Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds, it is a story that adults can read. Fantasy is a subgenre of speculative fiction and is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes though these genres overlap. Most works of fantasy were written, since the 1960s, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games and art. A number of fantasy novels written for children, such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Harry Potter series and The Hobbit attract an adult audience. Stories involving magic and terrible monsters have existed in spoken forms before the advent of printed literature. Classical mythology is replete with fantastical stories and characters, the best known being the works of Homer and Virgil.
The contribution of the Greco-Roman world to fantasy is vast and includes: The hero's journey. The philosophy of Plato has had great influence on the fantasy genre. In the Christian Platonic tradition, the reality of other worlds, an overarching structure of great metaphysical and moral importance, has lent substance to the fantasy worlds of modern works; the world of magic is connected with the Roman Greek world. With Empedocles, the elements, they are used in fantasy works as personifications of the forces of nature. Other than magic concerns include: the use of a mysterious tool endowed with special powers. India has a long tradition of fantastical characters, dating back to Vedic mythology; the Panchatantra, which some scholars believe was composed around the 3rd century BC. It is based on older oral traditions, including "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine". was influential in Europe and the Middle East. It used various animal fables and magical tales to illustrate the central Indian principles of political science.
Talking animals endowed with human qualities have now become a staple of modern fantasy. The Baital Pachisi, a collection of various fantasy tales set within a frame story is, according to Richard Francis Burton and Isabel Burton, the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, which inspired the Golden Ass of Apuleius. Boccacio's Decamerone the Pentamerone and all that class of facetious fictitious literature."The Book of One Thousand and One Nights from the Middle East has been influential in the West since it was translated from the Arabic into French in 1704 by Antoine Galland. Many imitations were written in France. Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin and Ali Baba; the Fornaldarsagas and Icelandic sagas, both of which are based on ancient oral tradition influenced the German Romantics, as well as William Morris, J. R. R. Tolkien; the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf has had deep influence on the fantasy genre. Celtic folklore and legend has been an inspiration for many fantasy works.
The Welsh tradition has been influential, owing to its connection to King Arthur and its collection in a single work, the epic Mabinogion. One influential retelling of this was the fantasy work of Evangeline Walton; the Irish Ulster Cycle and Fenian Cycle have been plentifully mined for fantasy. Its greatest influence was, indirect. Celtic folklore and mythology provided a major source for the Arthurian cycle of chivalric romance: the Matter of Britain. Although the subject matter was reworked by the authors, these romances developed marvels until they became independent of the original folklore and fictional, an important stage in the development of fantasy. Romance or chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative, popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe, they were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures of a knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest, yet it is "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates."
Popular literature drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c. 1600 they were out of fashion, Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in his novel Don Quixote. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, the word medieval evokes knights, distressed damsels and other romantic tropes. Romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman and Provençal, in Portuguese, in Castilian, in English, in Italian and German. During the early 13th century, romances
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life called alien life, is life that occurs outside of Earth and that did not originate from Earth. These hypothetical life forms may range from simple prokaryotes to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity; the Drake equation speculates about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life in all its forms is known as exobiology. Since the mid-20th century, there has been an ongoing search for signs of extraterrestrial life; this encompasses a search for current and historic extraterrestrial life, a narrower search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Depending on the category of search, methods range from the analysis of telescope and specimen data to radios used to detect and send communication signals; the concept of extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial intelligence, has had a major cultural impact, chiefly in works of science fiction. Over the years, science fiction communicated scientific ideas, imagined a wide range of possibilities, influenced public interest in and perspectives of extraterrestrial life.
One shared space is the debate over the wisdom of attempting communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Some encourage aggressive methods to try for contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. Others—citing the tendency of technologically advanced human societies to enslave or wipe out less advanced societies—argue that it may be dangerous to call attention to Earth. Alien life, such as microorganisms, has been hypothesized to exist in the Solar System and throughout the universe; this hypothesis relies on consistent physical laws of the observable universe. According to this argument, made by scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, as well as well-regarded thinkers such as Winston Churchill, it would be improbable for life not to exist somewhere other than Earth; this argument is embodied in the Copernican principle, which states that Earth does not occupy a unique position in the Universe, the mediocrity principle, which states that there is nothing special about life on Earth.
