Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

19% of the way through updating my manuscript for the last time. Not long now, and I’m extremely ready to be finished with it. Having said that, I’m very pleased with this last pass – final improvements have been made. This is why writers can tinker forever – there are always improvements that you can see, but the nagging concern is too many changes can be like too many facelifts: you end up with a result you did not anticipate, do not like, and find very hard to undo. I don’t think I’m there, but the worry remains.

Today I binged the original Star Trek series, end of season one start of season two. Takes me back to evenings in Scotland, BBC 2 at 5 or 6pm, and watching the show on the family black and white TV. I loved it then, still love it now, even if sometimes they give Spock some real clangers of lines to deliver. Leonard Nimoy gave it all he had to make them work!

Some SF heavy hitters wrote a few of those shows, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison among the ones I watched today. Really good ideas get explored, that seem rote to us now because they’ve been repeated so many times in so many other shows and movies over the years. To see the originals again is excellent: I was moved, laughed, felt melancholy and was delighted by their adventures. Evil Spock remains awesome.

Yes, some of the attitudes are of the era almost 60 years ago, but alongside that are group dynamics and faith in expertise well ahead of its time, and still ahead of ours when it comes down to it.

Anyway, a brief one this week. May all your futures be bright.