newspaper. These were our closest to instant communication and worldly wisdom: many Star Trek fans collected scrap books full of news clippings like they were collecting holy relics.
These were the times before streaming and YouTube, before DVDs and videocassettes – even before modern marketing made copyright issues ubiquitous and inviolate. Fans of TV programs took recordings of their favourite programs on audio cassettes, for their own personal use, and replayed them endlessly until they were word perfect on the script. They photographed their favourite shows off the TV screen. Decades before mobile phones and their inbuilt cameras, photography was more of an effort and an art. Commercial photos and souvenirs were largely unavailable.
Fandom Begins with Persistence
Photos required patience: you bought a roll of film, used a camera, then handed the film over to the local pharmacy, waiting a week for your memories to be developed and printed.
In my tweens during the early 1970s, my rapt attendance at a local movie theatre to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey while university-aged couples necked, led to my attending the theatre one weekend with my pocket camera and some rolls of film so I could take photos of the spaceships. After snap-snap-snapping during the movie, I took my rolls of film to my local pharmacy and impatiently waited the obligatory week for my photos to return. I was disappointed to find that – due to the darkness within the theatre – none of my photos had come out. The pharmacist felt sorry for me and gave me a free roll of film.
“Two rolls of film, one bruised ego, and a carry bag of flash cubes — proof that fandom begins with persistence.”
Undeterred, I returned the following weekend with my camera, more rolls of film, and a carry bag full of flash cubes — determined to photograph the wondrous spaceships. This time, my attempts at photography – flashes and all – caused consternation, likely misunderstandings, and mayhem in the theatre. After surviving being nearly strangled by local university-aged boys in the audience (their girlfriends told them to “leave the boy alone”), I finished my photos and once again (rather smugly this time) presented my films to the pharmacy, waiting another agonising week — only to find that these photos had also not come out. I explained what had happened to the pharmacist, and this time he sternly told me off.
Sadly, I gave up any further attempts to photograph these filmic images — only to joyously find later that the Space Age Bookshop in Melbourne was selling slides of these exact same fictional spaceships. My amateur and failed attempts to deepen my connection with my interest in things science fictional were finally starting to be anticipated and met by rudimentary professional marketing enterprises.
Phones of that era were firmly fixed on walls or situated on shelves. Wireless phones only existed in SF programs. Most homes had a single handset connected by wires, and long-distance calls meant booking ahead through an operator. If you were out and about, you found a TARDIS-shaped phone booth on a street corner and dialled home.
Phone booths were great places to shelter from the harsh weather as you made private calls to friends that you dared not make at home (on the family phone in the living room). They were also great places for Clark Kent to change into his Superman underwear – and those phone directories! In the days before modern privacy laws, these phone books comprised hundreds of pages containing the names, addresses and phone numbers of many thousands of people; I knew fans who had fun skimming through the directory pages to find the names of their favourite fictional characters – not to ring them, of course, but just because it was fun to see fictitious names in print in the “real” world.
This was the world a generation ago: awed by the space age and watching men walking on the Moon, but still stuck in an era before space age technology had trickled down to the everyday. It would take another twenty years before the Internet or mobile phones started making public appearances, another decade after that before home computers brought the Internet into our homes, and another two decades again before AI became commonplace.
Television in those days was a box in your living room, connected to small rabbit-ears antennae that sat on top of your TV set, or connected via wires to an antenna on your roof. Reception was limited to a handful of local TV stations that were accessible via your antenna; and if you wanted to watch a TV program, you were totally reliant upon the whims of the programmers at those local TV stations. In the days before streaming or DVDs or videotapes, when your favourite TV show was taken off the air, you had no guarantee that you would ever see it again. (And if you wanted to see a movie, go to a movie theatre).
And then, as if someone flipped a switch, the future began to arrive… not all at once, but in colour.
Future Echoes
On 1 March 1975, Australia officially turned on colour television – although colour test transmissions had commenced some months beforehand, hinting at a rainbow of multicoloured diversity in our formerly monotone black-and-white TV services. In those early days of colour TV, the colour palette was turned up high, so everything appeared almost fluorescent. This was especially breathtaking, for example, when seeing that cricket matches were played on the MCG grass field that was blindingly green.
“The [television] sets cost more than $1,000, the equivalent of approximately $8,800 in today’s money. The many who could not afford to upgrade their sets continued to watch in black and white.”
As a result of colour TV, local stations pulled many old programs out of their archives and repeated them – now in living colour. Star Trek was one of these programs, airing in a G-rated (suitable for children) timeslot for about three months on Saturday afternoons.. maybe fifteen episodes. For nerdy SF-starved teens, it was wondrous.
I remember sitting around the dining table for our family’s traditional Saturday evening dinner, and at my pleading they allowed me to have the television turned on so I could watch while we ate. Upon hearing the opening narration: “Space: The Final Frontier…” my father laughed and commented that space was the infinite frontier. Having been suitably chastened for the gall to watch television during family tea-time, I was allowed to watch the rest of the episode without critical commentary, although I was compelled to ignore my mother and sisters rolling their eyes in patronising amusement. Within my 14 year-old brain, I felt the thrill of space-age adventure mixed with deference to a nostalgic program that dated from the Apollo space era. I was hooked. Over subsequent weeks, in between the TV episodes on Saturday afternoons, I turned to reading Star Trek books, especially when the series was withdrawn from that timeslot, and later appeared in erratic late night “graveyard shift” timeslots.
This was an era when Australian Star Trek viewers were totally dependent upon the whims of Channel 9 programmers – who took the show on and off, often late at night. I even recall late night viewing of one episode, “Amok Time”, containing a scene in which Kirk and Spock face off against each other, ready to fight to the death. Snip! A Channel 9 film editor suddenly cuts out the subsequent five minutes of action – and Kirk went from standing courageously to lying apparently dead in front of Spock. As I sat there stupefied and puzzled, the reason for this edit suddenly became clear: the scene was ended quickly, in order to make way for another five minutes of advertising Saba and Franco Cozzo furniture.
