Welcome to the 15th (fifteenth) writing club update. Opening Manu Saadia’s Trekonomics to page 15 (“Portrait of the Author as a Young Fan”), we find this fiction related snippet:
When the movie [Star Trek: The Motion Picture] was over, I really, really did not want to leave the bridge of the Enterprise. I had to make that experience last. I still remember that very precise feeling, equal parts wonderment, recognition, and melancholy: this was the place I had been looking for, this was where I wanted to live, this was where I belonged. I had found my promised land. Pity it was all fiction and make-believe.
A pity indeed that the post-scarcity almost-utopia of Star Trek’s Federation is only make-believe. But then isn’t a story an almost-world, waiting to be brought forward by the midwives of action. Maybe casting writers and artists as parents is overstating our importance a little bit… it’s nice to think about, though.
But what I can’t overstate is how great our writers are:
If your name is not on this list and you think it should be, or vice-versa, just let me know and I’ll fix it right away. Also, is this list serving anyone? How do we feel about it? Is it motivational, useful, etc? DM or comment me your thoughts. I could go either way.
As always, guests are welcome to participate in this thread as much or as little as they like. A special hello to our honoured lurkers 👋️ your eyeballs are my drug of choice.
I like the piece, very thoughtful. But the ending confuses me slightly, is it meant to imply the random anonymous artists disappear or stop making art? Or just that named artists cease to be a thing, in that hypothetical setting?
Good feedback, thank you! I see I have an unwritten assumption without realizing it: My idea was that the random art has no artist (though obviously has named artists as influences (Rubens, Mondrian, MCU…)). The art just sort of emerges from everywhere, and then art institutions adapt to commercialize it.
It’s kind of about a lot of things. Since I’ve been working in a gallery, I wanted to talk about the business side and how the “art world” as an institution will not protect artists. It’s also mocking the dream (well, one dream) of generated art, that it absorbs all this art from the world, then spits it back out without the artist.
Art without an artist would be very convenient to a business, since artists are often troubled, or “queer” in some way (to use the term broadly, but also like, actually queer).