A lot of thought.

December 6, 2008 11:44 PM

Star Wars Technical Commentaries.Learn about the Endor Holocaust. [previously] Learn why it's not really called a "Super Star Destroyer," and why it's not actually five miles long. You can even learn what all those little pips and cylinders mean!

It is a body of work analyzing Star Wars as if it existed in the real universe, trying to find ways to explain everything so as to be both self-consistent, and consistent with science. I honestly can't believe it hasn't been on the blue before....

posted by cthuljew (66 comments total)

NEEEEEEEERRRRDS
posted by PenDevil at 12:24 AM on December 7, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I can so easily imagine someone who worked at ILM finding this and channeling William Shatner on Saturday Night Live:

"Get a life, people! It was just a movie! You, have you ever kissed a girl?"
posted by Ghidorah at 12:26 AM on December 7, 2008

ON THE IMPLAUSIBILITY OF
THE DEATH STAR'S
TRASH COMPACTOR .

posted by anazgnos at 12:29 AM on December 7, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Oh, but wait, there's more. From the article on the Executor:

This term is insensitive to realistic naval terminology, unlike the more intelligent “battlecruiser” and “battleship” designations used in Williamson's STAR WARS newspaper comic strip.

"Realistic naval terminology." Does more really need to be said? This coming from someone who actually, in a fit of boredom, read through the entire Wikipedia article on the 7 forms of lightsaber combat...
posted by Ghidorah at 12:30 AM on December 7, 2008

Shurely shome mishtake?
posted by tellurian at 12:33 AM on December 7, 2008

Good use of the "plate of beans" tag... But, seriously, I have to admire anyone who has that much enthusiasm for, and dedication to, his or her area of interest.
posted by amyms at 12:36 AM on December 7, 2008

I just noticed I'm the only person to ever use the "plateofbeans" tag. That's actually pretty surprising. Also, of all my searches trying to find a duplicate (not counting that off-hand reference to the Endor Holocaust), I honestly didn't think to search for the "ewok" tag...
posted by cthuljew at 12:43 AM on December 7, 2008

A preview of the Starship Battles miniatures game from Wizards of the Coast affirms Executor's 19km length. Further, it reports that the name “Super-class star destroyer” was originally a budgetary deception to hide the ship's vast nature from the Imperial Senate. Thus the colloquialism “Super Star Destroyer” arose. This implies that design began before the Battle of Yavin, and that there wasn't really a completed ship class called “Super.”

.
posted by mazola at 12:43 AM on December 7, 2008

I just noticed I'm the only person to ever use the "plateofbeans" tag.

Don't think of yourself as the only person, think of yourself as the first person. You can be a trendsetter!
posted by amyms at 12:50 AM on December 7, 2008

The Death Star II was designed as bait for the Rebel Alliance, but it was never supposed to be destroyed. The station was meant to be protected by an impenetrable deflector shield. Primitive bipeds on that paradise world were recruited and exploited by daring rebel commandos. They managed to overwhelm the security forces defending the shield's power generator. Ironically, the ewoks were actually the beneficiaries of the deflector shield, and their aggression indirectly and unwittingly brought about their world's doom.

Well that kind of changes the tone of the final scene in the movie ...
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:55 AM on December 7, 2008

NEEEEEEEERRRRDS
posted by DecemberBoy at 1:21 AM on December 7, 2008

The site reads better when you imagine the voice of comic book guy.
posted by felix betachat at 1:34 AM on December 7, 2008

It is a body of work analyzing Star Wars as if it existed in the real universe, trying to find ways to explain everything so as to be both self-consistent, and consistent with science.

I find your lack of faith... disturbing.
posted by orthogonality at 2:19 AM on December 7, 2008

Man, he calls the deflector shield generators on the Star Destroyer bridge section "scanner globes."

