Science Fiction & Blogging & Personal & Movies Posted by The Constructivist, 28 May 2007 12:00 am

“Best Star Wars’ 30th Anniversary Post Ever!”

Welcome to the Party! Please allow me to invite you for a walk down nostalgia lane.

My family was living in California (Palo Alto, to be precise) when the first Star Wars movie came out. Somehow my younger brother, who was five then, cajoled my parents into taking him to see it about twice as many times as I did. (I shouldn’t have been surprised: this is the kid who as a pre-schooler talked dozens of drunk college students into giving him “just one sip” of their warm, cheap beer during a faculty-student intramural softball game at my dad’s college.) Before my family made the cross-country trip back to our hometown in central New York, my bro and I saw Star Wars more times than the sum total of our years on the planet. I have an excuse for a kindergarten baby beating me in the viewings race: I had a seven-year-old’s crush on my second grade teacher, which is to say, I had other priorities. Still, losing to my brother in that and losing out to some other kid who was able to impress Ms. Buntin with his knowledge of the fancy word for “spit” were no fun to experience and just slightly less not-fun to remember (note to Party leaders: a great topic for a future Open Thread would be confessing — and ranking — the worst of your life’s trivial disappointments).

To tell you the truth, I have a terrible memory, so bad that I don’t have anything that specific to share about my reactions to Star Wars, at least anything that everybody else who saw it for the first time at that age isn’t likely to say, too (Darth Vader: scary! Luke Skywalker: cool! Princess Leia: hot! C3PO and R2D2: funny! Special effects: awesome!). Many things from that CA interlude stand out far more vividly still today than those movie-watching experiences: how cool it always was at night and in the morning and how clear and hot it always was during the day; how my mom panicked during a little earthquake — she thought my bro and I were jumping on the bed; we thought the dryer was being particularly rambunctious that morning — and drove us to the empty parking lot of the Star Wars mall to wait it out in safety; how my bro and I once fought over who would get to hold our pet anole (named after the lizard protagonist of a children’s book we loved) so violently that one of us (me, I think) accidentally stepped on her head in the scuffle, leading her to die a slow death a few weeks after we accidentally poisoned the egg she had laid and leading us to have to catch a toad from our yard for our neighborhood’s annual Pet Parade; the banana slug we found in our house one morning that my mom eventually had to remove from the house because my dad refused to get within three feet of it; the flea infestation bequeathed to us by the people who did the house exchange with us that year, which left my mom and I practically unbitten while my dad and bro suffered; playing catch with my mom in the backyard, “up against the wall” with my dad and bro in the schoolyard across the street from our house, and golf with the family at the Stanford University golf course (which stayed a burned-out brown that year); collecting rain water in a barrel and asking my parents whether I could flush the toilet because of the drought; riding bikes around the block with my bro, trying to catch lizards with him at my dad’s office complex, and using our squirt guns to attack the bumblebees that frequented the many fruit trees in our yard…. The more I write, the more I remember of that year — or at least I think I do, since we stayed in Palo Alto the following summer, too, and I may be dragging in some memories from then. But I don’t believe so.

So you can see that unlike the reminiscences of most people doing the SW30 thing, who have focused on the competition to be cool at school through memorabilia and trivia collecting, mine from that era are all family-related (although often linked to sports, animals, and weather). My only memorable memorabilia memory is thinking I had a much cooler Hanukah gift than my bro because my Battlestar Galactica fighter could shoot little red plastic missiles while his X-Wing Fighter could only light up and make noises — only to be foiled again when my safety-conscious mom preemptively impounded my weapons of minute destruction. I never even thought of trying to enter the school cool sweepstakes. Sure, I turned out to be well-liked, for a stuttering, glasses-wearing, puberty-hating, bench-sitting (I was the only person on my high school basketball team under 6 feet tall), cartoon-drawing, and (duh!) not-dating golfer and eventual salutatorian who hung out with the working-class ethnic kids playing kick the can and exchanging A-Team lines (I did a mean Mr. T) at lunch time. Being popular was out of the question. That was my little bro’s department, along with getting better than me at my two favorite sports by junior high school and starring in both during high school (and being salutatorian while doing all his homework in front of the tv). Even among my geeky friends, I don’t remember many being into science fiction or fantasy (note to sf purists: the fact that Star Wars is both does not make it not science fiction). The funny ones were too busy making cartoons I was too innocent to see were viciously attacking a female science teacher for being (they assumed) a lesbian; the arty ones were too into certain illegal substances that shall not be named here; the nihilistic ones were too into their differently-illegal “liquid lunches”; the smart ones wanted to talk about other things. My town and school were just too small to sustain a properly diversified high school loser population in the ecosystem.