The chemistry of life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable epoch when the universe was only 10–17 million years old. Life may have emerged independently at many places throughout the universe. Alternatively, life may have formed less then spread—by meteoroids, for example—between habitable planets in a process called panspermia. In any case, complex organic molecules may have formed in the protoplanetary disk of dust grains surrounding the Sun before the formation of Earth. According to these studies, this process may occur outside Earth on several planets and moons of the Solar System and on planets of other stars. Since the 1950s, scientists have proposed that "habitable zones" around stars are the most places to find life. Numerous discoveries in such zones since 2007 have generated numerical estimates of Earth-like planets —in terms of composition—of many billions; as of 2013, only a few planets have been discovered in these zones. Nonetheless, on 4 November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way, 11 billion of which may be orbiting Sun-like stars.
The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists. Astrobiologists have considered a "follow the energy" view of potential habitats. A study published in 2017 suggests that due to how complexity evolved in species on Earth, the level of predictability for alien evolution elsewhere would make them look similar to life on our planet. One of the study authors, Sam Levin, notes "Like humans, we predict that they are made-up of a hierarchy of entities, which all cooperate to produce an alien. At each level of the organism there will be mechanisms in place to eliminate conflict, maintain cooperation, keep the organism functioning. We can offer some examples of what these mechanisms will be." There is research in assessing the capacity of life for developing intelligence. It has been suggested that this capacity arises with the number of potential niches a planet contains, that the complexity of life itself is reflected in the information density of planetary environments, which in turn can be computed from its niches.
Biologist David Zeigler has argued that, based on evolutionary convergence from many different ancestral groups on Earth, a worm form is a life form on other life-bearing planets. Life on Earth requires water as a solvent in place. Sufficient quantities of carbon and other elements, along with water, might enable the formation of living organisms on terrestrial planets with a chemical make-up and temperature range similar to that of Earth. More life based on ammonia has been suggested, though this solvent appears less suitable than water, it is conceivable that there are forms of life whose solvent is a liquid hydrocarbon, such as methane, ethane or propane. About 29 chemical elements play an active positive role in living organisms on Earth. About 95% of living matter is built upon only six elements: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur; these six elements form the basic building blocks of all life on Earth, whereas most of the remaining elements are found only in trace amounts. The unique characteristics of carbon make it unlikely that it could be replaced on another planet, to generate the biochemistry necessary for life.
The carbon atom has the unique ability to make four strong chemical
Magic, Inc.
Magic, Inc. is a science fantasy novella by Robert A. Heinlein, it was published in Unknown Fantasy Fiction of September 1940, under the title "The Devil Makes the Law". In the story, magic is a commonplace profession used by businessmen in various fields. A small business owner fights off an attempt to force magic under the control of a corrupt association called "Magic, Inc." The story is included in the book Waldo & Magic, Inc.. Archie Fraser is a building contractor. Despite the common use of magic in other professions, Archie has little use for it, since so much of his work involves "cold iron", which defies magic, he does have a sideline in instant temporary structures, such as bleachers and tents, all made of wood with no iron in them, which can be reconstituted from a fragment of an original structure. The work is done by magicians operating as independent contractors. Mistakes are made – at one point a fragment of a house is used by mistake. Archie creatively puts a sign outside the out-of-place structure saying "Display model!
Now open!" One day Archie is the subject of a shakedown by a sleazy character who seems to be operating a protection racket based on magic. After scaring the criminal off by exploiting his obvious superstitions, Archie goes to see his friend Jedson, who uses magic to operate a clothing business. Jedson's specialty is "one season" clothing, not intended to be hard-wearing; as Archie arrives, he is auditioning a teenage medium. Jedson is disappointed to find that the result is a copy of an existing design owned by somebody else, so he cannot use it. Jedson and Archie are able to grab the would-be gangster as he lurks near Archie's storefront and hustle him inside. There Jedson draws a "magic circle" around the miscreant, he makes a voodoo doll and uses it to strike fear into the criminal. The criminal breaks down and babbles some information, most of it useless in finding out who runs the racket, they kick him out of the store. Archie protests Jedson's tactics, but Jedson replies that he didn't do anything.
