Outside of the Vulcans, Klingons are the most enduringly famous humanoid race in the Star Trek universe, a fearless and fearsome interstellar military power in the Beta Quadrant. The Klingons are singularly intriguing as a veritable pastiche, a motley conglomeration, of various human cultures. Klingon culture is so well developed, in fact, that they are the only Star Trek race to have had their language published in a dictionary for fans who wish to nurture their inner warrior spirit. This chapter (...) explores some of the human cultural representations that find in the favorite bumpy‐headed, bat'leth‐swinging, raktajino‐drinking aliens that can help to reflect on how human society has evolved and where one may be headed in the future. The Klingon religion is an interesting combination of mythical and spiritual elements, along with a grounded humanism that characterizes Gene Roddenberry's fundamental vision of the future by eschewing the contemporary existence of deities. (shrink)

In this book the main emphasis is twofold: on autonomous machine intelligence, and on mind uploading. This chapter shows that, while science fiction (SF) has depicted the extreme embrace of the “prosthetic impulse,” most notoriously in Star Trek's“Borg,” this is used as a warning of the potential Faustian consequences of such tendencies. The Star Trek franchise has also highlighted the converse, the Pinocchio syndrome, a reverse prosthetic impulse, most notably in the android Commander Data. Data is a sentient android and (...) a full member of the Enterprise starship crew in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The inverse of the Pinocchio syndrome, the prosthetic impulse, is arguably exemplified by Star Trek's Borg, who constitute a relentless inhuman tide that threatens to overwhelm every species violently, assimilating all individual beings into the Borg collective, stifling their lan vital and incorporating them as part of a hive mind, with an inexorable “insect mentality”. (shrink)