But, you know, I don’t remember those years as particularly horrible or scarring. And Star Wars had just a little bit to do with that. You see, my dad was a science fiction fan before Lucas helped make it part of mass culture (the first Toy Story movie, with Buzz Lightyear triumphing over Woody What’sHisName, retroactively reads that transition back into an earlier time). His one big pop culture wish (besides that my bro and I would appreciate High Noon — of course we mocked that baby worse than we mocked our parents’ taste for country music in the Constructivist Family Ten Commandments my bro and framed for their anniversary one year) was that his sons would follow in his science fiction-loving footsteps. Well, one did. Guess who? After Star Wars, I kept collecting comics, of course, but I specialized in The Uncanny X-Men during Claremont’s sf kick and Rom: Space Knight when I first began to branch out from my Spider-Man obsession. So in addition to fantasy writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, Stephen Donaldson, Robert Asprin, Terry Brooks, Dave Duncan, Charles DeLint, Guy Gavriel Kay, David Eddings, L.E. Modesitt, and Steven Brust — and hybrid or switch-hitting fantasy-science fiction writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Madeleine L’Engle, Ray Bradbury, Robert Silverberg, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony, Sheri Tepper, and Orson Scott Card — I also had E.E. “Doc” Smith, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stanislaw Lem, Douglas Adams, Alan Dean Foster, Jack Chalker, David Brin, and Dan Simmons to keep me company during what my dad refers to as my “awkward years” (strange how he leaves the end date ambiguous). Who could feel lonely or left out for long with such great writers, worlds, and wonders for their enjoyment and edification?

I like to think it was Star Wars‘ influence that lead to my appreciation today of Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson, Alan Moore and William Gibson, Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, Marge Piercy and Maureen McHugh, My Neighbor Totoro and Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Spirited Away. It sure wasn’t that Flash Gordon remake starring that former Jets quarterback. Even I knew it sucked, right as I was watching it, even though as a then-Jets fan I was trying to give it the benefit of the doubt. And it definitely wasn’t Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. That was such a Battlestar Galactica ripoff.

So I look forward to your own true confessions, otaku autoethnography, and general wit and raillery in comments. Just don’t ask me about most any tv or movies since the end of 2003 (even sf ones!). That’s when onechan was born. I’ve been plotting and implementing my grand golf/sf indoctrination strategy for/on her ever since then (and redoubling my efforts since imoto’s grand entrance about 13 months ago). That’s also the reason you’ll have to find on your own the SW30 Blog-a-thon posts assessing Lucas’s first script, identifying fans’ best YouTube homages, self-reporting on a dad’s indoctrination attempt, and appraising much memorabilia for glimmers of retroactive coolness.

It all comes down to other priorities, people, other priorities. Some things never change. But some do. Girls are up. Gotta go. See you in the funny pages! (Wait, that’s more a Stan Lee letters page thing. Anyone got any good Star Wars/WAAGNFNP mash-up ideas for sign-offs?)

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Responses to ““Best Star Wars’ 30th Anniversary Post Ever!””

  1. on 28 May 2007 at 12:24 pm 1. JP Stormcrow said …

    Firstest comment to the “Bestest Star Wars’ 30th Anniversary Post Ever!”

    However, I find your lack of a proper signoff disturbing.

  2. on 28 May 2007 at 1:09 pm 2. James Killus said …

    I will, I expect, mostly sit this one out, despite being in possession of one of the Empire Strikes Back t-shirts that was handed out at the SF premier, having worked on Lucas Valley Road in Marin (which was not named for George, but may have had some impact on the location of Skywalker Ranch), knowing several people who have worked at ILM, knowing several of the SF&F people named on the above list, and having married someone after whom Chris Claremont named an X-Men character.

    Ultimately, however, I must remove myself from the fray, because I gave up on Star Wars roughly halfway through Return of the Jedi. No, it wasn’t the Ewoks, and I do agree that Carrie Fisher looked very hot in a fur bra and chains.