I can't trust anything he says.
posted by Faux Real at 2:49 AM on December 7, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I read everything on the internet in the voice of comic book guy, felix.
posted by hattifattener at 2:54 AM on December 7, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

On the surface, this looks like an even worse figure than the mistake which was unwittingly promulgated by West End Games, however on inspection it reduces to the simple statement that the Executor is something greater than four times the ISD length, which allows “eleven times” just as well as it allows “five times”.

Heh. "Please, please, please let it be 11."
posted by vbfg at 3:09 AM on December 7, 2008

I mean seriously, in Jedi an A-Wing from Green Group kamikazes through one of the big bulb things on the top of the conn tower. Cut to a bridge mook yelling "Shields Down!"

That's more cannon than the cover of "For Those About to Rock."
posted by Faux Real at 3:18 AM on December 7, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Growing up (& up) I only ever watched the films. I was very wary about dipping further into the SW universe as that way, as I'd seen with a few Star Trek loving friends and the internet in general, lies severe nerdery and strangeness. (Star Wars wedding? WTFF?!?) Then, after I'd seen the final film (and loved it – ha!), I thought I'd read some of the books and have ended up reading most of them.

Some are truly ridiculous and have made me realise that sci-fi isn't a literary genre that I really want to get too involved in. (Judging by the author biogs I've read a range of the practitioners. And what the hell is it with Greg Bear?) However a lot of them fit really well into the whole story and continue what I see as the main enjoyment of the films – a bundle of dumb space fun with explosions and saving beings and stuff. They also got me into the habit of reading something that wasn't too taxing for an hour in bed before going to sleep which has helped my sleep pattern no end in recent years.

All in all, I'm glad that stuff like these commentaries exist because it keeps me safe in the knowledge that I've got a hell of a descent before I reach this level of dorkism but also, like Gidorah, that it's kind of interesting to dip into now and again at times of aimless boredom. I'm not ashamed to admit it and I think I can handle it. I just think you have to respect the potential danger of over involvement in your pleasures...
posted by i_cola at 3:39 AM on December 7, 2008

You know, before I landed a good full-time gig in film development, I temped around the Paramount Pictures & 20th C. Fox Studio lots. I spent a week or two on the Star Trek Voyager production doing script editing and then later, when I got a full-time job, was always in contact with all sorts of Star Trek movie and TV people because my boss oversaw the movie franchise. On the one hand, there was a sincere recognition on the part of these people that the fans were what kept the franchise rolling and that their imaginations and want of detail was, in a sense, admirable. On the other hand, a good portion of them were seen as having way too much time on their hands and misplaced priorities. I think the movie Trekkies captured this ambivalence well, even though it was an outside documetary. The Star Trek production office got stuff like this guy wrote *all* *the* *time*, like almost every day. The production really didn't need it, they tracked this stuff very tightly in what they called "The Bible," which was an enormous typewritten "book" that had all the technical jargon, when it appeared, and how it was to be used or not to be used. Some of it was well reasoned from spurious connections between shows, movies, fiction, etc. and went to the lawyers for a nice note back to the author about not accepting "submissions". Some of it looked like it came from a serial killer and went to the lawyers for different reasons. Most of it gave them a good laugh (when it didn't terrify them).
posted by mrmojoflying at 4:38 AM on December 7, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Five Lame Things in Star Wars Canon reminds you that vast creative projects resulting from decades of effort of thousands of highly-paid artists at the top of their craft can still be, essentially, bad.
posted by ardgedee at 5:03 AM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is one of those things that I just can't get behind, probably because after it's all said and done, Star Wars isn't real, and coming up with explanations to make everything consistent just doesn't have a point- it's a story some guys made up.

So yeah. Comic book guy voice.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:53 AM on December 7, 2008

Also, of all my searches trying to find a duplicate (not counting that off-hand reference to the Endor Holocaust)
Am I missing something here? Your [previous] link was to a 2003 thread about beating the Taliban. I thought it should be this? As an aside: I kind of miss MidasMulligan, that dude knew how to argue a position.
posted by tellurian at 6:07 AM on December 7, 2008

Just when I forget how way too far into it some folks are, a post like this pulls me right back in line!

