A "Mundane SF" Star Trek?

As a leftist and a Star Trek fan, I was very excited to see that the Bad Faith podcast, by Bernie Sanders’ former campaign communications director Briahna Joy Gray and Chapo Trap House alum Virgil Texas was doing a whole Star Trek episode of their podcast¹. It’s good; you should listen to it. But I wanted to kind of address something that they talked about very briefly. BJG wondered if part of the reason that people could be Star Trek fans and still have terrible politics is that, as a science-fiction show, it's set in a far-off future that's easy to dismiss as impossible.

What if there were a “Mundane SF²” show that depicted a society that was not quite Utopian, but much further along the road to Utopia than us, at about the level of ethical development as the Federation, but at a “currently possible” level of technology. Not *identical* technology to our society, but things that we could do if we wanted to; especially alternative ways technology *could* have developed from the industrial era to the present day if it were driven by the needs of an egalitarian, ecological society. I’m not going to go too far into imagining the details of that society right now; it is intended to be the background to a television drama, not a fictional ethnography. But just suppose “the best we could do” at current tech levels or lower, inspired by Murray Bookchin’s Post-Scarcity Anarchism³.

What kind of stories could you tell? You wouldn’t have the sci-fi exploration/adventure/action hooks that the Star Trek shows have. You couldn’t have crime stories, at least, not very often, because there wouldn’t be very much crime. You could have a sitcom, or a workplace comedy, but I’m not sure those would be the most effective frame for showing the society. You could have a soap opera (because the people will still be human, and still have interpersonal conflicts), but it might be a little boring, because the people would be better at communicating their needs and desires.

I guess it would have to be “slice of life”, focusing on getting to know a group of characters who are connected in some way, but with no real stakes? I’m really thinking, I guess, of a show where the Deep Space Nine “B plot” is the “A plot” every week.

Anyway, write me⁴ if you’d like to talk about this or have ideas; or write a gemlog with a backlink to this one, and I hope to see it.

1. Bad Faith Episode 33 - The #Resistance Is Futile

2. Mundane Science Fiction – Wikipedia (gemini proxy)

3. Post-Scarcity Anarchism (EPUB, 350K)

4. Email me.