Lit Do you want Science Fiction stories in Star Wars?

It's not. There's non sentient creatures in the EU that are Force sensitive. Also, if you remember Yoda's teachings in ESB, the Force is present in all living things. Even rocks have it, which according to science aren't technically living organisms.

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Ulicus It wasn't the the level of intelligence of an artificial life-form that I was suggesting makes it appear in the force. I was suggesting that when the AI fits the current definition of life it is granted the status of living force generating, midichlorian containing, living thing. AI doesn't fit the definition of life until it hits the intelligence explosion because until then it doesn't reproduce.

I got the impression that midichlorians are "granted" because they have a birthplace.

I agree that if only really smart computers could be part of the force it would be dumb.

Right onto your post Kev-Mas_Colcha

Unfortunately the force has been developed a lot since ESB. Looking at all canon material as equally valid I'd have to conclude that Yoda was referring to the cosmic force that binds all matter together.

 

What did you think of my post, @Ewan Tibbetts ?

 

Ah, I see. Sorry, I thought you'd moved on from that. Yeah, I've absolutely no interest in conflating the living thing with the physical, as I've said. At the risk of hyperbole, it would basically ruin an important part of Star Wars for me. I don't think the definition of life is relevant.

As for the midi-chlorians . . . I can't really say, because I've still yet to catch up fully on TCW. From what I've read, I don't get the impression that the Wellspring stuff is intended to suggest that all midi-chlorians are created there and sent out in search of hosts. It's just the place where they, and perhaps all life, originated.

 

I'm still split over alternate dimensions. On the one hand that would be a great way to legitimize Legends, on the other, it would get really messy.

I agree with you on time travel and resurrections.

I definitely want a Vader/Grievous book that focuses on their cybernetics.

I'm going to bed so won't be able to respond for a while. I hope that was satisfactory.

EDIT: Actually, before I go, I would like to leave this thread with a quote from Bloodline.

 

The post-Return of the Jedi SW novels released by Bantam Spectra in the nineties got a lot of flak for being too SF and for missing the point of SW as a mythological fantasy. Bantam mostly hired Sci-Fi authors, and we got the military sci-fi of Zahn and Stackpole, weird sci-fi concepts like Waru (The Crystal Star) and Luke vs. bubble (The New Rebellion), and interesting sci-fi stuff like the Teljkon Vagabond (Black Fleet Crisis). There were also sleeper ships (The Crystal Star) and droid revolutions (The New Rebellion). Dave Wolverton was a notable exception, as his background was in fantasy, and his Courtship of Princess Leia involved a planet of witches and the fantasy-inspired fairy kingdom of the Hapes Cluster.

When Del Rey took over the SW fiction contract, they began to mostly hire fantasy authors who had backgrounds writing in Forgotten Realms. A few years after the prequel trilogy wrapped up and there were far fewer restrictions on including and exploring Sith, all of SW started to look exactly the same --- books, comics, video games, and TV shows were all fiestas of Jedi and Sith clashing lightsabers, hurling lightning, and backflipping. The Old Republic looked like Legacy looked like The Clone Wars looked like Dawn of the Jedi. It made me really nostalgic for the Bantam era, when the restrictions on what could happen coupled with the sci-fi influences led to exploration, to unique tales, and at the very least to authors being unafraid to try something new. I'll take the eerie sleeper ships and transdimensional beings of The Crystal Star over another Jedi-Sith conflict any day.

 

I think the closest we've gotten to SF in the new canon is The Phantom Limb comic, which touches on droids and how their identities change with mind wipes.

 

That one shot was proof of how well sci fi can do in the SW setting. Then again pretty much everything James Robinson touches is gold............almost everything
"And together we can BE Rebels"
Can't wait for him to get a Star Wars book where Luke does have a kid but then he kills the kid off in someone else's book in a brutal and cruel way just for the sake of drama.

 

Also my favorite of the new canon stories.

