"...where no MAN has gone before!"

Where no heshe has gone before?

That would be s/he. I've used that for a couple of species here and there - one that was asexual and one that could change after a lengthy physical and psychological process.

As someone mentioned, there's always Mensch, from either the German or Yiddish. It means "person," as opposed to Mann.

"Where no person has gone before..." Hmmm, no. Still doesn't account for non-human species passing by or taking up residence.

Truth is, if they really are hitting the reset, the original used "man"; it was only TNG that felt compelled to change it, thereby making it *less* accurate rather than more.

At least it's not the "one small step for a man" controversy. Much less JFK's famous "I am a pastry."

s/he? Now you're really showing YOUR sexist colors! Can't even take a nonsensical compromise suggestion.

How do you even pronounce that anyway?

Not s/h/it? Why not?

^rolls off your tongue, does it?

Dunno. Probably "s-[slight pause]he." I just write it. It's up to the reader to decide how to pronounce it, just as it's up to the reader to get a mental image of a character from the few clues the author provides. It's especially fun when creating exotic character and/or species names.

I've done that, too. The reader had to work through an entire novel to discover the in-joke in one particular species' name. I like to challenge my readership.

Well, heshe sounds an awful lot like heechee but that's already been taken.

Totally off-topic, but I'd been reading Terry Pratchett's novels for years before I realised where he got 'Hersheba'.

I love it when an author pulls that stuff.

It'll be interesting to see whether they retrofit it, stick with the TNG version, or avoid the "controversy" altogether by coming up with a third thing.

Less interesting to see if Sokar's dick falls off, but worth laughing at.

As long as they include the Courage fanfare, we're good.

Oh, yeah. It's really not Trek without that, Jeffries tubes, and other pseudo-scientific technobabble.

To be precise, it means "human".

But it's funny that you mention it, because i've often head to cringe reading leftist pamphlets, which, no matter how much i agreed with their content, used "mensch" instead of the german "man" because they considered "man" un-PC because of its similarity to "Mann" (i.e. english "man"). Calling that language-fascism got me into quite a number of rather harsh discussions...

You should all stop being so niggardly with your comments. Async has the right idea...