It could be worse, I know a guy in real life who actually speaks Klingon.

Frightening.

I especially love the motto on the KLI insignia "language opens worlds". That's definitely going to pay off when the fictitious alien race decides to integrate with us earthlings.

Although I will admit that after a few minutes of browsing one of these sites I just want to go out of the house, maybe rebuild a carburetor or something and then talk to real actual human women just to validate my status in life. I guess the net gain is a positive one after all.
posted by jtoth at 6:10 AM on December 7, 2008

Some are truly ridiculous and have made me realise that sci-fi isn't a literary genre that I really want to get too involved in.

Please don't judge science fiction as a literary genre by reading a handful of Star Wars novels. That's like deciding that movies must not be very good because you saw some of Pauly Shore's work.
posted by EarBucket at 6:18 AM on December 7, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Some are truly ridiculous and have made me realise that sci-fi isn't a literary genre that I really want to get too involved in.

Ninety percent of science fiction is crap. But ninenty percent of everything is crap.

That was true before the advent of NaNoWriMo; now it is more like ninety-nine percent.
posted by grouse at 6:28 AM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Jesus, you idiots, wasn't this like 25 years ago?

*makes coffee, goes back to watching "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"*
posted by facetious at 6:39 AM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I think this is just great. I'm a historian, and this is basically what I do all day long--reconstruct something that is gone, that is, exists today in a fragmentary state. In the case of the Star Wars Universe it never existed, and the fragments came out of George Lucas's head, but what's the difference.
posted by MarshallPoe at 7:02 AM on December 7, 2008

ON THE IMPLAUSIBILITY OF THE DEATH STAR'S TRASH COMPACTOR.
posted by anazgnos at 9:29 AM on December 7

<nerd mode>
With all due respect to the amount of thought given by Mr. JOSHUA TYREE in the referenced paper, I must forcefully disgree with one of the principal arguments.

He believes that the Death Star must eject its trash into space, as other Empire vessels do. However, he does not take into account the mass of the death star.

Other vessels (notably the star destroyer used in his example) eject their trash before leaving orbit using their Newtonian mass-reaction ion drive engines. Therefore the trash is left behind in orbit to burn up in planetory atmospheres

The Death Star, although capable of both real-space movement, is not capable of equivalent velocity or accelleration. This, coupled with the gravity well generated by the death star's significant mass would mean that any trash ejected would not be left behind - as in the case of the star destroyer - but would either enter orbit around, or simple fall back onto the surface of the death star... Neither of course are desirable situations.

Therefore trash must be handled differently - offloaded into freighters, or recycled internally. Either way, large pieces of trash would eventually become an encumberence, and thus the existance of the trash compactor is justified.
</nerd mode>

Ok, so I am bored today :)

i_cola: There are a lot better Sci-Fi books around (both in the ltererary and in the 'realistic' sense) than those that are based in the Star Wars universe (and for that matter, any movie/tv show franchise).
posted by nielm at 7:12 AM on December 7, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

i_cola, seriously, you should check out some real science fiction. There's a reason the Star Whatever books are at the end of the sci-fi section.

Try, uh, of the top of my head

Alfred Bester (The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man)

Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Man in The High Castle, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said)

John Brunner (The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider, Stand on Zanzibar)

Harlan Ellison (Angry Candy, Shatterday, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream)

Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, The Baroque Cycle)

Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix <-- really quality later day science fiction)

There's a lot more out there. Worlds, even.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:42 AM on December 7, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Totally seconding Ghidorah's post.
Star Wars books I always steered clear of, as they seem about two steps away from slash fiction. OK, two steps from fanfic, but still...
posted by opsin at 7:55 AM on December 7, 2008

Down with Star Wars! LOTR is the best trilogy!
posted by Bageena at 7:59 AM on December 7, 2008

I just noticed I'm the only person to ever use the "plateofbeans" tag.

ftfy
posted by BeerFilter at 8:00 AM on December 7, 2008

Gene Wolfe, Ghidorah. Gene Wolfe.
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:12 AM on December 7, 2008

L. Neil Smith wrote a trilogy of B-books called (I kid you not) "The Adventures of Lando Calrissian". The first was Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu. Yes, an entire franchise built around Lando. I assume Smith drew the short straw at the licensing convention.