The circle and the doll were just symbolic. It was the man's own misguided beliefs which caused his body to react as if he were being imprisoned and tortured. At that point there is a scream outside, they discover the man's body, ripped from shoulder to groin as if by the talons of a huge bird, the gouges being filled with a stinking ichor. Archie's business begins to suffer. There are mysterious accidents and problems with his workers who are scared by hex symbols which appear around the business. One morning the entire business is destroyed by elementals of fire and water. Jedson helps Archie consult a prestigious magician, who sets up a tent on site after some activity in the tent, announces he can do nothing and that they owe him $500 as a "survey fee". Jedson politely tells him to forget it, as no such fee was mentioned before, magicians, like lawyers, work on a "contingency fee" basis. Biddle disappears in a huff. At that point a young magician by the name of Bodie, watching the performance, tells they should have used an old witch he knows, a Mrs. Jennings.
They consult her in her well-ordered home. After a reading of tea-leaves, Mrs. Jennings announces. At Archie's jobsite, she calls the elementals to her; these are a gnome, an undine, a fire salamander. The undine is a repulsive sluglike creature, while the salamander is a naive, benign creature of flame which sees no wrong in burning, though it regrets causing harm. By force and persuasion, she instructs them to reverse. There is a huge rushing noise and Archie's business is restored. Strange events continue, this time directed at Archie himself. A few times he is saved from danger by the distant intervention of Mrs. Jennings herself. Jedson consults an anthropologist, a "witch smeller". A large, handsome African impeccably dressed in an expensive business suit, holding a string of degrees from prestigious institutions, Dr. Royce Worthington can find and neutralize black magic, he announces that he has found a lot of unusual magic, but that he will leave his grandfather behind to watch over things.
Meanwhile, Biddle's organization, a body of "professional magicians", nominally intended to assure high standards, keeps dunning Archie over Biddle's fee. There is a new "one stop shopping" company calling itself "Magic, Inc." which hires magicians and finds them work. It is an open secret; the nominal head of Magic Inc. is a man called Ditworth. Jedson discovers that a bill in the State Legislature, intended to regulate magicians, would give Ditworth monopoly power, they go to the State Capitol to try to head off this law, but are outwitted by Ditworth, who manages to get the bill attached to a major public works project, making its passage unstoppable. However Ditworth makes the mistake of passing by a large mirror in the Capitol building, he is seen to cast no reflection, showing that he is a demon. Once the law begins to bite, only magicians who work for Magic Inc. are able to find work, while those who refuse to join Magic Inc. have their licenses revoked. Meanwhile, customers such as Archie are charged higher rates for magic services.
Jedson discovers that Ditworth has been at work in all other states, there is nowhere for them to go to get away from his schemes. Royce, Jedson and Archie meet at Mrs Jennings house from time to
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical, it was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied most in the visual arts and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, the social sciences, the natural sciences, it had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism and nationalism. The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension and terror, awe—especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.
It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, but spontaneity as a desirable characteristic. In contrast to the Rationalism and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, industrialism. Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which preferred intuition and emotion to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the events and ideologies of the French Revolution were proximate factors. Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of "heroic" individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society, it promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism.
The decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist; the importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich, "the artist's feeling is his law". To William Wordsworth, poetry should begin as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet "recollect in tranquility", evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can mold into art. To express these feelings, it was considered the content of art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were natural laws the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone.
As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creator's own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist, able to produce his own original work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism, to be derivative was the worst sin; this idea is called "romantic originality". Translator and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most phenomenal power of human nature is its capacity to divide and diverge into opposite directions. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature; this in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. In contrast to the very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, tended to believe a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy.
Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. So, in literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves". According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals"; the group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has a complicated history, but by the middle of the 18th century "romantic" in English and romantique in French were both in common use as adjectives of praise for natural phenomena such as views and sunsets, in a sense close to modern English usage but without the amorous connotation.
