Lit Access to information (or lack thereof) in the GFFA: the case of Leia's biography

There's a passage from Calliope Glass' Princess Leia: Royal Rebel, an in-universe biography of Leia Organa, that made me think about the apparent difficulty to access information in the GFFA:

Is that's weird that there are no records to be found about her in the 30 years between ROTJ and TFA? Even if you buy into the idea that many New Republic records were destroyed along with Hosnian Prime, how could it be that there were no other sources available? Surely, Leia must have appeared, been mentioned and discussed in many documents aside from NR records. HoloNet News and other news agencies? Books? University lectures and theses? Encyclopedias? The GFFA equivalent of Wikipedia?


Now of course, the Doylist, "real-life" explanation is that when Calliope Glass wrote, next to nothing had been written about the decades between ROTJ and TFA. But how can we justify that from a Watsonian, in-universe perspective?

 

I made a thread about this after Bloodlines came out, because the tech in that book, as well as the Tarkin one that came out immediately before, shows odd inconsistencies with our own technology (although not with itself). Leia and co. need to go out of their way, sometimes to obscure libraries with hardbound books, to get information from only years ago in that one. There are also scenes where characters ask very basic questions that could easily be answered with the equivalent of Google or Wikipedia, but they have to ask real people for answers. And there's a scene (scenes? can't remember offhand) where one of Leia's assistants comments they can't access their equivalent of email because they're not in range of Coruscant yet. The Tarkin book has a few of these moments as well, including reference to the government monitoring activity on the holonet.

I get the impression then that the GFFA holonet is designed for 1) news, 2) entertainment, and 3) communication, but not to search for information (?). I may be wrong, and I agree Lelal, that it seems the major explanation right now is the real life logistics behind writing the novels. What is true now may soon change in a few years. The Royal Rebel book seems to fall into that category, unfortunately.

 

I get the impression from this wording that perhaps other records are available, but the in-universe author is interested in using only "official" NR documentation in their research and would consider anything else "speculation" and thus out of bounds. (If the author is PZ-4CO, the "archival droid" who was shown as having a keen interest in Leia's life story in Moving Target, that inflexible attitude would make a lot of sense.)

Regarding the state of electronic information access in the GFFA, it has always felt to me a lot like the Internet of the 1980s, before the Web. Databases of information are available but not necessarily complete or omnipresent (i.e. not accessible via holonet). I remember reading Jason Fry's descriptions of Merei accessing information in his Servants of the Empire series and thinking about how much it reminded me of Gopher, the old text-based precursor to the WWW. From a computer with Internet access one could access an organization's "Gopher site" and be presented menus of hyperlinks that you drilled down into until you (hopefully) found the information you wanted. (Rebel in the Ranks is required reading for anyone interested in how computers and information access work in the canon GFFA.)

 

I'm not keen on the retro (or lack of) tech at all in new canon, i.e. Kanan in new canon vs Orman Tagge of the EU.

And they are using the "records don't exist" excuse again?! At the very least, surely someone had the sense to credit these ridiculous in-universe excuses to Voren Na'al again, right? I'd like to believe he's the only historian in Star Wars who relies on this...

 

It's pretty funny how the most and least extensively-covered areas of the EU have switched placed in canon--it used to be the Dark Times that they rolled out the "destroyed records" excuse for.

 

The ironic thing is, back then it made sense because Emperor Palpatine was actively destroying records (we can conjecture now so that no one ever realizes he was responsible for the Clone War).

Now, unless the Hosnian system held all records, it makes no sense at all. Maybe they should have just named the capital system Obroa-Skai instead...

 

Yeah, that's an incredibly dumb way to handle the OOU fact that we're not supposed to know that information yet. It was awkward enough when the EU had all the Old Republic records unavailable and then twenty-something years after Endor everyone had dug up the records after all and maybe they'd even had them for quite a while because now we knew these things so the characters should too. In five years, when they're doing stories set in this time period, is any notionally-IU source going to credit the idea that there are no sources available on a prominent public figure during her period of greatest freaking galactic prominence? You need some consistency. Having the state of IU knowledge fluctuate wildly according to the state of OOU readers' knowledge is stupid and totally unsustainable. There are better ways to write around it.