Fans became frantic for more Star Trek, a hunger which Channel 9 seemed reluctant to satiate, despite our phone calls, letters and petitions (I recall being told by one Channel Nine Programming Manager that they had enough problems in their workplace without having to worry about giving fans what they wanted). Into this vacuum stepped a local film theatre manager.
A portion of a Ritz theatre flyer, with the bottom half of the page advertising the first Star Trek Marathon on 27 November 1976
Bob Johnston was a local film enthusiast who had collected many films and ran a small theatre – the Ritz – in a hired theatrette in Errol Street, North Melbourne (his Sydney operations were likewise run out of ANZAC House). Out of curiosity, he threw a couple Star Trek episodes into a theatre night, and the audience response was so positive that he decided to run a Star Trek Marathon featuring Star Trek episodes running “from dusk ’til dawn”, and for the first time ever, he had to open the theatrette balcony in order to accommodate the audience. Naturally, this meant that the Marathons became a regular feature in both his Melbourne and Sydney theatres.
My teenager friends and I were already running an amateur student science club, the Melbourne Amateur Science Club (MASC), and we excitedly attended this first Star Trek Marathon. We even took some photocopied flyers advertising Austrek (a subsection of MASC), and these were snapped up by Marathon audience members and caused us to be overwhelmed with immediate sign-ups for new memberships (an annual membership initially costing $1, although postage costs for our newsletter forced us to quickly increase that to $2.50). We quickly concluded that we did not have the resources to run both our school children’s science club and the fledgling Austrek (which in one night had received more enthusiastic memberships than MASC had received in its years of operation), so we closed down MASC and dedicated our limited teenage time and efforts to Austrek. That first Star Trek Marathon on 27 November 1976 was retrospectively assigned as being the date of our club’s public launch. We even met a lovely young lady, a school teacher named Diane, who encouraged us to run our new club.
Science fiction fans have traditionally been voracious readers, and local fans were no exception. Concurrent to the aforementioned media activities, we had previously sought Star Trek-related material via a scarce number of books. British author James Blish had novelised the Star Trek episodes, and US author Alan Dean Foster had done the same for the Star Trek animated series. Beyond that, such books were rare. We started watching Star Trek on TV, fell in love with its magic, and scoured bookshops for more.
There were two books that particularly made a difference in the early club. Star Trek Lives! introduced us to the concept of fan clubs and fandom. We learned that there were others like us: keen and enthusiastic for Star Trek and space age excitement; running fan clubs and conventions; writing fan fiction and publishing fanzines. This book had probably helped inspire us to start Austrek as a sub-section of our humble little schoolkids science club, MASC, and begin to consider expanding that subsection into something more (the Star Trek Marathons helped that option take off like a rocket).
The second book to impact our lives was I Am Not Spock, an autobiographical account by actor Leonard Nimoy. He complained that any time anyone wrote a letter and addressed the envelope to “Mr Spock, Hollywood, California”, the Post Office delivered it to him. Encouraged by this, we did something that I would now recommend that nobody ever do: we wrote to him using that very method. Dozens of us signed a letter asking if we could officially start a Star Trek fan club, and we posted it with teenaged-sized bravery, wondering if we would ever get a reply. To our surprise, we did – but not from the man himself.
It turns out that there was an organisation called the Star Trek Welcommittee (STW) – a Star Trek volunteer-based information exchange network, based in the USA. In the days before the digital communications, they wrote a snail mail reply to us, recommending that we contact a mysterious “D. Marchant” who lived in Melbourne (but in far-away Mordialloc, a southern suburb – too far for us to visit in the days before we were old enough to own or drive our own cars). With some fear and trembling, I dialled my home phone’s rotary dial and called this mysterious “D. Marchant”. To my astonishment, my new friend – Diane from the Star Trek Marathons – answered the phone. It turned out that she was the world STW representative for every country outside the USA.
Diane mentored, encouraged and assisted us with everything from contacting local fans, to posting out our first real newsletter (she donated the stamps for us to afford the postage costs). It was full-steam ahead.
A portion of page 1 of the first Captain’s Log
The following months were a mix of frantic and exciting, especially balancing schoolwork and homework against building Austrek infrastructure. We published our first Austrek newsletter, titled Trekkie Talk, and then changed the name after Diane gently explained how the word “trekkie” was seen as a negative by many Star Trek fans at that time; leading to the newsletter being relaunched as The Captain’s Log.
Our first public meeting took place in the abovementioned church hall in Fairfield on 27 February 1977. The pastor was annoyed when I asked for a receipt for the hall hire cost: the princely sum of five dollars. He hand-wrote a receipt, making sure to exaggerate the receipt number as #1 (the 1 being preceded by a ridiculous number of zeroes) as his gentle protest.
The meeting was attended by Diane and her mother Jessie, by many of the teenage club members, and a mix of new members who had joined since the first Marathon. One teenage boy dressed as Darth Vader, managing to go to the milk bar next to the church and trying to buy a Star Wars icy pole, getting flustered, and tripping over the Twisties stand. But our youth and enthusiasm were infectious: our club sped ahead into new activities over the coming months, not being held back by wisdom or caution. We had never tried anything before, and we had no idea what was possible or impossible, so we generally went ahead and did it anyway. Any time we had an idea, we anticipated the later Star Trek mantra of Make It So, and we did. Our human adventure was just beginning.
Early Austrek logo
Austrek has organised many activities: including club meetings, car rallies, birthday parties, weddings, Christmas events, weekend events at private homes, New Year’s Day events, trivial pursuit nights, camps, fan fiction, fanzines, newsletters, collating parties, conventions, fan films, art displays, costume competitions,’courts martial’ and ‘ambassadors’ banquets’ and other cosplay events, formal debates, letter campaigns to help NASA or medical causes, charities, banquets, movie nights, sold out theatre bookings for virtually every Star Trek movie premiere, museum displays, filk songs, radio programs, Moomba floats, media interviews, medical and personal interventions, picnics to Hanging Rock, merchandise including T-shirts and cups and stickers and playing cards and lanyards, contributions to books and magazines, assisting the start of many other SF media clubs, assisting fan authors and fan artists to become professionals, providing a welcoming sanctuary for many people facing issues of diversity, isolation and difference, introducing women to science fiction and science fiction to women… the sky was our limit. Whether creative activities borne of need in the early days to find more Star Trek inspiration amidst the cultural desert; or more recent consumerist activities to accommodate the wide range of franchise material now available, the club has learnt and adapted to suit changing commercial and copyright and cultural interests.
