To: 
From: "Steve Oostrom" 
Reply-To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com

>I series bible would be an excellent idea.  Better yet create some off
screen
background and use it.  A list of popular playwrights, musicians, and writers of
the 21st, 22, and 23rd centuries. You don't have to create their art but
for small bit seen once in a while or quoted.  "Let me help". 
Some philosophers, a
few radical politicians.  Name and place all of the Federation members. Give a
gloss on each race and culture.  Make the background rich and consistent and you
will have them eating out of your hands.

I like the idea of filling in the cultural background of the time between
now and the setting
of the stories.  I've done a little of this, referring in "The Naked
Reality" to a 22nd century
pop song, and in the upcoming novel, Thorpe and Matsubara briefly discuss a book by
a noted author from the late twenty-first century.  Several times in TNG,
we saw musical
compositions played by characters, and just once, I wanted them to play something
that sounded brilliant, but came from this dark-age era.  Although the people that
compose music for "Star Trek" and other television shows might
not have the brilliance
of Mozart or Beethoven, they should have at least enough talent to create fifteen
seconds of brilliance and say it was written by somebody from the 21st or
22nd century.
I'd like to see more cultural references from our future, especially on
"Enterprise."

On the other hand, I doubt that anybody could come up with a comprehensive list of
Federation members.  We're bound to forget one... unless we start the
stories with this
list and stick to it.  Surprisingly, this does not limit the story ideas,
and even enhances
them.  When doing the detailed backgrounds for the main "Athena"
characters, I noticed
that I was able to come up with some interesting story ideas.  In fact, I
can pull an entire
novel out of Bayanhong's backstory.

Another thing I like to see is some cultural variation within a race.  Not
all humans are the
same, and so should not all Vulcans and Andorians and the rest.  I tried to
do a little of
this with the Kentyans, although it appears more in the background article
than in the
stories so far.

Steve
The Universe Unbounded.

Visit "Star Trek: Athena" at http://ussathena.iwarp.com


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