I owned all three (a gift, I think) when I was a kid... they were "too hard" for me to read at the time, and then they just got lost in a box. And so they moved with me, around and across countries and continents for decades, without ever being remembered or read. One day many years later, when desperate for something to read, I stumbled across a box of old books, found them, and gave the first one a chance...

...and I was shocked to find out that it wasn't at all horrible, and in fact was actually pretty a pretty clever, LeGuin/Bradbury-style take on alien archaeology and misunderstood technology. The trilogy has at least three or four genuinely great sci-fi ideas in it, in fact, and it's really a shame they were buried in a lame spinoff.

One could have searched-and-replaced the handful of Star Wars names and references with generic ones and no reader would ever know the difference. It's that far removed from the canon.

So who knows, maybe there are other gems in what looks like a sea of crap.
posted by rokusan at 8:15 AM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I just noticed I'm the only person to ever use the "plateofbeans" tag.

It's sort of implicit when posting to MeFi, the way </head> is implicit even if you leave it out.
posted by rokusan at 8:16 AM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

ON THE IMPLAUSIBILITY OF
THE DEATH STAR'S
TRASH COMPACTOR .

I always figured the Death Star did not eject trash into space because the Death Star is so big that is has a gravitational pull. Trash must be stored on board or flown out of the gravity well by shuttle. Thus it makes sense to compact it.
posted by autodidact at 8:25 AM on December 7, 2008

"May the Force be with you...for me to poop on."
posted by kirkaracha at 8:40 AM on December 7, 2008

The Super Star Destroyer model is awesome. And about 5 foot long.
posted by Artw at 8:56 AM on December 7, 2008

faux real, I'm pretty sure the bridge deflector shields are actually blown up by an XWing. Then we cut to the bridge and see Admiral Piett saying "Intensify the forward batteries! I don't want anything getting through!" Uh oh, the AWing gets shot and starts careening out of control.

Piett: "Intensity the forward firepower!"

A bridge lackey yells "Too late!" and tries to save himself as the AWing hits the bridge, not the shield generator, and the Executor plunges into the Death Star.

Why yes that was my favorite scene in the trilogy when I was growing up why do you ask
posted by barnacles at 9:03 AM on December 7, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

L. Neil Smith wrote a trilogy of B-books called (I kid you not) "The Adventures of Lando Calrissian".

I'm gonna guess that somehow Lando saves free-marketeers from the crushing hand of the Imperial collectivists?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:20 AM on December 7, 2008

opsin: I read the X-Wing series of SW novels by Kevin J Anderson I wished that I hadn't -- its was like watching a terrible movie: you know it's bad, but you keep watching to find out what happens. As I_cola said, they required no thought (in fact, like the SW prequels, they are all the better with your brain turned off)

Supplementing Ghidorah's author list:
Iain M. Banks
Alasdair Reynolds
David Brin
Peter F. Hamilton (warning: his books are BIG -- such as the 3000 page Night's Dawn trilogy that was too big for the US market and therefore had to be split up into 6 books!)
Frank Herbert's Dune series (But avoid like the plague the 'prequels' and 'sequels' co-written by his son and Kevin J Anderson: amazon reviewers sum my feelings up quite well!)

All of these authors construct entire universes for themseleves that are far more internally consistant than anything based on George Lucas' work, and then add characters with more than one dimension, and plots (sometimes several inter-twining plots) that not only do not have any holes, but are also original and not completely predictable...