As for me, I will never forget the many people who have told me (over the last five decades) how Austrek literally saved their lives by providing supportive social networks.
We may not have changed the world overnight, but we have changed it one life at a time. After half a century, our journey – our legacy – continues.
And the rest is history.
“Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits.”
– Picard, Measure of A Man, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Published to commemorate the birthday of Joanna Russ.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
— Neil Armstrong, 1969
“He was a man, and I was a woman. That’s what they told us.”
— Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer, 2018
Genre Was Never Neutral
Speculative fiction was built on a foundation of masculine myth. From the 19th century onward, writers like Verne, Wells, and Burroughs imagined futures of conquest, invention, and control. Their heroes were white, male, cisgender, heterosexual, and rational – and women were either absent or ornamental.
Early science fiction: Explorers and inventors dominated their worlds. The alien was orientalised and othered. Women were sidelined.
Golden Age SF (1930s–50s): Pulp magazines glorified masculine genius. Women were assistants, lovers, or threats.
High fantasy (Tolkien, Lewis): Noble bloodlines, patriarchy, and exotic locations.
Space opera (Star Wars, Foundation): Empire in space. Male heroes and women as damsels in distress.
For me as a younger science fiction fan, one of my template heroes was Captain Kirk, who happened to be white, male, heterosexual and imperialist. The same with Commander Straker, Luke Skywalker, Doctor Who, R. Daneel Olivaw, and even Galen from Planet of the Apes. These generically universal straight white male heroes (or their analog) served to lead and guide science fiction by example. But from Tarzan to Tony Stark, from Sherlock to Spock, the so-called “universal” hero was never really universal. He was a product of Western patriarchy, designed to dominate and conquer.
Helena Tried to Give Them Souls
She Was the Genre’s First Media Emotional Ark
Helena Glory, the President’s daughter, arrives at Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.), a factory that mass-produces synthetic labourers. She comes as an emissary of the League of Humanity, pleading for the robots to be treated with dignity. She begs the scientists to give them souls, to make them more human. They laugh. They dismiss her. They marry her.
Years later, Helena burns the formula for creating robots (not out of malice, but grief). She’s horrified by their callousness, by the sterility of a world without care. When the robots revolt, she is killed: erased like the empathy she embodied.
One of Gnaedinger’s covers (Pulpfest)
From the beginning, women haunted the margins of speculative fiction: sometimes as authors, more often as symbols. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) gave the genre its first speculative scaffold, yet even there, women are silenced, sacrificed, or erased to propel male ambition. In colonial fantasies by Verne and Burroughs, women are romantic prizes or civilizing burdens; emblems of the empire’s moral veneer. As the genre moved into pulp fiction, women were both creators and constraints: Mary Gnaedinger edited Famous Fantastic Mysteries, while writers like Clare Winger Harris and Leslie F. Stone published under ambiguous names to slip past editorial gatekeeping. Yet on the page, female characters were often mute, decorative, or doomed: narrative decoration for masculine conquest. Even in R.U.R. (1920), where the word “robot” was born, Helena Glory’s efforts end in obliteration. These early texts excluded and obliterated women.
Maria: The Robot Was a Woman
In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), the first cinematic robot wasn’t a neutral machine, it was a woman. The Maschinenmensch, built in the image of Maria, wasn’t designed to liberate. She was built to deceive, seduce, and incite chaos.
She was created by Rotwang, not as a marvel of science, but as a monument to his lost love, Hel. In that act, the genre revealed its blueprint: women being subservient to the whims and fantasies of men. The robot wasn’t just futuristic, it was patriarchal fantasy presented in chrome.
And yet, she endures. Her silhouette haunts pop culture, from C-3PO to Beyoncé. She reminds us that speculative fiction didn’t begin with liberation — it began with discrimination.
Masculinist Literature
Science fiction, in particular, has long been a stage for masculine melodrama. From lost-world adventures to interstellar warfare, the genre has often glorified the warrior archetype. As Ezekiel Crago puts it, SF’s morality is saturated with “military masculinity”, a form of manhood that justifies violence through the illusion of protection. The “helpful hero” becomes a vessel for power.
To understand how women are written in speculative fiction, we have to start with how masculinity is constructed. The genre doesn’t just exclude women, it defines them in contrast to male protagonists. They’re presented as emotional devices, moral challenges, or damsels in distress. Feminist SF has pushed back for decades, but the genre remains stubbornly resistant.
Let’s talk about the classics: Aragorn, Paul Atreides, Luke Skywalker, Hari Seldon, and their ilk. They were role models for young white boys, and reflected what NASA would later classify as being “the right stuff” for astronauts: male, white, heterosexual, and culturally all-American.
Aragorn: Inherits kingship through bloodline and prophecy. Éowyn’s grief is sidelined.
Paul Atreides: Becomes a messiah. Women vanish in his vision.
Luke Skywalker: Cosmic destiny, paternal revelation, heroic aspirations.
Hari Seldon: Intellectual superiority. Women reduced to background decoration.
These narratives entertained and instructed. The hero wasn’t just a character. He was a role model for male emotional distance and a testimony to testosterone. Hasta La Vista, Baby!
The Treatment of Female Characters
In speculative fiction, women are rarely protagonists. More often, they’re decoration, used to provide background context for the male hero, or to soften his testosterone. They’re props.
Altaira and the Gaslight
I recall chatting to a younger SF fan about an old movie (Forbidden Planet), which I had always considered positively, but I was about to learn something. This younger guy viewed this movie as being awful, which surprised me because it is often invoked as a classic. When I asked him why, his reply was startling but made me think:
“That scene when the captain scolds Altaira for wearing a short skirt in front of a spaceship full of men who haven’t seen a woman for a year. Talk about gaslighting and rape culture!”