    But while the first film was a revelation in pop-action, and the second film actually carried some dramatic weight, the third not only dropped the weight, but, in my opinion, both then and now, then did unseemly things to it.

    The proximate cause was this: at the end of Empire Strikes Back Luke not only learns his true origin, and, by implication, that his trusted mentor has been lying to him, he loses a hand. One might have thought that this was important; I certainly did. I expected repercussions. At the very least, I thought that he might, oh, I don’t know, have trouble using The Force through a prosthetic. Did he? No. Were we given more than a brief reminder of “oh, yeah, he’s got a mechanical hand now?” No.

    Instead we got what was basically a rehash of the first movie, with the critical scene being where his father decides to rescue Luke rather than to let him die. Yeah, that had real dramatic tension to it. No one could have seen that one coming, except maybe everyone but the Emperor.

    So feh. Haven’t bothered with one since. I’ll also note that this has saved me the bother of trying to figure out just how democratic and liberal the Jedi were, given that they themselves seemed to be some sort of hereditary supermen, and they liked to pledge their honor to Queens and Princesses. Or how, if you take your original template from Saturday adventure matinees, you shouldn’t be surprized if some racial stereotypes are mixed in the genetic material.

    Not that I’m carping, you understand.

  3. on 28 May 2007 at 1:19 pm 3. Oaktown Girl said …

    Party Patriot Colonel KL has alerted the Ministry of Justice to this new Star Wars stamp (part of a series, Gojira help us!) that may please TC:
    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    Sweet Lord Astaroth, Yoda - look at those feet! And to think Britney Spears took flack for her poorly kept toes this past week. Oops - I what I mean to say is: for her feet took she flack, Britney Spears this week did.

  4. on 28 May 2007 at 1:26 pm 4. Oaktown Girl said …

    James - this thread is not reserved for those who want to engage only in a Star Wars love fest. Besides, when I detail my Star Wars beefs later on (sadly, I have to work today), I want to hear your feedback.

    In short: permission to sit out declined. And that goes for all of you.

    Oaktown Girl
    Minister of Justice
    WAAGNFNP

  5. on 28 May 2007 at 2:11 pm 5. Kiera PSI said …

    My remembrance of the initial Star Wars was of confusion. We are dropped into the action, as it were, without a clue as to who we were supposed to be rooting for. It did not get much clearer than that until pretty far along in the film. I don’t have the excuse of being too young, I was sixteen and on a trip to Philadelphia to visit my future college campus when I saw it.

    While I loved the first two films; I, too, lost interest during the third. I think it tried too hard. I actually did go to see the first two prequels, but was horribly disappointed in both. I skipped the third and haven’t even bothered to watch it on cable.

    Star Wars did give SF and Fantasy much needed entrée into the mainstream of entertainment. Comic book, SF and Fantasy series and movies are no longer automatically relegated to the back corner where other “guilty pleasures” are stored. It’s now “cool” to enjoy them, to find their stars hot even when they’re not portraying humans (as Orlando Bloom can attest). I also think it’s had more of an effect on reducing racial barriers than anything else in history. Granted, the effect has been small, but it’s there and it’s noticeable. When you have a TV series with two handsome, muscular characters (Andromeda) and the white star does not get the bulk of the fan mail, that is a step forward…the fans are reacting to the characters as individuals rather than as members of a certain ethnicity. And Keith Hamilton Cobb is QUITE an individual!

    Let’s see, where was I going with this? Oh yes. Star Wars, with all its clichés, over the top and underdone moments has left an indelible stamp on not only the entertainment industry, but on our culture. I, for one, say “Bravo”, and “Well done”, even if I never choose to watch it again.

  6. on 28 May 2007 at 2:26 pm 6. christian h. said …

    Hmmm… let’s see… I was too young to see the original Star Wars in theaters. I must have seen it on video when I was maybe 14 - after watching Space Balls first and wondering why it was supposed to be funny. Not the best introduction to the whole franchise, I guess. I think my favorite of all the movies is Clone Wars, because it has by far the worst writing I have ever had the misfortune to witness, film or television. No contest. And it’s as egregious an example of a director being in love with CGI as you’ll find.

