Lit Do you want Science Fiction stories in Star Wars?

Star Wars, contrary to how it may appear to those unfamiliar with it, mostly tells fantasy or drama stories. There haven't really been any pieces of Star Wars media that focus on science fiction stories and themes.

Do you lot think an intelligence explosion plot line could work? Or are droids so nonsensical that using them as a way to explore potential real life AI would break your suspension of disbelief?

The mixing of fantasy tropes and sci-fi tropes is part of what makes me like Star Wars. I think introducing the force to an intelligence explosion scenario would be really fun. If AI was no longer constrained by whatever stops SW droids getting out of control, what would happen? When a system starts taking in energy and using it to reproduce/build a better system, does it fit the definition of life? If an electronic system fits the definition of life, does it get the force? Am I overthinking this? Am I using commas correctly?

I'm hoping this thread is used as a place to discuss how sci-fi concepts could be explored in Star Wars and weather or not they should be at all.

PS: Apologies for my grammar.

PPS: Are there any old EU stories that did this?

PPPS: KOTOR 2 was pretty heavy on philosophy so I think we all know Star Wars doesn't have to be dumb to be fun.

PPPPS: Some examples of common science fiction themes include:
> Eugenics
> Virtual Reality
> Cloning (the ethics of cloning have been explored in SW, just not that much)
> Replicants (I think this popped up in Legends somewhere)
> The Nature of Consciousness
> The Eventual Heat Death of the Universe
> Genetic Manipulation/Splicing/Creating the Perfect Being/KHAAAAAAN!
> Time Travel

 

You must not have read much of the EU because a great deal of the stuff you're talking about has already been covered.

For example, time travel was covered to a degree with the Muur Talisman plotline that appeared in a few different comic series (as it traveled through time to each of them, essentially). It was also done in a way that is uniquely star wars, which adds in fantasy elements via the mysteries of the Force.

For that matter, I don't think you can do science fiction in Star Wars any other way. If you don't, it just doesn't feel like Star Wars. You might as well watch Star Trek at that rate.

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Kev-Mas_Colcha You're right, I'm not familiar with the old EU outside of the games. Did these stories explore the concepts they dealt with or did they just feature them?

As for the Star Trek thing. I see were you're coming from but Star Wars borrows from many different genres in it's new and old material. eg: Death Troopers (horror), Rogue One (war film) and the upcoming Screaming Citadel comic crossover event (gothic horror).

 

Well, the method in which they used time travel was stasis, which is a commonly used method of time travel for several different stories, usually used by the Sith. I guess you could say it was only a feature, but in my honest opinion if they paid any more attention to it than that it wouldn't be Star Wars anymore. It would just cheapen it and make it seem like a generic science fiction story. That's not the point of Star Wars. It's supposed to be more than that. It's both science fiction and fantasy at the same time. A lot of the concepts associated with Science Fiction ARE in Star Wars and even featured in the movies, but they're usually subtle and blended in with a fusion of fantasy elements. That's how Star Wars does sci-fi. Different authors do write in the science fiction elements a little more obviously though, as every writer has a different style.

 

I'm glad Star Wars doesn't use the typical overused Trek plots of "the enterprise flies into a nebula that makes the crew horny/violent/stupid and only the android/vulcan/hologram who is unaffected can save the crew from imminent disaster!" and "the crew gets trapped on the holodeck and the safety protocols are off!"


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It does. See: Mortis.

Mortis is an episode of Star Trek.

 

The Mortis arc features god like beings, like in some episodes of Star Trek, but the themes are completely different. Mortis is about good vs evil and destiny. The first episode of Star Trek to feature a god like being was "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and was about how power corrupts. Most of Q's episodes in TNG were about judging humanity.

In my opening post I said I wanted sci-fi stories and themes. I said that because every piece of Star Wars media features sci-fi elements. God like beings are in sci-fi and Star Wars but their relationships and magic are explored in Star Wars and their ethics are explored in Star Trek. My droid AI explosion idea includes the force but that's just a part of it. The real meat is "are robots that constantly iterate on themselves alive?".

Trek episodes with those plots are usually pretty poor yes... But I'd totally love a "The Naked Time" style Rebels episode!

 

The Crystal Star is also obviously a classic 1980s Star Trek TOS Pocket book.

