You will know us by our Mos Eisley tourguide books

It's Saturday, so you have plenty of time to ruminate about this wonderfully nerdy article on the type of willing suspension of disbelief needed to be a lifetime sci-fi fan. [Thanks, Pops.]

For you see, any story must have a certain amount of internal coherence if we are to achieve suspension of disbelief. And we must achieve suspension of disbelief. For most people, that just means that a given fictional universe must hold together for the space of two hours ... It is only the grandeur and majesty of a fictional universe the size and complexity of one like the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, the DC Comics universe, or the Marvel Comics universe (and perhaps soap operas) that is truly difficult to maintain.

Yet sometimes the editors and writers responsible for such series barely care about maintaining continuity, so busy are they with more mundane tasks such as writing entertaining dialogue and coming up with interesting new characters. That is why such universes desperately need the obsessive, crank-like fan.

Comic books are soap operas, don't you think? Over the years, the characters burn through storylines as fast as any TV daytime drama. Imagine how hard it must be to keep the X-Men from making temporal goofs right and left after 42 years. (Hey! Those teens are as old as I am!)

Marvel Comics used to award something called a No-Prize to the geek who spotted a paradox that couldn't be explained within the context. The honor was rarely won - those cats were on the ball. I used to write in with what I thought were goofs, only to be reminded by the editors that such-and-such really conveniently happened to Johnny Storm in the Negative Zone, where the laws of space and time have no meaning. Thus the coveted No-Prize ever eluded my grasp. Pesky Negative Zone! I curse thee!

Comments

[pops]

The Super Cuts in our neighborhood has so many characters running in and out of it that we call it The Mos Eisley Salon.

Be that as it may - here's where I earn my No Prize.

http://www.theunionleader.com/business_showa.html?article=54376

Mr. Card forgets that City on the Edge of Forever aka The Joan Collins Episode was written by Harlan Ellison.

Ever notice how Frank Miller's Dark Night series and Allan Moore's Watchmen get a free pass from X-treme anal retentiveness? How did that happen? Did they take hostages?

[ricky]

Hmmm, the paradox, the contradiction...it's pretty fucking irritating.

I think that's why I always loved The Lord Of The Rings; I think Tolkien really nailed it down. If there's anything that doesn't add up, I never noticed it--yeah, yeah, yeah, The Hobbit doesn't really go well with it, but the Hobbit wasn't really written to go with the rest of it.

Star Wars, though, what Lucas has done with it, has made it almost impossible for me to even enjoy. I mean, this goes back to the Return of the Jedi, when the Emperor kept talking about all the shit he had foreseen, and, yet, while he was a foreseeing fool, he never seemed to foresee himself getting totally exploded in the new Death Star, which, even if you didn't have foreseeing power, you should've had reservations about, since the old Death Star totally exploded, as well.

But Lucas took it to a new level of theater groaning when he made young Darth Vader actually build C3PO. And so C3PO and R2D2 not only knew young Darth Vader, but they spent a terrific amount of time with Obi Wan.

But you watch the first movie, and like in the first twenty minutes, what does Obi Wan say? He looks at these two droids like he's never seen them before and says he doesn't ever remember owning a droid in his life. Especially not these two, who, we later learn, he's spent an assload of time with.

And then, these droids, who were built by Darth Vader, seem to be totally surprised that Darth Vader even exists!

You'd kind of think that at least C3PO would say, "Oh, yeah, that's the dude who made me."

Sorry, I know this stuff is not comic books. But it just drove me crazy watching Lucas actually wreck the great story he started.

It was too bad. Timothy Zahn wrote a pretty good trilogy of books, called, I think, "Dark Force Rising" or something. Which was a lot of fun. It was a shame Lucas didn't make those books into movies.

As for comic books, I was always partial to Weird War. That was a totally creepy, cool comic book series!

[Anthony]

The BEST "no mistakes made" narrative choreography I think belongs to Julian May, who, in her early 80s "Pleistocene Exile" quartet of novels introduced us to her favorite dysfunctional parapsychic family, the Remillards (no sauce jokes, please). Then, she wrote 5 more novels set in the present day/future where she, without dropping a stitch, brings us full circle to the events which LEAD UP to the Remmillard exile in 2083. In the meantime, every character, every hint she invented in the early 80s gets carefully integrated into the present day narrative (it's all a giant circle). Great writing and I wish more SF writers were as careful (read the "Amber" novels and see how many wierd gaps Zelazny left in the 20 years he wrote all ten)!
As for "Star Wars" apparently (if we can believe Kevin Smith's tell-all review on his website) Lucas does provide an explanation for the seeming irregularity about R2 and C3PO.

[ricky]

But what about the Emporer's lack of exploding foreseeing?

Frankly, I just think Lucas is furiously backpeddling at this point. Also, he may be extremely drunk. Possibly, from the Empire Strikes Back on...

[pam]

Lucas had a towering feat to accomplish, wedging this episode right into the middle. And that's all I got to say about that.

Ricky, you're right about the Emperor in ROTJ. I was too busy mocking the Planet of the Marketable Action Figures to notice at the time. I blame it on the inclusion of Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote. He also wrote Silverado; his strong suit is snappy dialog (sort of), not cohesiveness.