(PS autodidact: see above!)
posted by nielm at 9:23 AM on December 7, 2008

The Super Star Destroyer model is awesome. And about 5 foot long.

The usage of the approximating term 'about' indicates some leeway in the measurements of the 'Super' Star Destroyer model, which can be entirely consistent with the true length of 11 feet.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:27 AM on December 7, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Admiral Ackbar, evidently floundering with human language, called the ship a “super star destroyer” in the heat of battle.

Heh.
posted by SPrintF at 9:40 AM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

read the X-Wing series of SW novels by Kevin J Anderson I wished that I hadn't

Hey now, those were written by Mike Stackpole and Aaron Allston. Maybe you're thinking of some other crappy Anderson novels?

Cause I kinda like them.

Yub Yub, Commander
posted by Snyder at 9:41 AM on December 7, 2008

Hey now, those were written by Mike Stackpole and Aaron Allston. Maybe you're thinking of some other crappy Anderson novels?

Anderson wrote the Jedi Search trilogy, they were truly awful. As you said, Stackpole and Allston wrote the X-Wing books, I quite enjoyed them - yeah, they weren't good literature, and in no way comparable to some of the other authors in nielm's post, but they were good mental bubblegum*.

*disclaimer - they were also based on the X-Wing series games, of which I was a huge, huge fan - nothing quite like reading a story of a mission you can actually remember flying (and failing, repeatedly, as I recall)
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 10:20 AM on December 7, 2008

See, this is the thing. I LIKE the SW films. All of 'em, prequels and all. I LIKE the books. The more I hear SF nerds reel off a list of what I SHOULD read and how crappy some bit of the SW universe is, the LESS I want to read more SF. If I want to think, I'll read a real novel.

And still no explanation re: Greg Bear.

(I'm sorry to dismiss something that some people love but I see it all the time here with stuff I love so we're about even & no hard feelings.)
posted by i_cola at 11:15 AM on December 7, 2008

(Not to say that a 'proper novel' can't have a SF element, e.g. Do Androids...)
posted by i_cola at 11:18 AM on December 7, 2008

The influence of Noam Chomsky/truthers on fan fiction:


Immediately following the Battle of Endor, the heroes of the Rebel Alliance departed to attend to a bizarre and urgent crisis in the Bakura system. They spent only one night at Endor, with Han Solo then morbidly inspecting the site of Anakin Skywalker's pyre. Nothing in this tale is affected by the Endor holocaust. Luke Skywalker and his companions can be excused for not knowing or understanding the extent of the calamity since:

- they were preoccupied with grief, healing and celebration; they were not in the mood for pondering astrophysical and climatological circumstances;
- they spent too little time in the system to witness the climatic aftermath;
- rebel leaders would be embarrassed by the hardship which they had unwittingly inflicted on the ewoks, so there would be an official cover-up
posted by KokuRyu at 11:33 AM on December 7, 2008

See, this is the thing. I LIKE the SW films. All of 'em, prequels and all. I LIKE the books. The more I hear SF nerds reel off a list of what I SHOULD read and how crappy some bit of the SW universe is, the LESS I want to read more SF. If I want to think, I'll read a real novel.

I don't know if I understand that line of thought. Presumably you're reading for enjoyment purposes; if continuity errors and such don't bother you, then so what -- carry-on as usual.

By "should read", anyone with a serious interest in suggesting good reading is saying "should read" in the context of "if you like that sort of setting / writing, these books should appeal to those tastes."

If you don't want to "think", read instruction manuals -- avoid anything that even has a passing connection to the creative aspects of writing. Sorry, but it sounds like you're slightly embittered because Star Wars is not highly acclaimed sci-fi.

When I mention that I like all sorts of extreme music (death metal, black metal, grind, drone, doom, etc) and someone tells me I "should listen to (insert group / genre here)", I usually do look into it. Even if they're a snobbish prick, that doesn't mean they might not be onto something; I understand recommendations for what they are, and do not equate them to personal affirmation that I do -- or do not -- have "taste".