The application of the term to literature first became common in Germany, where the circle around the Schlegel brothers, critics August and Friedrich, began to speak of romantische Poesie in the 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his Dialogue on Poetry, "I seek and find the romantic among th
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American space opera media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series called Star Trek and now referred to as "The Original Series", debuted in 1966 and aired for three seasons on NBC, it followed the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew aboard the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century; the Star Trek canon includes The Original Series, an animated series, five spin-off television series, the film franchise, further adaptations in several media. In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by the Horatio Hornblower novels, the satirical book Gulliver's Travels, Westerns such as the television series Wagon Train; these adventures continued in the 22-episode Star Trek: The Animated Series and six feature films. Five other television series were produced: Star Trek: The Next Generation follows the crew of a new starship Enterprise, set a century after the original series.
The most recent Star Trek TV series, entitled Star Trek: Discovery, aired on the digital platform CBS All Access. The adventures of The Next Generation crew continued in four additional feature films. In 2009, the film franchise underwent a "reboot" set in an alternate timeline, or "Kelvin Timeline," entitled Star Trek; this film featured a new cast portraying younger versions of the crew from the original show. Its sequel, Star Trek Beyond, was released to coincide with the franchise's 50th anniversary. Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called Trekkers; the franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, novels and comics. Star Trek had a themed attraction in Las Vegas that opened in 1998 and closed in September 2008. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world; the series has Klingon. Several parodies have been made of Star Trek. In addition, viewers have produced several fan productions; as of July 2016, the franchise had generated $10 billion in revenue, making Star Trek one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Star Trek is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is noted for its progressive civil rights stances; the Original Series included. Star Trek references may be found throughout popular culture from movies such as the submarine thriller Crimson Tide to the animated series South Park; as early as 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted a proposal for the science-fiction series that would become Star Trek. Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer space—a so-called "Wagon Train to the Stars"—he told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale. Most Star Trek stories depict the adventures of humans and aliens who serve in Starfleet, the space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping armada of the United Federation of Planets; the protagonists have altruistic values, must apply these ideals to difficult dilemmas. Many of the conflicts and political dimensions of Star Trek represent allegories of contemporary cultural realities.
Star Trek: The Original Series addressed issues of the 1960s, just as spin-offs have reflected issues of their respective decades. Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, imperialism, class warfare, racism, human rights, sexism and the role of technology. Roddenberry stated: " a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, Vietnam and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and they all got by the network." "If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they never caught on. They were more concerned about cleavage, they would send a censor down to the set to measure a woman's cleavage to make sure too much of her breast wasn't showing"Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive political agenda reflective of the emerging counter-culture of the youth movement, though he was not forthcoming to the networks about this. He wanted Star Trek to show what humanity might develop into, if it would learn from the lessons of the past, most by ending violence.
An extreme example is the alien species, the Vulcans, who had a violent past but learned to control their emotions. Roddenberry gave Star Trek an anti-war message and depicted the United Federation of Planets as an ideal, optimistic version of the United Nations, his efforts were opposed by the network because of concerns over marketability, e.g. they opposed Roddenberry's insistence that Enterprise have a racially diverse crew. The central trio of Kirk, McCoy from Star Trek: The Original Series was modeled on classical mythological storytelling. There is a mythological component with science fiction. It's people looking for answers – and science fiction offers to explain the inexplicable, the same as religion tends to do... If we accept the premise that it has a mythological element all the stuff about going out into space and meeting new life – trying to explain it and put a human element to it – it's a hopeful visio
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter and creator of the original Star Trek television series, its first spin-off The Next Generation. Born in El Paso, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, where his father was a police officer. Roddenberry flew 89 combat missions in the Army Air Forces during World War II, worked as a commercial pilot after the war, he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Los Angeles Police Department, where he began to write scripts for television. As a freelance writer, Roddenberry wrote scripts for Highway Patrol, Have Gun–Will Travel, other series, before creating and producing his own television series The Lieutenant. In 1964, Roddenberry created Star Trek, which premiered in 1966 and ran for three seasons before being canceled, he worked on other projects, including a string of failed television pilots. The syndication of Star Trek led to its growing popularity. In 1987, the sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation began airing on television in first-run syndication.
