As if the transition from summer to autumn isn’t bad enough, we’ve decided to make this year’s even more painful by revisiting George ‘you can never have too many cute furry things’ Lucas’ Star Wars ennealogy (go on, look it up; I had to). Yes, it's a classic, but not only have we lost the middle chapters in their original form and now have to put up with ‘improved’ versions - improved like when your kid brother improves your mint 1972 Dodge Challenger with go-faster stripes using permanent marker - but, most crucially, we have the initial ‘is the hor d’oeuvre meant to taste of sick?’ barrier to vault named Jar Jar Binks.
Not that this post has anything to do with Jar Jar, but it’s a hobby horse I like to exercise at any opportunity. Consider its legs stretched.
No, this post is nothing more than a simple observation on the Fourth Estate and its role in the Star Wars storyverse: it doesn’t have one.
I don’t know about you, but I’m swimming in a media world. I check the headlines on my phone each morning whilst making tea; I’ll read online news with a mug of the aforementioned char in bed; and something news-related will play on the television at some point in the day, every day. And I don’t think I’m at all unusual in this (apart from the working-at-home luxury of being able to take my tea back to bed of a morning). In fact, I’ll contend I’m behaving like the majority of people from Vladivostok to Tierra del Fuego. I’d also argue that if you took away access to news, as happens in the less enlightened parts of our planet, people will react in a variety of ways, including seeking to overthrow you with extreme prejudice.
But none of that happens in the Star Wars storyverse. Which, when you think about it, is weird.
That means of communication exist is clear - grainy blue holographic images play out in real time from travellers who only left days or hours before throughout, so there’s every opportunity to dispatch the Kate Adie of a long time ago and a galaxy far far away to report back. What few screens they have don't appear to be any good for, say, watching a decent sci-fi movie in high-definition, but given the ability to produce starships and huge cities, the infrastructure of broadcast media must be easily within their grasp. But even without screens, they've surely invented the printing press. Or does moveable type post-date faster than light travel in this world? Only that would help explain why the Senate need a commission to be sent to Naboo to establish the facts of the invasion rather than simply turning on a tellybox to get minute-by-minute coverage.
There appear to be no newspapers, television, nor equivalent of an internet. Nor is there anything in the way of advertising or marketing (compare and contrast with Bladerunner's prescience), even though every third person is some sort of vague 'trader'. And there seems precious little interest from the populace in information of almost any kind, from baseball results to celebrity gossip.
Which makes them strange, parallel creatures to us, the humans looking like humans but clearly under the skin lacking some basic human circuitry...
Oh, hold on. I just remembered. It's all a fiction created by someone who will only worldbuild what's directly necessary to the story - social structures, faster-than-light travel, tax laws, TAX LAWS! - even if the other stuff talks to basic human wants and needs, and its absence creates a screaming, inexplicable void.
But cute, furry creatures... you can never have too many of them.
2084. The world remains at war.
In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.
The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.
Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.
Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.
24 0s & a 2
Twenty-four slipstream stories. Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
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