Maybe the Creature from the Id was wider than just a movie concept.
Narrative Roles Assigned to Women
The Love Interest: A prize or temptation. Think Leia, Arwen, Chani.
The Healer or Mother: Emotional tokenism. Often unnamed or undeveloped as a character, often sacrificed. Think Edith Keeler, Beverley Crusher, Deanna Troi, and Miramanee (Star Trek)
The Symbolic Martyr: Forgotten, or sanctified. Think Maria in Metropolis and Furiosa in Mad Max.
The Exceptional Woman: Allowed agency only by rejecting femininity or becoming “one of the boys.” Think Buffy Summers, Dana Scully, Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Susan Calvin.
These clichés teach readers or viewers to see women as secondary, symbolic, or expendable. As Brian Attebery puts it, science fiction doesn’t just reflect gender norms, it teaches them. It animates machines and aliens with power, while presenting women as relatively inert, decorative, or dead.
Case Studies in Erasure
Éowyn (The Lord of the Rings): Slays the Witch-King, then vanishes into domesticity.
Chani (Dune): Warrior and guide, reduced to womb and warning.
Leia Organa (Star Wars): Rebel leader, strategist, and survivor—yet always framed through restraint and lineage.
Susan Calvin (Asimov’s Robot series): Brilliant roboticist, emotionally flattened and mocked for her intellect.
Dr Elizabeth Dehner (Star Trek pilot): Brilliant scientist, emotionally flattened and mocked as a ‘walking freezer unit’.
These women are allowed power only when it serves the hero’s arc. Their stories are shaped by the emotional logic of a genre that mistrusts vulnerability and disciplines care out of its protagonists and its readers.
The Frigid Prototype
Dr. Susan Calvin, robopsychologist in Asimov’s I, Robot, is often described as cold, emotionless, and robotic. Shmoop notes that she’s referred to as a “frosty girl” with “cold enthusiasm,” her face and voice repeatedly described as cold—like the metal bodies of the robots she studies.
Calvin is more than just a scientist, she’s a genre prototype. She embodies the masculinist ideal of intellect stripped of emotion, a woman who “protected herself against a world she disliked by a masklike expression and a hypertrophy of intellect.” Her competence is unquestioned, but her humanity is flattened. She’s allowed power only by rejecting personality complexity.
Even Asimov admitted she was “much more like the popular conception of a robot than were any of my positronic creations.” Calvin’s legacy is profound: she’s the frigid woman scientist who must become machine to be taken seriously. And yet, she endures: brilliant, unyielding, and emotionally dead.
Damsels, Temptresses, and Designed for Rescue
Speculative fiction has long relied on women as visual and figures to be rescued, desired, or punished. These characters aren’t protagonists. They’re genre tropes, designed to elevate male heroism while suppressing female agency.
From Geisha to General
Princess Leia’s Story Arc Was Evolution
She began as a captured princess, framed through defiance but rescued by men.
She was silenced in a gold bikini, her body part of the conquest and subjugation.
She became a general: grieving, commanding, mentoring, surviving.
It took a lifetime for women’s liberation to arrive in a galaxy far, far away.
Designed for Rescue
Jane Porter (Tarzan): Repeatedly rescued, framed through romantic submission.
Aouda (Around the World in Eighty Days): Intelligent, gracious, but offered as romantic reward.
Maria (Metropolis): Saintly human and seductive robot, her humanity mechanised and weaponized.
Weena (The Time Machine): Passive and childlike.
Nova (Planet of the Apes): Mute, idealized, emotionally dependent.
Vina (Star Trek: “The Cage”): Reconstructed for beauty, her trauma made decorative.
Janice Rand (Star Trek: TOS): Professional, yet subordinated, her arc vanishes without closure.
Altaira Morbius (Forbidden Planet): Beautiful, naïve, emotionally reactive, transferred from father to suitor.
Dr. Ruth Adams (This Island Earth): A scientist, but emotionally subordinated, reduced to companion and witness.
Desire as Punishment
Marla McGivers (Star Trek: “Space Seed”): Betrays her crew for Khan’s love, her professionalism and autonomy forgotten.
Princess Aura (Flash Gordon): Sensual and rebellious, her quest for love made dangerous.
Barbarella:Her personality is contextualised through erotic spectacle.
Competence Undermined
Carol Marcus (Star Trek II): Brilliant scientist, but her arc is framed through romantic history and maternal sacrifice.
Maureen Robinson (original Lost In Space TV series): Qualified scientist who spends her time baking space cookies, washing the space laundry, and worrying about her children.
Tanya Adams (The Giant Claw): A mathematician, but her intellect is sidelined by romantic quests and repeated rescue.
Lois Lane (Superman): A brilliant journalist, yet frequently endangered and emotionally tethered to Superman’s arc.
These women aren’t just underwritten, they’re minimised. Their emotional power, sacrifice, and desire are used to fortify male heroism, not to explore their own arcs. They’re written to be seen, not to see.
Jessica Runs
I recall the opening episode of Logan’s Run: Jessica stands to one side, looking helpless while the men fight in fisticuffs. Just as the villain is about to defeat Logan, he is disarmed by a shot from Jessica, who has turned from damsel in distress to become a self-empowered runner!
I was sitting in a room with other teenagers, and we all cheered as Jessica discovered Women’s Lib. It wasn’t just a plot twist, it was a the birth of a new era. In that moment, speculative fiction cracked open, and we saw possibility sprint across the screen.
Point and Counterpoint: Wonder Woman
Diana isn’t rescued; she rescues the genre from itself. In a landscape dominated by male heroes, Wonder Woman emerges as a revelation.
Lasso: Compels honesty, not obedience.
Bracelets: Deflect violence, not invite it.
Mission: Peace over conquest.
She doesn’t conquer the other; she connects across difference. Where Paul Atreides erases Fremen women, Wonder Woman represents the silenced. Where Luke Skywalker inherits destiny through bloodline, she chooses empathy. She is not a masculinist hero reassigned as a woman. She is her own character.