  7. on 28 May 2007 at 5:10 pm 7. James Killus said …

    I also think it’s had more of an effect on reducing racial barriers than anything else in history.

    Kiera, I have Star Trek mentioned in this context numerous times, but I have never in my life heard the same for Star Wars.

    If you mean “it created a new business model and a lot of other genre works came in and they collectively had that effect” I believe that you are giving far too much credit to Star Wars, and not nearly enough to Star Trek, The Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, et al., to say nothing of the films that came afterwards that don’t really look to have that much of a debt to Star Wars, such as Batman, The Mask, X-Men, etc.

    I will allow as how ILM changed the movie landscape somewhat, but it’s worth considering that Max Headroom owed everything to the Amiga.

  8. on 28 May 2007 at 5:53 pm 8. Kiera PSI said …

    What I meant is that Star Wars brought SF and Fantasy into the mainstream, which allowed all of the other movies and series that followed (and preceded it for that matter) to have a more profound and lasting impact. Otherwise the collective advances made by all movies and series in the genre would likely have been dismissed as “that cult stuff” as the pioneering barrier breakers such as Star Trek, et al, often were.

    Being “of an age”, I personally heard people dismissing Star Trek’s impact before Star Wars came along. “The fans are only those Trekkies, after all, and don’t count”, they would say. Once Star Wars made it big, those same people had radically different comments on the Star Trek phenomenon. In fact, the early reviews of Star Wars were pretty rank, until the critics discovered how thoroughly the public was embracing the film, then they changed their tune…a total 180. I remember laughing about it and complaining that they were total hypocrits (not that anything has changed there, but as a younger woman, I thought it was worth crowing about).

    Perhaps some other filmaker would have found the right combination of script, actors and timing to accomplish the same thing if Lucas hadn’t done it. But personal opinions on the man and his overall body of work aside, we should acknowledge he was in the right place at the right time and got the job done.

  9. on 28 May 2007 at 7:32 pm 9. James Killus said …

    Kiera,

    Normally, I consider Star Wars to have had two major contributions to the Hollywood Business Model that had nothing to do with sf/f per se. The first was the “Summer Blockbuster,” but on reflection, I think that the ground had already been prepared by Jaws.

    The second was the merchandising, which had been signed over to Lucas in a fit of insamity by the studio. I assume that tie-ins were at some sort of cyclical low, because the original template, the Saturday matinee, had plenty of merchandising; Roy Rogers made his fortune on it. In any case, it was merchandising that paid for the sequels and the R&D that became ILM.

    It’s also worth noting that Close Encounters of the Third Kind also came out later in the same year that SW appeared. So it’s not as if the big budget sf film was a virgin birth. In fact, I’d be willing to make the case that it would have come about earlier, after 2001: A Space Odessey, save for the fact that Douglas Trumbull’s special effects follow-up, Silent Running, tanked (Trumbell worked on CEOTTK, having turned down the job on Star Wars).

    In more general terms, I think that it was “steam engine time” to use Charles Forte’s term. The audience was there and Lucas hit the Sweet Spot, no doubt. I just wish I didn’t have the nagging feeling that his Honkey Future was part of the package, and that later diversity sci-fi was in spite of Star Wars, not because of it.

  10. on 28 May 2007 at 9:00 pm 10. Kiera PSI said …

    I don’t think Close Encounters would have done it. It required far too much thought to appreciate as did 2001, A Space Odessey. The common filmgoer didn’t really warm up to either of them in anywhere near the numbers that did for Star Wars. This doesn’t mean they aren’t better pictures, they are. I honestly think it was the action packed adventure story that made Star Wars cross the lines as opposed to any more worthy brethren.

    As for the “honkiness”, I think it just didn’t occur to Lucas until well into the second film. I had more than half completed the novel I’m working on before I noticed it was totally devoid of animals…and that was only because one of my beta readers caught it. As a fiction writer one gets totally focused on an idea, and making sure your background fits actual reality rather then your limited impression of reality is not much of a priority during the creative process. And besides. The guy is from Modesto. A more Honkey town I have never seen…well, except maybe Sonora. That place was Twilight Zone scary. There weren’t even Mexicans in the Mexican restaurant.