In the end, if you find something you enjoy, you win. Simple as that. Anything else is verging on fanboyism.
posted by Dark Messiah at 12:22 PM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I learned from Darth And Droids that there's no paper in the SW universe as George thought it would make it seem for science-fictionary.

And the fact that you can hear the sounds of ships and lasers and the like in space - unscientific? No, there are not actually in space but are sounds created in the cockpits of the space ships by the ships computers as an aid for the pilots...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:25 PM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

SF != 'proper novel'?! Now there is fighting talk :)

Do Androids... is SF, as are several other classic works of literature (eg Huxley's Brave new world, Wells' Time Machine). My point was not to dis something that you enjoyed (although I did!), but to point out that you cannot judge an entire literary genre from some poor books in one specific franchise which was based on a few fun movies...

stackpole/anderson... oops :)
posted by nielm at 1:25 PM on December 7, 2008

i_cola, I think, maybe, that if you want ideas, that if you want to think, then good science fiction (or speculative fiction) is exactly what you want. One of the central aspects (or failings) of sf is that it is all about ideas. In fact, you could argue that each sf story is based around an idea, or group of them, and that the novels focus on that idea to the detriment of things like characters and such. One thing sf suffers from is stock characters, and while I'm sure some people will point out great sf characters, the whole point of the genre is taking a "what if" idea and running with it.

That would fit the John Brunner novels in a nutshell. In the 60s the guy wrote those novels based on taking one general issue and magnifying it. Stand on Zanzibar was based on the ideas put forth in The Population Bomb, and it focuses on what massive overpopulation would be like. The Sheep Look Up is based on how bad things could get with polution, and, strangely, the most accurate of all would be Shockwave Rider, which nails a lot of modern society, including the internet. Almost every Philip K. Dick novel/short story is based on a central idea, and tells what things would be like if that were the case. (And I'm sure that he would be shocked/pleased to be considered a mainstream writer, or novelist, as you put it)

And, just because, these might interest you if you like Star Wars

Robert Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land)
posted by Ghidorah at 3:02 PM on December 7, 2008

One of the central aspects (or failings) of sf is that it is all about ideas. In fact, you could argue that each sf story is based around an idea, or group of them, and that the novels focus on that idea to the detriment of things like characters and such. One thing sf suffers from is stock characters, and while I'm sure some people will point out great sf characters, the whole point of the genre is taking a "what if" idea and running with it.

I would humbly submit that all of this is only true if your knowledge of SF stalled out around 1977 or something.
posted by Justinian at 3:40 PM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

So I was scanning through some of those Techincal Commentaries... mild curiosity only (Well ok, as a child, I read the Star Wars novelisation something like 14 times and I suppose deep down it's still there, once a geek always a geek and all that... but.. but.. the guy makes some tentative speculation about Vader's toilet habits. And I think that's the high-water mark of nerdom that I will now judge everything else by. I mean fuck whether his glove went through a warphole or something... did that glove wipe the Dark Lord Of The Siths' arse? I mean there's no paper in the 'Wars universe after all...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:28 PM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Justinian, feel free to post lists of books you think are worth reading, then, rather than posting a smug one-liner. I posted books I thought i_cola might enjoy, though I wouldn't say that many of them were a) written after the seventies, or b) manage to escape the idea over story trap. If there's other stuff out there that you think conveys a great sense of character, while still being sf, I'd be interested in reading it.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:46 PM on December 7, 2008

I admire this sort of work. I think there's something essentially human about it. "I have seen something wonderful and amazing. What does it mean? How could it be possible? Why did this happen this way? What will happen next?" I guess I would also ask: what is Star Wars that it deserves this sort of creative speculation? I expect Curtis Saxton has his own answer to that.

