The Borg (bad S.F. digression)

> From: xenophile2002@y
> Were the pasty-faced bionic zombies invented by Gene Roddenberry?
>... did he ever say much about them? Like, "These are the best Star
Trek villains ever," or "They were only meant for the one show; I
don't know why everybody's latched onto them."
Mike Combs wrote
> Don't have any hard and fast facts for you, but I will say that the
Borg concept never struck me much as seeming like a part of the
Roddenberry vision. I think the ending of ST:TMP seemed to establish
Roddenberry as someone open minded about the prospect of humanity
joining with its technology in order to create something greater than
the sum of its parts.
> In today's parlance, I think we'd call him a transhumanist. The
Borg seemed more like the standard Hollywood vision of technology:
Keep technology at arm's length, lest it transform you into a pasty
zombie.

Even Voyager has nothing good to say about their fusion of
tech/flesh, even though it's saved lives countless times. They've
reprogrammed Seven's nanoprobes many times, but somehow Trek has
never taken the jump to adopting it beneficially -as a superior
bionic eye, or implanted communicators, or life-saving implanted
trauma-stabilization medics.
One episode in particular, some ex-borg used a non-invasive
temporary implant to save somebody from what even a sickbay would
have called a fatal injury. It even gave him a pleasant, temporary
radio-telepathic link to his new friends.

A final word about the popularity of these villians: they're not a
threat. They've established many times that the Borg have no
resistance whatever to physical weapons.
If your ship gets boarded, replicate grenades, pistols, Uzis, and
swords. Mount naval guns and Phalanx or Goalkeeper CIWS to your
ship's hull, for anti-torpedo weapons. A 203mm shell travels faster
with longer range, does more damage, and with old fashioned laser,
GPS, or IR guidance, are more accurate than their supposed antimatter
torpedoes.
I'll never get over Spock's line in ST-VI: "...Ionised gas!" Try a
Sidewinder.
(A friend said once that Starfleet has a 'Warehouse 51' larger than
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" -planet sized-, full of forgotten
technology and innovations.)
I liked the flamable uniform fabric in the last movie... (Where the
Enterprise-E was being pounded on by the streched-latex-faced people)
Sure, plasma is hot; hot enough to vaporise the pants, leg, and every
bulkhead within 10 meters. (Don't pipe live plasma to every console
and crew station! Try electricity. Fer cryin' out loud; use armoured
suits when in combat! Cut the artificial G! How many people get
killed by fragments, fire, and falling beams? Even the US navy
learns their lessons: They don't build warships out of aluminum
anymore. The 'Cole' would have broken in half if not made of steel.)

I like 'hard' S.F. nowadays. Niven, Robinson, (Combs) etc.
BTW, check out the fiction (the entire fourmilab site) at
http://fourmilab.to/nav/topics/sf.html