  11. on 28 May 2007 at 9:19 pm 11. Oaktown Girl said …

    Quick drive-by comment until tomorrow -

    Lucas got a lot of flack for his lack of people of color, especially Black folks, in Star Wars. He damn well knew he better do something for the second movie.

    I saw Star Wars with my family. It was a dead silent ride home in the car - everyone waiting for someone else to break the silence and make the comment about the startling absence of Black folks in a film whose plot spanned an entire universe (maybe there was one Black person in the background for about a second). I think it was my dad who finally broke the silence. That James Earl Jones played the “voice” of Darth Vader meant nothing, and acutally even kind of made it worse.

  12. on 28 May 2007 at 9:40 pm 12. JP Stormcrow said …

    I have generally enjoyed (except ixnay on the rat-thingies from Endor) my children’s enjoyment of their “discovery” of Star Wars. They certainly had no prodding from my wife or me. And I have also enjoyed many of the cultural follow-ons and used many a Star Wars reference in conversation, but I must pile on with those for whom Star Wars was generally more irritating than inspiring. The proximate cause for my initial discontent was when after seeing it with a friend (we were early 20s), he described it using the exact marketing words that I had read in Time or somesuch that afternoon. (Some “return of actual exciting movies” type of thing.) I know this probably speaks more to the character of my friend than the movie - but it was such a drumbeat from so many sources, that I pointedly never saw Strikes Back or Jedi until prompted by Stormcrows: The Next Generation in the 90s.

    I will say that I was primed to not necessarily like it - by that time I had reread Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, finding that I was now cheering for The Mule. The sci-fi flick from the ’70s that I really liked was John Carpenter’s Dark Star - it even comes with some good waagnfnp/Dr. Strangelove material, an ultimately futile discussion with a bomb in the bomb-bay.

    Bomb#20: In the beginning, there was darkness. And the darkness was without form, and void.
    Boiler: What the hell is he talking about?
    Bomb#20: And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness. And I saw that I was alone. Let there be light.

  13. on 28 May 2007 at 9:46 pm 13. JP Stormcrow said …

    And for one of my favorite Star Wars cultural artifacts, here is the Death Star sequence from Clerks.

  14. on 29 May 2007 at 5:25 am 14. hi ho, hi ho said …

    On merchandising, Disney had that wired back in the 30s. Mickey Mouse was heavily merchandised.

  15. on 29 May 2007 at 8:43 am 15. The Constructivist said …

    This comment thread is making me realize I should have written “When Did Star Wars Jump the Shark?” or “How Do I Hate Thee, George Lucas? Let Me Count the Ways”! I endorse all the criticisms and highly qualified praise herein. It’s only because I didn’t have anything original to contribute in that direction that I tried to contextualize my first decade of engagements with Star Wars, as best as my bad memory permits. I appreciate JP Stormcrow’s and Oaktown Girl’s variations on the otaku autoethnography genre and hope to hear more!

    christian, I, too, am guilty of experiencing many parodies before originals. The Most Egregious Example is eventually getting around to seeing The Graduate and finally realizing its ending is what that Simpsons episode was sending up. I definitely read the Mad Magazine parody of Alien well before I could bring myself to watch it on tape (although once I did, I was hooked and saw almost evey sequel in the theaters). My college and grad school friends all know me as a film philistine because I had zero knowledge, much less viewing experience, of any film buff, critical, or scholarly canons. Of course I blame Star Wars. Between it and Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was hooked on sf and action/adventure exclusively, until the 1990s.

    On other sf films, one of the sadder moments in my dad’s life must have been in the pre-VCR days when a local theater was doing a special showing of 2001 and the projector broke about 10 minutes into it. My bro and I were happy to escape at the time, although of course once I did get to see it I was ready to appreciate our Chairman-for-Life’s reading of it. But given my age at the time it came out, ET played a much bigger role in my life than 2001 or Close Encounters, although I did get around to seeing the latter before college. What I’m very curious about is you all’s memories of their receptions compared to classic alien encounter movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still or Invasion of the Body Snatchers or that Tempest rewrite, Forbidden Planet (am I wrong to include Invasion in that category–somehow I think of it as older than 2001). When you think about it, Mars Attacks and Independence Day are playing off a rich and almost-nuanced sf film debate over aliens (not nearly as nuanced as the best writing can be, that is).