Transitional Figures
Not all feminist characters arrive fully formed. Some characters inhabit the gap between old tropes and new ideas.
Ann Veronica (H.G. Wells): Defies patriarchy, seeks autonomy, yet returns to domesticity.
Jessica (Logan’s Run TV): Begins as companion, evolves co-architect of resistance.
Servalan (Blake’s 7): Glamorous and manipulative, yet politically dominant.
Elizabeth Dehner (Star Trek): Gains power, refuses domination, and then dies to stop Mitchell’s descent.
Nyota Uhura (Star Trek): Cultural bridge and communications officer. Like her character, her full name was not invented for decades.
Zira (Planet of the Apes): Empathetic and maternal scientist who dies in self-sacrifice.
Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who): Investigative journalist turned protagonist. She challenges the Doctor, leads her own spin-off.
These women signal that the genre is beginning to crack open.
Ripley Wasn’t Supposed to Survive
Ripley was originally written as a man. In early drafts of Alien (1979), the character was a standard-issue male officer. But director Ridley Scott, with a nudge from studio head Alan Ladd Jr., flipped the script: “Why can’t Ripley be a woman?”
Scott later explained the logic: a woman would be the last person audiences expected to survive. That subversion—casting Sigourney Weaver as the by-the-book officer who outlives them all—wasn’t just a twist. It was a genre detonation.
Ripley didn’t just survive. She returned, again and again, across sequels and decades, evolving from reluctant survivor to maternal protector to existential warrior. She became the spine of the franchise—and a new archetype for speculative fiction.
Feminist Interventions: Ripley and Sarah Connor
If Wonder Woman reframes heroism through care and individualism, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor represent a darker evolution. They are the female equivalents of violent male heroes such as the Terminator, Judge Dredd, Batman, Wolverine, or Lobo. As such, they epitomise the idea that “might makes right” and their character development needs further nuance if they are to be seen as fully fleshed out, positive role models. While they represent the idea that women are just as physically capable as men towards forms of assertive behaviour, they also represent a transition phase between the “damsels in distress” of the past and more healthy representations in the future.
Towards Intersectionality and Speculative Care
Speculative fiction doesn’t just imagine futures. It helps to create them.
Russ Drew the Map
Joanna Russ exposed the architecture of genre in speculative fiction. In her essay “What Can a Heroine Do? or, Why Women Can’t Write”, Russ mapped the literary traps that constrain female protagonists: the ornamental roles, the emotional baggage, the narrative erasure. She showed how women are written to serve, not to act.
Russ argued that the problem isn’t just representation, it’s structure. The genre’s expectations discipline women into silence, sacrifice, or spectacle. “The heroine cannot act,” she wrote, “because the plot does not permit it.”
Her work teaches us that rewriting the hero means rewriting the blueprint. Russ didn’t just ask what a heroine could do. She demanded that we build stories where she can.
Reading List
Attebery, Brian. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake
Busse, Kristina. Framing Fan Fiction
Butler, Octavia. Kindred, Parable of the Sower
Cherryh, C.J. Foreigner series
Crago, Ezekiel. “The Helpful Hero: Military Masculinity in Science Fiction”
Drapeau-Bisson, Marie-Lise. “Feminist Readings of Genre Disruption”
Fellman, Isaac. The Breath of the Sun
Haraway, Donna. A Cyborg Manifesto
Lemberg, R.B. The Four Profound Weaves, The Unbalancing
Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”
Studocu Editorial Team. “Feminist Analysis of Joanna Russ: A Study of Female Agency.” Studocu.
Tiptree Jr., James (Alice Sheldon). Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Vint, Sherryl. Bodies of Tomorrow
Yang, Neon. The Tensorate Series
Unreal Worlds, Real Bodies: Speculative Fiction and the Colonial Imagination
A four-part journey through how speculative fiction echoed empire, rewrites resistance, and reclaims futurity.
Part One: Race and the Colonial Imagination
Published: 2 January 2026 Read Part One
From Lucian to Le Guin, speculative fiction’s imperial DNA is exposed: how imagined futures rehearsed conquest, racial hierarchy, and colonial logic.
Part Two: The Hero Must Be Rewritten
Published: 22 February 2026 Read Part Two
Gender and the myth of the universal hero. This chapter rewrites masculinist genre scaffolding, tracing how speculative fiction disciplines emotion, care, and female agency.
Part Three: Sexuality & Queer Futures
Published: 1 April 2026 Read Part Three
A queer reading of Star Trek and speculative canon. This chapter critiques heteronormative erasure, celebrates queer fandom’s legacy, and imagines futures beyond genre discipline.
Part Four: We Occupy the Future
Published: 5 April 2026 Read Part Four
Published on the anniversaries of the 504 Sit-In and Medibank Blockade, this chapter confronts techno-fix fantasies and reimagines futures where disabled bodies are not corrected or cured, but centred, celebrated, and architecturally included.
“Everything needs to change and it has to start today.”
– Greta Thunberg, 2018.
I am writing as a concerned Australian citizen to oppose this project. I respectfully call upon you to reject the project for the following reasons:
It does not enjoy support from the local community. Democracy requires that people should have representation in administrative and community matters, and there are many local people who oppose the project for many of the following reasons, and because it will not greatly add to local employment, nor otherwise benefit their community and the world around them.
The expansion will reportedly destroy 55 irreplaceable Aboriginal cultural artefacts, and potentially impact dozens of others. Such damage to our national and cultural legacy – for such short-term gain – must surely border upon the unethical and criminal.
The proposed expansion is located alongside a nature reserve and environmental damage will be extensive. This includes groundwater and creeks where pollution or other effects could create wide and long-term damage. It is our responsibility to protect our environment, and this project adds to damage and endangerment while adding very little overall benefit.
The project would destroy extensive areas for flora and fauna. I understand that this includes habitat for koalas, Regent Honeyeaters, and up to 401 hectares of the nationally endangered Box Gum Woodland ecosystem. It is our legacy to protect these areas for the sake of the biosphere and for the future of the world.