He continued to consult on the series until his death in 1991. In 1985, he became the first TV writer with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he was inducted by both the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Years after his death, Roddenberry was one of the first humans to have his ashes carried into earth orbit; the popularity of the Star Trek universe and films has inspired films, comic books, video games, fan films set in the Star Trek universe. Roddenberry was born on August 19, 1921, in his parents' rented home in El Paso, the first child of Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline "Glen" Roddenberry; the family moved to Los Angeles in 1923 after Gene's father passed the Civil Service test and was given a police commission there. During his childhood, Roddenberry was interested in reading pulp magazines, was a fan of stories such as John Carter of Mars and the Skylark series by E. E. Smith. Roddenberry majored in police science at Los Angeles City College, where he began dating Eileen-Anita Rexroat and became interested in aeronautical engineering.
He obtained a pilot's license through the United States Army Air Corps-sponsored Civilian Pilot Training Program. He enlisted with the USAAC on December 18, 1941, married Eileen on June 13, 1942, he graduated from the USAAC on August 1942, when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was posted to Bellows Field, Oahu, to join the 394th Bomb Squadron, 5th Bombardment Group, of the Thirteenth Air Force, which flew the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. On August 2, 1943, while flying B-17E-BO, 41-2463, "Yankee Doodle", out of Espiritu Santo, the plane Roddenberry was piloting overshot the runway by 500 feet and impacted trees, crushing the nose, starting a fire, killing two men, bombardier Sgt. John P. Kruger and navigator Lt. Talbert H. Woolam; the official report absolved Roddenberry of any responsibility. Roddenberry spent the remainder of his military career in the United States, flew all over the country as a plane crash investigator, he was involved in this time as a passenger. He was awarded the Air Medal.
In 1945, Roddenberry began flying for Pan American World Airways, including routes from New York to Johannesburg or Calcutta, the two longest Pan Am routes at the time. Listed as a resident of River Edge, New Jersey, he experienced his third crash while on the Clipper Eclipse on June 18, 1947; the plane came down in the Syrian Desert, Roddenberry, who took control as the ranking flight officer, suffered two broken ribs but was able to drag injured passengers out of the burning plane and led the group to get help. Fourteen people died in the crash, he resigned from Pan Am on May 15, 1948, decided to pursue his dream of writing for the new medium of television. Roddenberry applied for a position with the Los Angeles Police Department on January 10, 1949, spent his first 16 months in the traffic division before being transferred to the newspaper unit; this became the Public Information Division and Roddenberry became the Chief of Police's speech writer. He became technical advisor for a new television version of Mr. District Attorney, which led to him writing for the show under his pseudonym "Robert Wesley".
He began to collaborate with Ziv Television Programs, continued to sell scripts to Mr. District Attorney, in addition to Ziv's Highway Patrol. In early 1956, he sold two story ideas for I Led Three Lives, he found that it was becoming difficult to be a writer and a policeman. On June 7, 1956, he resigned from the force to concentrate on his writing career. Roddenberry was promoted to head writer for The West Point Story, wrote 10 scripts for the first season, about a third of the total episodes. While working for Ziv, he pitched a series to CBS set on board a cruise ship, but they did not buy it, as he wanted to become a producer and have full creative control, he wrote another script for Ziv's series Harbourmaster titled "Coastal Security", signed a contract with the company to develop a show called Junior Executive with Quinn Martin. Nothing came of the series, he wrote scripts for a number of other series in his early years as a professional writer, including Bat Masterson and Jefferson Drum.
