From: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.misc,rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Re: "Probe" and "Imzadi"
Date: 5 Oct 92 23:19:40 GMT
Reply-To: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Dept., Madison, WI

In <67071@cup.portal.com> Peter_A_David@cup.portal.com tosses out a bunch of stuff:
>I generally refrain from smiley faces and such.  Simply a stylistic 
>habit.  Nor do I write (ha ha) in letters.  It just seems like a crutch to 
>me.  I'd much rather just say what I want to say, and if someone thinks
>I'm answering with one attitude when I mean quite another, then they can
>feel free to say so and I'll be happy to clarify it.

I've had flings at "your" approach to writing on the net, and in general
I've found that I don't have much success with it.  For some reason, the
group dynamics embodied in USENET and in APAs is much more palatable for me
with smileys and (for you APAhackers) acronyms such as HHOK (Ha Ha Only
Kidding).

Maybe it's just that I'd rather try to get it right the first time than
clarify things.  My experience is that someone somewhere will usually miss
the humorous nature of a point and so without smileys I get a good dose of
"And just what do you mean by that??"s which my mailbox can do without.

>Or to put it another way:  If you see a STTNG episode you really liked,
>and you say to someone, "What did you think of that episode," and they
>replied, "I don't watch Star Trek because it sucks; therefore the
>episode wasn't worth watching." That does not seem a reasonable or 
>informed opinion to me.

This is the great catch-22.  I often have people asking me, "Why do you
watch Star Trek: TNG if you hate it so much?"  I actually didn't watch it
for most of the third season, but then when I started interacting with other
fans (as I do, being a huge fan of the original series) I would get comments
like, "How can you pass that sort of a judgment if you haven't seen the
third season??"

So, I started watching it again.  (And I will readily admit that the third
season was the best.)  And, I keep watching it.  And, sometimes it's worth it.

But, I know if I stopped then I'd inevitably catch all sorts of flak about,
"How can you pass that sort of a judgment if you haven't seen the seventh
season??"

Maybe the solution to this is just not to relate to Trek fans.  Unfortunately,
that's pretty tough since most of my friends are Trek fans. :-)  Well, it
does give me an excuse to organize a party once a week... ;-)

>Now...if the original question about the novels had been, "What do you 
>guys think of Trek novels in general," and the response had been,
>from anyone, "I think they suck in general," then that's a reasonable
>answer...presuming you've read a decent enough quantity to form an
>informed opinion.

How about, "I don't read Trek novels because I haven't been impressed with
the ones I have read and because I'm currently wading through Dan Simmons'
body of work - all 4000+ pages of it [not bad for a guy who's written
basically five novels and a short story collection]" ?  :-)

-- 
Michael Rawdon				 rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."
				- Dream, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"