    I’ve asked my dad and bro to read this (and hopefully they’ll show it to my mom and sister-in-law), so I may have more non-otaku autoethnographies to share in comments. Memory is a funny thing and I’m certain theirs differ from mine.

  16. on 29 May 2007 at 8:46 am 16. The Constructivist said …

    I assume other Party old schoolers are holding off on proper sendoffs, so I’ll try to break the ice on that thread seed: “May the GNF be with you.” “And with us all.” Too obvious, right?

  17. on 29 May 2007 at 10:11 am 17. The Constructivist said …

    Speaking of Star Wars humor, I’m assuming everyone is politely refusing to acknowledge my bad taste in doing a Comic Book Guy send-up in my title. And on sf humor and the travails of male adolescence more generally, I must recommend the anime FLCL, which I introduce here (in the context of linking imoto’s recent head banging and a Yahoo News headline on Miss Universe 2007 that made me want to bang my head on my desk in exasperation, and later, frustration). And if you think that set-up is convoluted, you should see the original opening two paragraphs of this post!

  18. on 29 May 2007 at 10:20 am 18. The Constructivist said …

    Or check out the comments on Rob MacDougall’s Old is the New Hope piece.

  19. on 29 May 2007 at 10:35 am 19. James Killus said …

    To clarify the terminology, “respectable,” in Hollywood terms, means “made a lot of money.” Every film that does this spawns a lot of imitators, and if some of those imitators also make a lot of money, then you have a “trend” or even a new “genre,” even if there were plenty of films of that genre prior to the biggie.

    So there is a lineal descent from The Godfather to The Sopranos which includes Goodfellas. Likewise Animal House produced a ton of “college rebel” movies, some of them including gems like Real Genius. Closely related are the high school idiot movies like Porky’s, which are one step removed from the more serious “generational” movies like The Breakfast Club, Dazzed and Confused, et al..

    If the wave of Star Wars imitators had tanked, or if the other sf movies (CEOTTK, The Last Starfighter, Alien, Terminator, etc.) had not had at least a few megahits among them, the “trend” would have died quickly. It didn’t because 1)there were some good movies among them and 2)a lot of people went to see them. Truth to tell, I’d rather see The Last Starfighter again than revisit any of the SW or ST series:

    Alex:When did the hanger go up?
    Grig: I told you, when Xur attacked.
    Alex Rogan: And, where were the starfighters?
    Grig: In the hanger.
    Alex Rogan: You mean they’re dead?
    Grig: Death is a primitive concept. I prefer to think of them as battling evil, in another dimension.
    Alex Rogan: Another dimension? How many are left?
    Grig: Including yourself?
    Alex Rogan: Yeah!
    Grig: One!
    Alex Rogan: One gunstar? Against the whole armada? It’ll be a slaughter!
    Grig: That’s the spirit!
    Alex Rogan: No, MY slaughter!
    Grig: I’ve always wanted to fight a desperate battle, against incredible odds.

    But I digress.

    The real comparison for Star Wars is probably to The Godfather. Both were lucrative enough that the directors started their own production studios, in Northern rather than Southern California. But Coppola squandered his jackpot trying to make good movies, whereas Lucas concentrated on new special effects wizardry and formulaic sequels. In terms of monetary success, Lucas is the hands down winner, but there is the example of Sophia Coppola, and I’d also rather see Lost in Translation again than see Jar Jar Binks for the first time.

  20. on 29 May 2007 at 11:31 am 20. The Constructivist said …

    Catching up on a little bloggy reading and discovered via boing boing that May 25th is also Towel Day. I haven’t reread any Douglas Adams in a long time because I’m afraid I won’t like it anymore, but maybe for next year I’ll try to organize a DA blog-a-thon. Or maybe for 5/25/12.

  21. on 29 May 2007 at 11:32 am 21. The Constructivist said …

    BTW, the college rebel genre got sent up in both The Simpsons and Futurama. Good times.

  22. on 29 May 2007 at 11:46 am 22. The Constructivist said …

    Timothy Burke reminds me of a fantasy author I missed in my list: Lloyd Alexander of the Chronicles of Prydain.

