Author: Ben Crofts

Star Wars and Generational Ethics: What is Owed to the Next Generation?

Posted on February 13, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

Sparked by the A Case for Starting Over, Part V: Passing The Torch piece….

A recurring line of political rhetoric over the last few years – and it is rhetoric, certainly not policy by any measure – has been around the idea that governments should not leave debts to future generations. In an ideal world that would be the case, but the world is not ideal and we have to deal with it as it is. That in turn means inheriting the debts of our predecessors regardless of whether it should be the case, some of the debt being the cost of the World Wars.

It might be said Star Wars is a case in point of one generation having to clean up the mess of its idiotic predecessors! Did Luke, Han or Leia wish for the galaxy to be ruled by a totalitarian Galactic Empire that sees the deployment of planet-killers as justifiable protest control measures? Of course not, but they’re stuck with it anyway.

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To Buy or Not to Buy

Posted on January 31, 2014by , and Not A Committee

Lucas: All of us at Eleven-ThirtyEight are passionate about Star Wars. But that doesn’t mean we’re passionate about all the Expanded Universe material that’s being put out. That puts us in a position shared by many fans: do we keep buying all the EU even if we don’t care for particular works, do we pick and choose carefully, or do we check out of the current output to some extent? We’ve brought together three Eleven-ThirtyEight contributors at various positions on that spectrum for a discussion about what we buy, why, and what impact it has on our fandoms.

First, I’d like everybody to give an idea of where you’re at in your Star Wars purchases. Myself, I’m at the buy-everything end. Within reason, because I don’t have endless money, I don’t play the RPG, et cetera, but I’m a completionist at heart. I wait for paperback on a few things, and there are a few books and comics that I have low interest in and haven’t picked up quite yet, but I intend to get around to all of them eventually, and basically, I buy all the books and comics that come out. I always have.
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Centerpoint Station: An Indictment of the GFFA

Posted on January 27, 2014by

A couple of weeks ago, my In Defense of Superweapons article omitted Centerpoint Station, save perhaps as a vague mention as falling into the ancient star-killing tech category. Some commentators wondered about that, which in turn led to this!

Centerpoint Station is, to me, quite different from all the other superweapons – for they were designed as weapons. All of them have a quite clear and defined intent – to kill and destroy on a mammoth scale! Centerpoint Station is not this. Oh sure, the Empire advanced the line that the Death Star was for asteroid clearance but the duplicity and lack of belief in the statement is obvious. The Death Star projects exist for one purpose: To terrify a galaxy back in line. (Although it could be said the designers or the Empire didn’t really consider the full implications of their success.)

In contrast Centerpoint Station was created by its ancient builders to do just that – build! With Centerpoint Station we are no longer in the area of technology being created to kill but rather technology being perverted from its original aims!

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Star Wars in Five Seconds

Posted on January 24, 2014by , , , , , and Not A Committee

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I know I’ve expressed disdain with what you might call “Buzzfeed-style” articles here before, but let’s be honest—who doesn’t love a good animated gif? A few properly-chosen seconds from your favorite piece of media can be like a little fortune cookie that allows you to reconnect with it for just a moment; in service of a larger point, to illustrate recurring imagery, or just for the fun of it.

I recently asked the staff to share their quintessential Star Wars movie moments; not just cool stuff, but the moments that spoke to them deep down, that encapsulated everything they love about SW in just a few seconds. On a whim, I then set out to track down an appropriate gif of each moment to go along with their responses. That part was a lot harder than I’d expected. Let’s see how I did.
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In Defense of Superweapons

Posted on January 16, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

Ah, superweapons, Star Wars would not be the same without them! Despite this, they have a vexed reputation within the Expanded Universe. The frequent accusation is they cover for author laziness, need a SW story fast? Whip up a superweapon! But before that charge is investigated in more detail, what is a superweapon, one definition is this:

“A weapon, especially an extremely destructive one, based on highly-advanced technology.” (http://www.answers.com/topic/super-weapon)

And arguably one against which there is little or no defense! Certainly the Death Stars qualify, despite suffering reactor overload due to some really inconveniently placed torpedoes and missiles!

So, to the initial charge: Is the insertion of a superweapon really the result of author laziness? Or can it be said to instead represent the villainous heart of the story’s adversary? After all, only villains use superweapons? Don’t they?

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