 

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

I'm a huge fan of hard science fiction. I would love to read a Star Wars book or book series that focuses solely on scientific research in the GFFA and the ramifications therein. We got tiny tastes of what that might look like with books like Outbound Flight (deep space exploration) and Catalyst (crystallography and energy physics), to an extent. (Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head) I feel like most of the "science"-y parts of the EU that have been expounded on in any depth have just been alchemy stuff. I'm more interested in things like engineering and astrophysics and quantum mechanics in the SW galaxy. We get plenty of the spiritual Force stuff, but just like this Earth we're on where religious zealots and science die-hards coexist, surely there is the same spectrum in Star Wars, and it would be great to see it explored.

Much of how the SW universe operates is based on science veiled with mysticism. We don't really know how space travel works, or how the HoloNet works, or why Vader's cape is majestically flapping in the vacuum of space at the end of Rogue One, or how Han and Leia can step outside the Falcon on an asteroid with tiny little oxygen masks and not die/freeze to death and also not float off into space (because a tiny little asteroid would probably not have a very strong gravity of its own!). Not to mention that time relativity is not even a thing.

There is, in my opinion, huge opportunity in Star Wars for the science side of things to be explored. Star Wars is science-fiction, yeah, but it's almost better classified as science-fantasy. There are more magic elements than there are science elements. And-- here's what gets me-- a lot of scientific ideas and concepts are introduced (e.g. imploded star cluster in Rebels, cloning, sonic charges in the vacuum of space in AOTC, midichlorians, and more), but never explained. Granted there may not be real-world explanations, but certainly there can be GFFA explanations. And I'd love to see them.

 

I was talking to Daneira, specifically, not addressing your opening post.

It's not just a part of it. It's the whole of it. The answer to the question is "not if they don't exist in the Force".

Would I still want it to be explored? Absolutely, but not (primarily) as science fiction. Do I think it will be explored? No, because droids being slaves is sadly convenient for the franchise and I don't think they'll have the guts to turn it on their heads and reveal, say, that conscious droids have always existed in the Force on a different wavelength.

EDIT: I mean, I'd definitely LOVE to see people IU asking the questions you're asking here, don't get me wrong. That'd be great.

 

Time travel is a pretty rare phenomenon in Star Wars, you have the Sith Jaden Korr faced and Bosbit Matarcher I believe who didn't have relativistic shielding on his new ship went from 222 BBY to 22 BBY. Basically an error led him traveling two hundred years, you have the transdimensional beings Splendid Ap and the rest throwing Leia and a storm trooper around I believe sending a storm trooper to 8000 BBY.

Cloning was dealt with in the prequels the implications and ethics therein have been dealt with lightly and intermittently by prequel material mostly

Droid rights and sentience has been discussed you have a droid revolution in Legends, of course you have the Vong backstory and the Silentium-Abominor conflict.

Eugenics hmmm not sure about that I guess you could have a genetically engineered Jedi stronger and faster even without the force, or soldiers/agents so to combat force users don't think that's been used though.

Heat death-well at the end of time does the force cease to exist or is it eternal? That's actually an interesting question.

Same thing with the Big Bang.

Super beings/gods Trek did that a lot and there is a little of that in Star Wars maaybe I might tolerate a Q or Organian sort of character but it would to be done well.

Virtual reality-Callista had that somewhat.

Trek had way for use for holograms/holodecks/and stuff like that Star Wars holograms are simply vehicles of communication.

As for the broader question yeah it exists and I don't have a problem with it just needs to be handled in moderation and within the setting.

Time Relativity is a thing, for the ESB reference remember they were in the stomach of the asteroid giant worm so there was probably more oxygen than would be there otherwise.

As for research, yeah hyperspace travel, deep space(intergalactic) exploration, and new weapons technology would certainly interest me

 

I've merged all the double posts in this thread, incidentally. You should always avoid posting twice in succession unless you've run out of the allotted edit time.

(I say "all". There were only a couple of double posts. Just want to nip it in the bud now.)

 

Ah right-- my memory of TESB is shoddy at best, as it is with all the films since I don't watch them quite as frequently as I would like to. Thanks for catching that Darth Invictus

But even still, relativity is generally ignored as a rule in SW. A one or two hour hyperspace jaunt should have major time ramifications, yet somehow, there are none.

 

My apologies. Your response makes a lot more sense now.

Droids aren't alive but I think they are sentient. It's kinda confirmed in Bloodline. Living doesn't mean sentient. A plant is alive but a conscious machine is not necessarily.

 

You've made the mistake of conflating the "living thing" that generates the Force with biology. It isn't. See: Yoda.

I mean, it doesn't make much sense if he was saying: "[Biology] creates [the Force], makes it grow. Luminous beings are we, not this [biology]."

This is also what explains the Jedi attitude.