  23. on 29 May 2007 at 12:34 pm 23. Seattle said …

    Star Wars. Let’s see, I was 15. Stood in a line around the block to see it. I don’t remember multiple viewings, that being a financial issue. However, my parents bought me the sound track for my birthday. Yes, on vinyl. And I played that endlessly. My father said, you’re reliving the movie everytime you listen to that, aren’t you? Indeed. I’d have to point out that even at 15, Skywalker came across as a whiner and Han Solo was the man to keep your eye on. Since I’d been reading SF since grade school, I was in no way critical of the first movie. As the years and the sequels and prequels passed, I found the whole franchise to be irritating. I’ve never appreciated stories that I know the end of before I see them. Which means the whole prequel section was lost on me. What did I care that Darth Vader had been a nice enough kid who went bad? It just made for depressing watching. But really, my formative years were all about Star Trek. And Andre Norton. And Heinlein.

  24. on 29 May 2007 at 1:13 pm 24. JP Stormcrow said …

    How Do I Hate Thee, George Lucas? Let Me Count the Ways

    I probably came down a bit more strongly on that side than is warranted. The aspect of Star Wars that I most appreciate is its demonstrated ability to inspire imitative art among the young. (of course ST really set the early bar on that, and Harry Potter surpassed both for at time, though not sure HP has the legs of the other two.) I do view fanfic (and other media renderings) as positives. I think they provide a nice structure for kids to try out their creative chops in interesting ways. (And of course the Internet has broadened th channel immensely.)
    Here is a nice piece in defense of fanfiction.

  25. on 29 May 2007 at 2:03 pm 25. Seattle said …

    Wow. That was a really LONG rant and counter rant about fan fiction. So has anyone in this blog actually attended a science fiction convention before? It’s quite the educational experience, and reading that fan fiction debate just brought it all back….and the reasons I don’t go any more. I don’t read fan fiction, nor am I particularly interested in published novels “placed in the world of…” either. In fact, I was a bit miffed with Orson Scott Card when he went back to the well with the parallel novels about Ender’s Game and moved the secondary character Bean into the progagonist’s spot. Jees, this universe could go on for the rest of my life, one minor character transformed to major at a time. (Did anyone see that “Ender’s Game” is slated to be made a movie in 2008?) Call me simple minded, a purist, or whatever, but I actually like stories to have a conclusion.

  26. on 29 May 2007 at 2:56 pm 26. JP Stormcrow said …

    but I actually like stories to have a conclusion

    My take on Ender’s Game: great novella, so-so novel, boring series. And I agree in general - there could be a whole thread on greatest drop offs in a sci-fi series. Dune after the 1st, and Riverworld after the 2nd, are my two leading candidates.

    My personal defense of fanfic is more centered around the benefits for kids and rank amateurs to experiment and just freaking write (or paint or film or whatever) within a structure that they are comfortable with and passionate about, and maybe get a little, relatively non-judgmental, feedback from like-minded folks. A nice contrast to what they are generally asked to do in school.

  27. on 29 May 2007 at 3:11 pm 27. Seattle said …

    To my mind, the best movies are made from good short stories, so there’s hope for “Ender’s Game” in the right hands. Unfortunately, since there is a whole series of novels after it, and this is the age of the sequel, they might well attempt the rest. My older son just started “Xenocide” over the weekend, even though I’ve been warning him off from it for a couple of years now. ‘Cause nobody does depressing like Orson Scott Card when he’s really ‘on’. LOL

  28. on 29 May 2007 at 3:25 pm 28. James Killus said …

    So has anyone in this blog actually attended a science fiction convention before?

    You’ve obviously never googled “James Killus.”

    I’ve sat on at least one convention panel with Card, and I can report that he is a nice guy in person. So I feel almost churlish in agreeing with John Kessel’s essay, Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality.

    But I do, and for reasons similar to the Star Wars thing: a betrayal of early promise by later storytelling, in Card’s case, an axe ground down to the handle.

  29. on 29 May 2007 at 3:53 pm 29. Kiera PSI said …

    [So has anyone in this blog actually attended a science fiction convention before?]

    Yes, several, mostly small time (Agamemcon, etc.). The only “big time” convention I’ve attended was ConJose in 2002, where I was one of the (very junior) volunteer staff coordinators. My best memory of that con was unexpectedly meeting Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, author of the Saint-Germain Chronicles, my introduction to paranormal fiction and still one of my all-time favorites. She was an older lady with a wicked sense of style and humor. Reminded me a bit of Eartha Kitt, oddly enough.