 

I agree that it could've been lampshaded better, but OTOH what I appreciate about the new canon is that they'll be content to just say "eh, it's a childrens' book" and not feel forced to cram that into canon history forever. The EU could have benefited from ignoring stuff like this from time to time.

 

I remember that Darth Bane got his bizarre orbalisk armor from the kid's book Secrets of the Sith, and the Darth Bane novel trilogy worked with that until getting rid of it as quickly as possible in Rule of Two...

 

I have to disagree, here--slightly. I don't quite like the whole "it's JUST a children's book" thing. This was clearly made to be taken "seriously" and I don't see why it shouldn't.

 

I protest! I was a kid back during the Bantam era, and that whole bit about missing records anytime the Clone Wars was mentioned bothered me a lot.

Looking through the original Essential Chronology now: "Not even the library planet of Obroa-skai can provide accurate details on the Clone Wars..." Even my reaction at the time was just

 

Maybe the best way to have handled it was have the book written circa 5 ABY, with an addendum circau 34 ABY about TFA. That way, the 30 year gap doesn't have to be explored at all. This was how the Jedi vs Sith guidebook dealt with the 100 years between 40 ABY and Star Wars Legacy.

 

One could speculate about another in-universe possibility to account for the missing records.

A very private person who surely has access to good slicers and even more reasons to keep her private life private once her son starts taking after her grandfather...

 

And may not be all that interesting to the target audience. Here's another thought - maybe this is a children's book in-universe, too, or some sort of propaganda tool?

Also worth mentioning is that despite what the quote above says, Princess Leia: Royal Rebel itself is not really silent on the years between ROTJ and TFA. Several pages, in fact, are dedicated to that period. It doesn't go into any degree of detail, and doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know, but recall that the thrust of the story is to show Leia as a defiant fighter, which might be an aspect of her personality that her later political career might not necessarily highlight.

None of these are perfect explanations, but I guess the point I'm trying to draw is, there are enough possibilities one could consider IU that it isn't entirely necessary to drop straight to criticism of the logic of it OOU. Or something like that.

 

Criticizing the book based on the "destroyed records" handwave assumes that's the only IU possibility, and it's clear from the quoted passage that that isn't the case at all. I'm not saying that the trope isn't immune to criticism, only that this book doesn't commit to such an extent that it rules out other speculation.

 

Bloodline made me think that the HoloNet as it's depicted, at least in that novel, is a throwback to the early Bantam books where the HoloNet was something that was very difficult for ships to have access to, people had to find actual data holodisks to discover unaltered records on, etc. Versus the later EU where comlinks were basically modern smartphones.

There really should have been a Clone Wars story somewhere about how Sidious was having the Separatists destroy galactic archives centers or spreading malicious holo-worms onto the HoloNet. In retrospect from an OOU perspective Palpatine using the Separatists, especially as tech-centric as they were, to destroy information he knew he would later want suppressed makes a lot of sense.

 

This is extremely helpful, and succinctly gets across a point I've fumbled at communicating time and again.

I hope it's drilled into all SW canon contributors at SW canon boot camp.

I also hope there is a SW canon boot camp.

 

I loved the retro tech in Rogue One. that ridiculous library of data tapes that have to be physically removed to access, the 70s computer graphics on all the screens...


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And the seventies sideburns. I tried to explain to my friends how the attention to detail with the ANH-style sideburns was the best part of the movie, but they all just looked at me funny. Numerous eyebrows were cocked.

 

Not a fan of retrotech at all In gaming terms, I want mass effect tech, not fallout tech.

I wonder if this order came from Lucas? Or elsewhere? Lucas in real life always pushed for the latest tech, to the extent the prequels sometimes looked more advanced...

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