{"id":51408,"date":"2024-10-26T17:57:28","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T00:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=51408"},"modified":"2024-10-29T08:44:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T15:44:15","slug":"a-contest-of-principles-by-greg-cox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2024\/10\/26\/a-contest-of-principles-by-greg-cox\/","title":{"rendered":"A Contest of Principles by Greg Cox"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:857,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/books\\\/004b346f-7dd8-4bde-a70b-399719c1bc81&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>67\/2024 &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/004b346f-7dd8-4bde-a70b-399719c1bc81\">&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This one was a particularly interesting and on-the-nose bit of &#8220;exploring today&#8217;s issues through SF&#8221;. Published in 2020 (and so, assumedly, written in 2019), the Enterprise is called into to observe the voting process for a planet having its first democratic elections. The contest is between a hardline conservative near-fascist military general whose followers use intimidation and assault, and a liberal reformist challenger who (minor spoiler) eventually steps down after a controversy and turns their candidacy over to a younger candidate. There&#8217;s a separate, more standard Trek adventure where Spock has to try to rescue McCoy and Chapel from other planets in the system, but reading the primary political plot just over a week before our election (between a hardline conservative fascist and a more liberal challenger who took over from the prior candidate) was an interesting experience. I can only hope we handle our election as successfully as this fictional planet does.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/gc_acop-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"Me holding A Contest of Principles\" title=\"gc_acop.jpeg\" border=\"0\" width=\"2016\" height=\"1512\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;: A particularly interesting and on-the-nose bit of &#8216;exploring today&#8217;s issues through SF&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036,2049,2047],"tags":[3181,4097],"class_list":["post-51408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-photos","category-star-trek","tag-greg-cox","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51413,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51408\/revisions\/51413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}