Time in a Bottle (Star Trek: TOS story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Time in a Bottle
Author(s):	Alexis Fegan Black
Date(s):	1985
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Time in a Bottle is a Kirk/Spock story by Alexis Fegan Black.

It was published in the print zine Naked Times #6.

Summary

"What is this thing we humans call "Time"? Is it nothing more than an entity which feeds on Death, an entity which permits a few short years of life before snatching us too soon from the realms of the living? And, if so, is Time a bitch who can be beaten?"

Reactions and Reviews

Aside from the general philosophical approach, one thing that bothered me about the story Is the sexual hostility directed at Time. Time was seen as a woman and referred to as a "bitch". It seemed to me somewhat misogynous. Western culture predominantly personifies Time in masculine terms. The Greeks, for example, saw Time as Cronos, the devourer of his children. Then there is the Image of Father Time, who is very old and has a long white beard that trails on the ground. On the other hand, the Hindus see Time as Kali, a Mother Goddess who brings life to birth but also destroys it in an endless cycle. If you see Time as cyclic the way the Hindus do, death can be accepted calmly as a new beginning, but if like Kirk and Spock in this story, you take the Western perspective of Time as linear with death as an ending, then it is very difficult to accept death. In its refusal to face death, it is almost a prequel to YET SHALL HE LIVE (NAKED TIMES 3), a paean to physical immortality. I assume this story was written before we knew that Vulcans have katra, and have no more of a quarrel with Time than the Hindus. Yet without the knowledge of the existence of katras, the author in THE FALLEN, also in NT6, managed to take an optimistic view of the prospect of life after death In direct contrast to TIME IN A BOTTLE. I would have preferred to have seen Spock reassuring Kirk that there is no ending, rather than have to watch him play into Kirk's hostility toward death.