Roddenberry's episode of the series
Q (Star Trek)
Q is a fictional character as well as the name of a race in Star Trek appearing in the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager series, as well as in related media. The most familiar Q is portrayed by John de Lancie, he is an extra-dimensional being of unknown origin who possesses immeasurable power over normal human notions of time, the laws of physics, reality itself, being capable of violating or altering them in unpredictable ways with a hand gesture cue. Despite his vast knowledge and experience spanning untold eons, he is not above practical jokes for his own personal amusement, for a Machiavellian and manipulative purpose, or to prove a point, he is said to be nigh-omnipotent, he is continually evasive regarding his true motivations. The name "Q" applies to the names of the individuals portrayed, it applies to the name of their race and to the Q Continuum itself – an alternate dimension accessible to only the Q and their "invited" guests; the true nature of the realm is said to be beyond the comprehension of "lesser beings" such as humans, therefore it is shown to humans only in ways they can understand.
Beginning with the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint" of The Next Generation, Q became a recurring character, with pronounced comedic and dramatic chemistry with Jean-Luc Picard. He serves as a major antagonist throughout The Next Generation, playing a pivotal role in both the first and final episodes. Q is presented as a cosmic force judging humanity to see if it is becoming a threat to the universe, but as the series progresses, his role morphs more into one of a teacher to Picard and the human race – albeit in destructive or disruptive ways, subject to his own amusement. Other times, notably during "Deja Q" and Voyager, Q appears to the crew seeking assistance. Gene Roddenberry chose the letter "Q" in honor of Janet Quarton. In Q's debut "Encounter at Farpoint", he puts Picard and the Enterprise crew on trial, arguing that humanity is a dangerous race and should be destroyed; when they save the life of a kidnapped alien, Q agrees to defer judgement, though he hints that it will not be the last time the crew sees him.
Q's next appearance was in the first season, in the episode "Hide and Q", when he decides to admit a human into the Continuum. Q believes that humanity has the potential to one day evolve beyond the Q, he wants to understand how, he settles on Picard's first officer, Commander Riker, but Q fails to trigger the evolution and Riker remains human. Thereby losing a wager with Picard, Q is bound by the terms of the wager to stay out of humanity's path forever. Q vanishes, but continues to appear in episodes as if the wager never occurred. In "Q Who", he offers to divest himself of his powers and guide humanity through uncharted regions and prepare it for unknown threats. Picard argues that Q's services are unneeded, Q rebuts him by teleporting the USS Enterprise to a distant system for their first encounter with the Borg. Unable to resist the Borg, Picard must ask Q to save the ship. Q returns the Enterprise home and tells Picard that other men would rather have died than ask for help. The'Star Trek: The Next Generation' Companion states that the Borg knew about Earth and were en route, that Q's actions were intended as an early warning.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode, "Regeneration", explains that the encounter in system J-25 intensified the Borg's interest in humanity, prompting them to escalate their plans to capture Earth. Using time travel, the Borg alter the course of events depicted in Star Trek: First Contact, where they encounter the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise and inform their 24th-century predecessors of the existence of Earth. Q's actions stabilized the time stream by creating a different cause for the Borg's awareness of the Federation; this anomaly is expanded upon in the Star Trek novels as being a partial indirect cause of the Mirror Universe, whose reality diverged from the original time stream when Zefram Cochrane attempted to warn Earth and the other worlds that would form the Federation about the Borg after the events of First Contact. In the original reality, Cochrane's warnings go unheeded. In "Déjà Q", Q is punished by the Q Continuum by being made mortal. In the same episode, Q says that Picard is "the closest thing in this universe that I have to a friend."
Q returns to the Enterprise in the TNG episode "Qpid" to thank Captain Picard for helping him regain his place in the continuum. At the time Picard's "friend" Vash is paying a visit. Q uses this opportunity to teach Captain Picard about love; this episode begins a partnership between Q and Vash, seen again during the DS9 episode "Q-Less". In the TNG episode "True Q" Amanda Rodgers, a young human student, seems to develop the powers of the Q during her internship with Dr. Beverly Crusher. Q boards the Enterprise, uninvited, to instruct Amanda and determine if she is fit to take her place in the continuum, revealing that her parents were Q in human form. While Amanda rejects Q's offer to join the continuum, she is unable to resist using her powers, decides to explore her powers in the continuum; this episode is the first reference to Q reproduction. Toward the end of The Next Generation, Q is less antagonistic toward Picard. In "Tapestry", Q saves Picard and helps him better understand him
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