Obi-Wan: If droids could think there'd be none of us here.

Conventional wisdom (Jedi wisdom, at least) would hold that droids are p-zombies at best.

So, regarding this specific example, I don't think science fiction is the most appropriate means of exploration in SW.

 

Oh sorry Ulicus, just not sure how to use the multi-quote feature, won't happen again.

corinthia Yeah the Bosbit Matarcher story is an interesting tidbit, and I imagine in the GFFA such incidents do happen at least every so often.

 

Not all droids are slaves. Some of them operate independently and then others, such as IG-88 have went on to exhibit many similarities to science fiction stories where a robot starts an uprising (see the "Revolution and Deactivation" section of IG-88B's page on Wookieepedia. Also the "Final Stages of the Plan" section of IG-88A's page on Wookieepedia).

 

Really interesting stuff, for sure. (re: Bosbit Matarcher)

I guess what I'd really like is a Star Wars science encyclopedia that explains how things like relativity shields on hyperdrive-equipped spacecraft actually circumvent time dilation and stuff like that. I'm not satisfied with a "it just does the thing, we don't care how" explanation I'm sure some Star Wars-loving astrophysicist out there somewhere could come up with logical explanations for things.

 

Kev, it's not that all droids are slaves but that droids that are -- or seem to be -- intelligent and conscious are treated as slaves by otherwise heroic characters. Literally everyone is okay with it, which suggests that the debate (and there must have been a debate) has long since been settled. It doesn't matter how intelligent droids seem to be, they're always ultimately treated like things rather than people.

Even by the characters who treat droids nicely!

Remember that episode of TCW where Anakin goes mental trying to track Artoo down and refuses to just accept a replacement because Artoo was his friend?

Even there:

"You have something that belongs to me."

 

Sure, as long as they keep some semblance of Star Wars-yness. No time travel, please. I want an explanation and rule set for how hyperspace works. There's hand-waving of epic proportions going on there.

 

Biology and silicon based life, like the Fyrnocks, generate the living force. Am I wrong?

If I lived in Star Wars I'd be running shirtless in front of the Jedi Temple shouting "sentience is an emergent quality!".

 

I would say so, yes. I had amended my post in the time you took to respond.

It doesn't make sense for Yoda to be saying: "[Biology] creates [the Force], makes it grow. Luminous beings are we, not this [biology]."

The "Living thing" that generates the Force is non-physical.

Well. At least as described in TESB.

Plenty of EU contributors didn't seem to get that memo, and that may be the case with the NU, too. I know Triple X was banging on about blood and the Force in DARTH VADER and that made me quail a bit.

 

No time travel where you can appear visible to others in the past, or change the past.

No alternate dimensions.

No outright resurrection of the truly dead.



Other than that, as long as it's a good story with solid characters that fits with established Star Wars continuity, then have at it.



But yeah, a lot of those have already been dealt with.

Many are hoping we'll see a Droid Rights/Revolution movement in the future.

Even the heat death of the universe is integrated into the story of Shadows of Mindor.

The Clone Army is all about cloning/eugenics.

There's been a few cases of transhumanism/transentientism, and I hope we see more. Such as Grievous, Vader, the enhanced clones.

The Force, and droid rights, get at the nature of consciousness.

Not too many instances of virtual reality, though we did have a Living Hologram in TOR. This could be explored more.

Just don't break those 3 rules above.

 

Triple Zero is a God among droids.

I hope what Yoda is referring to is the soul that living sentients posses. eg: The nightsister spirits in Rebels and the selfless force ghosts. I think the way it works is if you are a living sentient there are ways of continuing the pattern that your consciousness emerges from, using the force. This allows for Triple Zero's blood theory to work. He can could potentially harness the power of the force through the blood but he couldn't become one with the force because his brain is still mechanical. His living blood cells would feed the living force into the cosmic force.

My question is, if an electronic system was able to evolve/build increasingly better versions of its self, would the force consider it life and grant it midichlorians.

 

I wouldn't expect so. I'm not under the impression that midi-chlorians are "granted" or spontaneously appear out of nothingness. I would be amenable to a story where such an electronic system eventually developed a presence in the Force that could be sensed, however.

Of course, the question would then become: "What makes this artificial being stand out compared to other droids? Why did it require THIS degree of super intelligence to appear in the Force as alive, when normal people can be exceedingly dumb and still register just fine?"


At which point it sort of stops being pure sci fi.

But that would be the appeal to me. Taking sci fi concepts and then going "NOW, MYSTICISM AND RELIGION WOOOoOOOoooOOO."