My undergraduate degree is in Philosophy (during which I also took a year long course in Novel Writing with Charles Johnson -- listed on my profile at Imdb.com). There were a few required courses within the major curriculum, and one of them was Ethics.
As I took the course that quarter, on Sunday afternoons when I would be making dinner for my then boyfriend and myself, I would watch TV (it was in the kitchen) and as it happens, the first Star Trek series was in reruns. I had seen it as a child when it first aired. However, as I began to pay attention to the story lines, week by week, I realized that every single one dealt with an ethical issue. In some cases, the issues were prevocative -- discussing contraception as a means of population control rather than infecting an entire planet with a disease (meningitis, which James T. Kirk had had); racism (does it really matter that one man's face is half white and half black on the opposite sides of the other?); mind control (which brought about the first interracial kiss on American broadcast television). In some cases, they were humorous (The Trouble with Tribbles, A Piece of the Action, both fun yet relevant).
When I first began The Casebook of Elisha Grey around 1990 (yes, that's right, this isn't a new venture) I knew that the crimes needed to -- just as the original inspiration for the series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did -- address issues pertinent to the culture of my day even though I was setting the stories in what I consider to have been a historic place: Atlantis (I grant you this is anything from controversial to ludicrous depending upon who considers my point of view and dismisses it, however, that's my approach). As Casebook has evolved (I'm now drafting Casebook V) each mystery, whether there is a crime or not, revolves around an ethical issue.
To me, this is important. Science fiction gives the leeway to consider ethical issues without our current cultural or political baggage that weighs us down with preconceived notions; rather, we can consider the issues with a more open mind.
Here's a link describing one of the several texts I had to read for that Ethics class. It's a slim volume, and well worth the time: John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty
image: woman warrior with fox by Chie Yoshii
As I took the course that quarter, on Sunday afternoons when I would be making dinner for my then boyfriend and myself, I would watch TV (it was in the kitchen) and as it happens, the first Star Trek series was in reruns. I had seen it as a child when it first aired. However, as I began to pay attention to the story lines, week by week, I realized that every single one dealt with an ethical issue. In some cases, the issues were prevocative -- discussing contraception as a means of population control rather than infecting an entire planet with a disease (meningitis, which James T. Kirk had had); racism (does it really matter that one man's face is half white and half black on the opposite sides of the other?); mind control (which brought about the first interracial kiss on American broadcast television). In some cases, they were humorous (The Trouble with Tribbles, A Piece of the Action, both fun yet relevant).
When I first began The Casebook of Elisha Grey around 1990 (yes, that's right, this isn't a new venture) I knew that the crimes needed to -- just as the original inspiration for the series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did -- address issues pertinent to the culture of my day even though I was setting the stories in what I consider to have been a historic place: Atlantis (I grant you this is anything from controversial to ludicrous depending upon who considers my point of view and dismisses it, however, that's my approach). As Casebook has evolved (I'm now drafting Casebook V) each mystery, whether there is a crime or not, revolves around an ethical issue.
To me, this is important. Science fiction gives the leeway to consider ethical issues without our current cultural or political baggage that weighs us down with preconceived notions; rather, we can consider the issues with a more open mind.
Here's a link describing one of the several texts I had to read for that Ethics class. It's a slim volume, and well worth the time: John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty
image: woman warrior with fox by Chie Yoshii