The proposed expansion will contribute to climate damage that contradicts NSW climate goals and endangers the future of the world. I work with young Australians, many of whom are concerned with the inadequacy of actions by Australian authorities to address and redress climate damage concerns. It is incumbent upon your Commission to ensure that their concerns are acknowledged and that action is taken to create a better world for these generations who follow.
The proposed expansion ignores world trends to wind back coal and fossil fuels. It entrenches redundant economic and ethical policies that the world is leaving behind. Australia needs to move forward instead of repeating the mistakes of our past.
I ask you to consider the legacy this proposed expansion would leave for future generations, and I submit that this legacy would not be positive for Australia or the world.
I respectfully urge the Independent Planning Commission to recommend that the Moolarben OC3 Coal Mining Extension Project be refused. Thank you for considering my submission.
‘Star Trek’ was an attempt to say humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in lifeforms.”
– Gene Roddenberry
When Star Trek VI came out in 1991, its background story echoed the contemporaneous collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Glasnost. Fans and critics alike praised the movie for its courage to be edgy and unafraid to explore contemporary social issues. A generation later, a small faction of fan critics for the newest Star Trek series (Starfleet Academy) complain about its wokeness, and they demonstrate a fear of the social evolution and change to which it appears to allude.
What I want to explore here is this attitudinal change as an example of populist cultural collapse that is currently underway in the United States of America and some other parts of the western world.
Star Trek – Back to School
I will be honest: for all the obvious reasons, I have not yet seen the three episodes of Starfleet Academy that have been shown publicly. I am unable to comment on the show itself, nor provide a valid critique. I do believe that much of Star Trek since the reboot films (2009 – 2016) has been somewhat deficient because it often comes across as poor science and poor fiction – just generally sub-par writing (I am glad to say that many Star Trek fans disagree with me – and each other – and have energetic debates about this material). In all fairness, I will withhold airing my personal opinion of the new Starfleet Academy series until after I actually get to watch it.
The problem is that some fans appear to reject the new material outright – not primarily because of anything related to the perceived quality of the writing, but because these fans appear unwilling or unable to cope with new characterisations of sexuality, gender or gender identity, race and social evolution. I saw the same thing happen in 2017, when Doctor Who was recast as a woman; then again when a queer Rwandan-Scottish actor played the part. Many fans went hysterical. Straight white men proclaimed that they were suddenly being victimised and excluded; as though their previous fifty years of privilege had mysteriously disappeared. Similarly, when Star Trek Discovery first appeared on television that same year (2017), some fans bewailed the appearance of strong, non-white women; and a mixed-race gay male couple. Once again these armchair warriors wailed, “Why are straight white men being excluded”? Overall, they came across as a bunch of Sad Puppies.
Most recently, the idea of a new Star Trek series featuring a young cast in Starfleet Academy – possibly analogous to young people entering college (university) and for the first time leaving home, becoming independent adults, exploring their new surroundings and friendships and a mix of strange, new cultures – seems inspiring and fresh and potentially exciting. They live in a world 1000 years from now, where alien cultures (formerly enemies) have evidently reconciled and interbred; where new societal norms have swept aside old prejudices and bigotries. What could possibly go wrong?
“Star Trek” has always touted its desire to explore strange new worlds; what “Starfleet Academy” supposes is, what if college is the strangest world of all?”
– Clint Worthington
Recontextualising material to suit the romance literature market or the youth/teen market is not necessarily problematic. How many people complained back in the 12th century, when Arthurian stories were rebooted as medieval romance literature, changing Camelot forever from Dark Age “fall of the Roman Empire” mythology to romantic medieval chivalric code? How many Shakespeare fans have ever complained that the Bard himself rewrote earlier story versions of Romeo and Juliet, plagiarising it as fan fiction and adding extra depth of teen romance angst? Star Trek itself was rescued from being a failed television series in the late 1960s, recast as a multi-billion dollar franchise, in no small part because predominantly female fans (many of them being teens or post-teens) rewrote the material into thousands of fan fiction stories featuring “slash” material (same sex romance between Kirk and Spock).
Literature evolves to fit changing cultural norms and consumer demand. Star Trek will undoubtedly remain a science fiction franchise, but its stories must continue to follow the code of social evolution: adapt or die. In fitting with its long-time policy of incorporating “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”, it will continue to fulfil the vision of creator Gene Roddenberry that diversity should not just be tolerated – it should be celebrated. Bring on Starfleet Academy, youth culture and all.
Accordingly, I heartily recommend you seek out mainstream reviews of the series – most of which are balanced, rational, fair, and celebratory of diversity.
There are also reviews on social media, some of them extremely critical, such as this one, who complains at 17:30 that men apparently aren’t getting a fair representation (really, after nearly 60 years of male-dominated franchise?); and this one (who tries to rationally debate the criticisms of others about “wokeness”); and this one (who also complains about male representation) – perhaps no surprise that all of these reviews are created by men. But they do make an effort to analyse the material critically and fairly, and their comments align with fan comments I have heard about the soap opera nature of this program: a Dawson’s Creek or CW in space, with a ship that should be labelled NCC-90210.
I do not have a problem with fan reviews that express dislike of obsessive youth culture or other story elements – please wait until I see the material for myself and we can have a wonderful debate about the undoubted strengths and weaknesses of the script material – but my problem is with those fan critics who barely touch upon literary criticism and instead bewail the wrongs (real or imagined) inflicted upon them by woke warriors.
Stories can be freely criticised as being weak or garbage – but characters, and the existence of the minority groups they represent, should not.
Gay Klingons And Other Catastrophes To Befall Humanity
One British fan critic begins his review, “Window Lickers in Spaaaaaaaace!! ” with an attempt to analyse what he sees as the shortcomings of the material, although his references to the show as a “bowel movement” (0:03) and “science retardation” (4:03) suggest that his analysis is an emotional as much as a literary response. He continues to refer to “retards” (eg. 18:20) even makes a vague reference that appears to invoke (or it is to satirise?) Trump racism: “Immigrants going to Earth to steal. Wait, is this 2020?” (5:04). He adds a dismissively homophobic comment about characters: “Also, they’re gay. Probably… it’s Kurtsman Trek.” (11: 20).
