Living with Star Trek: American Culture and the Star Trek Universe

There is a wealth of literature on Star Trek , and this book is a welcome and original contribution to it. The book not only sets Star Trek in dialogue with ideas and stories of utopia, community, self-improvement, that are central to American culture and history, but goes further to examine the ways in which these are taken up and used by ‘ordinary’ fans, who engage with Star Trek in complex and significant ways. Lincoln Geraghty explores, for example, Star Trek’s multiple histories and how Star Trek has used the Puritan American Jeremiad, one of the nation’s foundational texts to create a narrative that relates how through communal effort and personal change, utopia can be achieved. He discusses how fans define the series as a blueprint for the solution of such social problems in America as racism and war and shows how they have used the series to cope with personal trauma and relate to such characters as Data and Seven of Nine in moments of personal transformation. This is all in all an enjoyable and revealing book on Star Trek’s active relationship with its many thoughtful fans.