    My second best memory was a small gathering (about 6 people besides myself and my roomie) in my suite where some of the folks I’d been talking writing with gathered to hear me read my work. I felt like a big time author as they all listened raptly. It was wonderful.

  30. on 29 May 2007 at 4:58 pm 30. Seattle said …

    I went to my last con a number of years ago. Norwestcon. Maybe I was just getting old. People stood around clutching 3 inch thick fantasy novels and vying for skimpiest costume. I realized I was really only there for the relatively rare space colinization panels and the vendor room. And I’d pretty much heard all the panelists had to say.

  31. on 29 May 2007 at 5:08 pm 31. Oaktown Girl said …

    Well here’s a highly illegal Simpsons Sci Fi convention clip (highly illegal because it’s on YouTube).

    Enjoy it before it gets zapped!

  32. on 29 May 2007 at 5:30 pm 32. hi ho, hi ho said …

    Did you catch the Gojira (aka Godzilla) booth 11 seconds from the end?

  33. on 29 May 2007 at 6:02 pm 33. Oaktown Girl said …

    Good eye on the Gojira Booth in that Simpsons clip! (And Gojira looking so cute!)

  34. on 29 May 2007 at 10:41 pm 34. The Constructivist said …

    News flash: 　

    Constructivist Suffering False Memory Syndrome. In a statement released to WAAGNFNP, The Constructivist stated, “They must have been implanted in some X-Files meets Philip K. Dick scenario I can’t remember imagining…or can’t imagine remembering…I don’t know which…total lack of total recall.” Details gotten wrong may include state in which Star Wars was viewed, number of times film was viewed, victims of flea infestation, and more. News at 11.

  35. on 30 May 2007 at 10:58 am 35. Seattle said …

    Nice Simpsons clip. LOL I went to a National Space Society convention last weekend and listened to a NASA rep talk for what seemed like upwards of an hour about a study they did on the way we the public view NASA and space exploration. They found that people over 65 didn’t think it was very important, between 65 to 45 there was a much more positive view of space exploration, between 44-30 or 25, I can’t remember which, we associate it with tragedy/disaster. Guess I’d better go write a post about the whole thing.

  36. on 30 May 2007 at 1:42 pm 36. Oaktown Girl said …

    [Quickie from work]

    JP - I keep forgetting to thank you for that YouTube from Clerks. To quote my Mr. Burns (a Ministry of Justice favorite character, of course)… Excellent.

  37. on 31 May 2007 at 7:17 pm 37. The Constructivist said …

    BREAKING NEWS: BAD MEMORY CONFIRMED
    Corrections and Updates from The Constructivist’s Family

    We got back to NY by mid-June 1977, so a good portion of the Star Wars viewings, if not all of them, must have taken place there and not in Palo Alto, CA.

    We bought the anole after the neighborhood pet parade precisely because we were ashamed of the toad we caught for it.

    We played golf at the Palo Alto Muni, not the Stanford U course (although I swear we played there once or twice!).

    The fleas attacked by mom and little bro–but it was the next summer.

    The banana slug was also the next summer. And my dad told me that upon encountering it in the early morning, he thought it was the head of a poisonous snake, with its body beneath the living room rug. He was about to kill it with a sand wedge but couldn’t bring himself to do it. So he went out in his pajamas and got a neighbor (the co-director of the Institute that had brought my dad over) and only after pulling back the rug did they realize it was a banana slug. This was the story of the Institute by late morning, needless to say.

    Finally, my little bro is taking his family on a trip from CT to FL–to a Disneyworld Star Wars‘ 30th Anniversary Extravaganza that his two older boys have been begging for (his oldest child, a girl, is only 6, so this sounds like a cover story to me).

    More errors to be reported as they are uncovered. This has given my family quite a few laughs!

  38. on 31 May 2007 at 7:27 pm 38. Oaktown Girl said …

    This has given my family quite a few laughs!

    Well, if that means they are here and reading the blog - that’s great! Can you get any of ‘em to delurk? I’ll tell Kiera you can get early release from The Trunk for all your egregious lies.

  39. on 06 Jun 2007 at 10:46 am 39. The Constructivist said …

    OMG.