He later discusses a scene in which a young black man defeats some armed guards (a trope in media science fiction since forever) but suggests that it is an example of inverse racism because the guards are all white (13:02). He even makes a comment mocking gender equality:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you the flaw in that logic that will stay here until the day everybody dies: Heavy lifting. Where’s the women? Oh, it’s the men. It’s the men doing the heavy lifting. The sexes are equal right up to heavy lifting.” (47:44)
He continues this vein in another review, within which he mocks female body image as portrayed by the show’s “robust women” (3:58 and 8:34), and summarises his criticism of the new series – not with literary analysis of its perceived script weaknesses, but with the following complaint:
“As expected, it has got nothing to do with Star Trek. It is just another far-left ideological spurge that takes a brand, a franchise name, and just puts its own messaging and inclusion and diversity into it.”(0:14)
The Vulcan “IDIC” symbol from Star Trek, representing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
He chooses to forget that Star Trek has always aspired towards (but did not always achieve) inclusion, and the promotion of, “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”. Instead, this critic denies any historic wokeness in the franchise, dismissing such claims as, “absolute, utter bullshit” (7:17). His perspective can be further seen in his tendency to dismiss those with whom he disagrees as simply having Trump Derangement Syndrome, or to disparage the physique of men on the show (conveniently forgetting that Star Trek used to shamelessly demean women as sex objects): “Is it rules for thee, but not for me?” (4:30).
His extremist conservative nature can be intuited when he complains that people from the planet Cheron should be extinct (because the original Star Trek series revealed that last two survivors from that planet had both been male) and yet descendants have apparently been shown in this newest series, set a thousand years later. The reappearance of such people – once shown to lead to their own potential extinction because of racist hatred – could fictionally and metaphorically demonstrate that even the most doomed of intolerant characters might somehow survive and grow. Appearing to overlook this symbolism, and ignoring obvious scientific and scientifictional possibilities surrounding this situation – including time travel to rescue other inhabitants, genetic engineering, alternative universes or timelines, or just simply more survivors later being found somewhere across the galaxy (any of these possibilities providing the possible basis for a background story in any episode) – this critic chooses a homophobic rant instead:
“So unless the show is insinuating that the only last two remaining Cheron males managed to bum themselves a whole new population, then this race should be extinct. But actually thinking about what I just said and the people that are running Star Trek nowadays, I probably think that they feel that that’s a viable thing that they could do. “(3:30)
Viewers might be forgiven for wondering whether this gentleman is really simply whingeing that conservative, straight white guys – for most of the last fifty years having enjoyed privileged status in the franchise – are now finding the portrayal of equality with others to somehow threaten their privilege? (see for example 9:26) Ironically, he projects his own narrow perspective onto those people whom he criticises:
“[This new Star Trek] represents a broken bubble, a broken shell of comic Californian wankers who think the world revolves around them… it doesn’t represent Star Trek and it certainly doesn’t represent humanity and people…” (16:47)
Really? So a series that portrays diversity and new forms of inclusion – new species, new characters descended from a mix of races previously portrayed as enemies, characters who break out of stereotypes and boldly explore a strange new world that they are creating… these people don’t represent the highest aspirations of a utopian future?
Lesbians with Cats?
Jones and Ripley in Alien (Wikipedia image)
Another male fan critic spends very little time actually analysing the story and most of his time complaining about the “woke chain” (4:35) and a “lesbian relationship” (4:58) and “the gay Klingon” (5:02) and “the woke degenerate crazy thing” (5:07) and “the feminism” (7:02) and “a bunch of retards just running around” (10:43) and bewailing the possibility that viewers might (shock! Horror!) be forced to watch “the lesbians going at it… full tilt” (10:58), He complains about the injustice of a changing room scene where the men are somewhat unclothed while the women are not – implying that the men are victims of exploitation by Hollywood and suggesting that sexual harassment lawsuits may be on the way (conveniently forgetting Star Trek’s long tradition of sexually exploiting female bodies over the last half century). He even manages to refer to polyamory as “degenerate stuff” (13:00) and praise one episode ever-so-slightly because “at least it wasn’t gay” (15:32) while expressing relief that he wasn’t forced to endure a lesbian romance scene (15:55).
He repeatedly refers to Star Trek writers as 40 year-old women who sip wine and have cats, blaming them for both promoting lesbianism and for the gratuitous male nudity (without seeing any irony in the paradox of allegedly promoting both at the same time); thereby managing to mix his misogyny and homophobia together while also insinuating that the franchise needs straight white guys like him to mansplain non-degenerate perspectives to delusional woke lefties.
Queer Cringe
You get the idea: instead of attempting a balanced, rational review like this one or this one, varied reviews are homophobic, reactionary, or otherwise bigoted, like this one or this one (reviewed by a right-wing woman of colour who appears to promote white supremacist racism by blaming immigrants and their children for crime – see 5:00). Even this one, which attempts to present rational analysis, still manages to disparage the gay and lesbian characters, while this one attempts some analysis under the heading of “Star Woke” as though wokeness is itself a negative. Such unbalanced reviews may, ultimately, still be statistically insignificant, but their rise and empowerment is a cause for concern.
Perhaps the ultimate criticism has come from Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff; and Nazi sympathiser Elon Musk; who have both criticised Starfleet Academy for being woke. In response, former Star Trek actor Whoopi Goldberg has criticised their comments as deliberate attempts to distract audiences from the state of the world that these men are actively creating:
“Why are you concentrating on a television show when people are being shot and killed, when people are going hungry, when farmers are losing their farms, kids can’t get meals at school? Why are you paying attention to this?”
This is probably Star Trek’s greatest message, as explored by generations of fan fiction writers exploring same sex relationships (known as “slash”) and other progressive concepts, and other fan activists promoting charity and change: taking Star Trek ideals and “making it so”. Detractors want to return to earlier times and use it as a distraction rather than as inspiration.