(also, fearful symmetry: bidets)
posted by wobh at 6:49 PM on December 7, 2008

Wait, is that excer-saucer / giant kinder egg thing that Darth sits in his crapper?
posted by Artw at 7:45 PM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ghidorah: For recent SF with a strong sense of character, I don't think you can go wrong with, say, SPIN by Robert Charles Wilson. It's one of the few actually worthy Hugo Winners from the last couple years. And as a bonus it contains huge amounts of sense of wonder, proving you don't have to skimp on either ideas or character.

That book is a model that other writers should try to emulate.

Other relatively recent examples:

PASHAZADE by Jon Courteney Grimwood.
NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro
BRASYL by Ian McDonald.
THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy. Hell, this one won a Pulitzer.

But SPIN is probably the best example since it has it wall; good writing, great character studies, and the biggest of big ideas.
posted by Justinian at 9:08 PM on December 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thanks for the list. I'll check out Spin, Pashazade, and Brasyl. I've already read The Road and Never Let Me Go (I recommended it on Askme a while back). While I definitely think of them as sf, I was trying to think of books you'd find in the sf section. I'm not sure whether serious authors (like McCarthy and Ishiguro) doing sf means the genre is more acceptable, or that genre labels are dying. Either way, more widespread acceptance is good. That, and, compared to the novels I listed, with the exception of interstellar travel, we pretty much are living in their future.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:51 PM on December 7, 2008

fearful symmetry: bidets

Yeah, but on Tatooine...? Where water is presumably scare? (Curse the Tech guy for making me thinks these things... )

Actually I've just remembered, when I was in Japan, seeing this all-singing, all-dancing toilet that had the full in-built bidet function... not that's not that unusual but this one was in midnight black and my immediate thought was: 'Wow, Darth Vader's bog!'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:48 AM on December 8, 2008

"The only exception is one utterance of “super star destroyer” by Admiral Ackbar, but this is excuseable because: Ackbar was not speaking in his native tongue; he probably only knows the rebel slang name for such ships; he was speaking in the heat of battle."

Oh please. In that case whenever I refer to a Super Star Destroyer, I'm actually using rebel slang. It's still used in the Star Wars universe - officially sanctioned by the Imperial Alliance or slang by a rag-tag team of Hoth Hooligans.
posted by yeti at 6:20 AM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

He believes that the Death Star must eject its trash into space, as other Empire vessels do. However, he does not take into account the mass of the death star.

Nor does he take into account that the trash ejection witnessed takes place in Empire, after the Death Star has been destroyed. The Galactic Sanitation Department had not been granted jurisdiction over the Imperial Navy till the expansion of power following the Battle of Yavin. Ergo, there is no reason to believe that this particular disposal policy was in place at the time.

Duh.
posted by butterstick at 7:52 AM on December 8, 2008

Yeah, but on Tatooine...? Where water is presumably scare?

They have sand!
posted by Artw at 8:20 AM on December 8, 2008

They have sand!

Yeah, I remembered this quote earlier...

"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth."

I think not having Andrex during his formative years is what turned him to the dark side.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:09 AM on December 8, 2008

God... that's actually dialogue isn't it? Oh Lucas...
posted by Artw at 9:29 AM on December 8, 2008

Endor Holocaust.

There is a great movie short to be made here: the post-apocalypse of Endor, where huge tracts of it have been decimated and turned into desert for as far as the eye can see. Only a few brave Ewoks have survived, by cunning, training, mercilessly walking on the corpses of their friends, or just plain good luck, and are now pitted against one another to find a safe place to live in the aftermath.

I'm picturing one in a leather jacket with one sleeve torn off, and a cut down blaster fighting against a couple with mohawks riding modified speeder-scout bikes.

The leader of the bad Ewoks should drive around in an old AT-ST, wear a broken stormtrooper mask, and call itself "the Miniaturest."

Shit. I'd watch that in a heartbeat.
posted by quin at 2:59 PM on December 8, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]