Loving the poorly educated
As people who allegedly align themselves with an ongoing franchise (that must, like all literature, adapt to the times or die), they seem remarkably devoid of understanding or empathy regarding inclusion and diversity, or of understanding disadvantage and disempowerment; instead inverting the Star Trek trope of “The needs of the one [themselves] outweigh the needs of the few… or the many [others, especially disempowered or disadvantaged groups]”. They resist the impulse towards self-education through asking questions and accommodating change; they instead prefer past times or privilege and inequality, yearning for past attitudes within which they feel most comfortable.
In doing this, they display the perspectives of extremists such as white Christian nationalists, who perceive the world and culture through a narrow fish-eyed lens:
“Rooted in a long history of American exceptionalism, it fuses white identity politics with a specific brand of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity to create a racist form of a national identity.”
Similarly, these so-called fans, who deny (or disparage as “woke”) the inadequate but sincere attempts at historic progressive inclusion within this franchise, are happy to rewrite or reinterpret the franchise in order to exclude those whom they hate. Some demonstrate a celebratory mood at news that the series may be cancelled early due to their efforts; one fan comment suggests that they would rather see the franchise die than be woke. Thus they take a franchise that seeks to promote utopian ideals, and drag it – and our world – backwards to more regressive values.
Trump and Tradition
While some may see the USA’s cultural and political turmoil as being caused by Trump and his regime, I see Trump as a symptom of a larger malaise. Swathes of US citizens actively deny and oppose their nation’s advances in vaccine and epidemiology, and scientific advances such as the 1960s space program that triggered history’s greatest technological peacetime advances. Moon landings – and their fictional counterparts, Starfleet Academy – are rejected by those who seek to deny the potential greatness and aspirations of their own country and culture; they seek to rewrite history and culture to suit their personal perspectives – as maybe so do we all. The difference is that their view of knowledge is that ignorance is equivalent to world-class expertise; their cosmos is a metaphoric flat earth instead of a rich tapestry of galactic stars and diverse cultures. Unlike them, I look forward to living long enough to having my values and perspectives challenged and educated by those who follow – that’s the value of being woke rather than asleep.
From cardassians to crucifixion, we see the same call for cultural compliance in populist fundamentalist religion having been hijacked by fascism, just as these Star Trek fans seek to rewrite and reboot their favourite quasi-religious franchise in their own image. They revel in creating division and dissent rather than social cohesion.
They are symptomatic of the potential cultural, scientific, social, educational and economic collapse of an empire:
The Archaeologist lists the decline of social cohesion as one factor creating the fall of empires:
“Social Cohesion: A strong sense of shared identity and purpose is essential for a society to thrive. If social divisions deepen and trust breaks down, a society can become vulnerable to internal conflict.”
Instead, we should view literature as an attempt to unite and contribute to our society and our world, in line with humanist values that include an appreciation and involvement in literature and culture:
“We value great works of art, music, literature and architecture regardless of their origin, and respect culturally significant landscapes, geological formations and artifacts. We support their preservation and believe in fair, equitable and culturally sensitive access for all.”
“Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There’s no room for it on the Bridge.
Do I make myself clear?” – Kirk, Balance of Terror (1969)
I grew up watching and loving the original series of Star Trek, which boasted a progressive attitude in its portrayal of African-Americans during the US Civil Rights era. I recall reading a quote from one African-American actor, who later recalled how powerful was the impact of his character, a visiting Black Starfleet Commodore, to whom the white hero James Kirk deferred and called “sir” in an an era where civil rights activists were being murdered in real life. In one episode, racial hatred was even shown as potentially destroying a planetary civilisation (the aforementioned Cheron). Star Trek tried its best within the limits of its commercial constraints for the time, even (wrongly) boasting of featuring television’s first interracial kiss (that kiss is problematic for many reasons) – although the appearance of an African-American woman on the Bridge was certainly groundbreaking for this same era.
Star Trek didn’t get everything right, particularly its early portrayals of women, and its exclusion of LGBT+ characters, but encouraged by its largely female fandom (fully inclusive of LGBT+ and neurodivergent fans) Star Trek evolved with the times, always implying the equality it frequently failed to show. So although I understand why some modern fans bewail the appearance of sexualities or racial realities that previously were never shown – only implied – I do think they need to understand the spirit of the series as much as its stories. Was Star Trek ever woke? Hell yes, ever since 1964.
Whether or not Starfleet Academy is great literature or a great disappointment, it deserves in-depth analysis and appreciation of its values, aspirations and its potential to inspire. Straight white men have enjoyed more than their fair share of representation in the franchise for sixty years; it is time for us all to explore strange new worlds and seek out new life – learning about these others and glimpsing who we ourselves might become as an inclusive species in the future. Gay Klingons, married lesbians, and strong women should be celebrated, not dismissed as evil or deviant or disgusting because some timid people fear what is outside of their traditional life experiences. Those fans who disparage this series because of personality politics have themselves failed the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. They are free to ignore the series and enjoy other literature – or to quote Bob Dylan:
“Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times, they are a-changin’.”
– Bob Dylan
Inclusion is for Everyone
This does not mean we should reject these problematic fans outright: one cure for White Christian Nationalism or other forms of cognitively dissonant extremism is providing a safe space for such people after they face their own disillusionment, disengagement and deradicalisation:
“Hospitality communicates ‘You are welcome here.’ When a person is ready to leave American Christian nationalism, they need a place to land, a genuine community of safe, loving people.”
Starfleet Academy is a victim of its times: an exploration of the future being opposed by luddites and reactionaries. If it has offended those who resist change, and enables them to ultimately question and grow, then it will have done its job. Otherwise, the fan critics who disparage the material are guilty of seeking to revisit and enshrine old times and old attitudes, to divide and destroy our social fabric, and to destroy our opportunities to grow as individuals and as a collective. They are the opposite of traditional fandom, where fans used slash and other diversity to promote a healthy culture of life and growth; these people today promote cultural stagnation and death. Such is symptomatic of a country and a culture that seeks to drag humanity backwards; to “make great again” a mythical concept marrying white elitism, heterosexism, misogyny, racism, authoritarianism and social regression – and even fascism. Star Trek and the future of humanity demand more. It is up to the rest of us to bring these people back from the edge.