 

Droids being more "alive" seems to be a direction they're going in the nucanon.

 

There's room for all of it. Bring it on.

I'd like to see a film or read a novel about Kamino that goes DEEP, for example.

 

Maybe it could deal with the ecology and society of a water world.

corinthia you have Curtis Saxton who fits the Star Wars loving astrophysicist

 

I'd be good with alternate dimensions as long as its just an acknowledgement, and no actual crossover. The only kind of crossover I'd accept is if a Force-using character gets a vision of events that took place in a different timeline at the same time but there is no way for him/her to cross over into said dimension.

I'm all for exploring eugenics, and I don't mean just augmented supermen. We've heard of rich nobility and leaders using life-extension methods to keep themselves young for a very long time. I'd imagine some important people would use that, maybe even some Republic Chancellors.

 

The problem I've always had with life extension in SW is that if it were possible, it would be ubiquitous in the upper echelons of society. There is no way that the galactic elite wouldn't be all over that . . . and, from the ages we've been given for the various characters, they weren't. Every human character (except the odd Jedi character) just looks their age.

 

In Legends, plenty of people have done it though. Upper-class. In the movies we just haven't seen it, but one of the minor Senator characters were noted as to having done it.

 

Wasn't it part of the plot of the post-LOTF, pre-FOTJ book "Millennium Falcon"?

I remember some guy talking vaguely about how most humans live to 200, staying young-like until 120, and they're trying to extend it even more. Or maybe it was 500. Remembering the details is fuzzy.

 

Guys, the way it was handled in Legends is why I've "always had a problem" with it. There is no universe in which it makes sense for this technology to exist and people like Palpatine to have not taken advantage of it. Hell, even people like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma.

 

How do we know Palpatine, Mothma, and Bail didn't take advantage of it?
Palpatine had dark-side scarring, which he apparently liked.
Mothma and Bail could have allowed limited use, because Marco Rubio can tell you that it's hard to be a politician and look too young. Appearing too superficially young could also be sign as a sign of vanity or showing off your wealth.
None died from old age.

In fact, the only person who dies from old age that we've ever seen seems to be Yoda at 900 (at least that I can remember off the top of my head).

I definitely agree it could be handled it better... but it's not too hard to reconcile it existing.

 

Because we know how old they are and they all look their age.

I'd have loved for them to have revealed that TPM Palps and RotJ Mothma were examples of wealthy elites in their mid-seventies or eighties, but they didn't.

The Rubio point is well taken, and I can well imagine that baby faces would want to be avoided, but it's not enough. We're still left with a bizarro world where life extension exists and yet Count Dooku is an old man at eighty who looks eighty despite being richer than God. It's entirely implausible. It's so much easier to assume that the reason it's not widespread throughout elite society is because it's basically not an option.

 

When I initially suggested eugenics, I meant it in a more traditional sense. Does anyone think we could see a breeding program in a Star Wars book? Or, a question for Old EU experts, have we seen any?

 

I enjoyed the comic but it was very bare bones. I hope they do more with that subject as it was interesting to me.

Edit: Oops. Sorry Ulicus. I'll try not to double post again.

 

Though we do have plenty of people who seem to function better than their ages would generally suggest (the whole seventy-is-the-new-forty thing - which I actually didn't mind for this very reason). Dooku and others are Force-sensitive, but that's not always the case.

The idea I always had is that rather than life extension, what we have is basically a scenario where most people are guaranteed to live to the 110-120 max human lifespan that only a very few exceptional cases reach in real life, and often remain quite functional up until the end - but don't go beyond that to like a couple of centuries or so, as is sometimes seen in more genuinely SF settings.

 

Star Wars, most specifically aspects of the Jedi and Sith, are based on sci-fi stories like Dune and Lensmen. I don't see the point in separating SW from science fiction just because Lucas treats it as fantasy/fairytale.

 

They could have allowed themselves to age superficially (skin and hair), but on the inside they're at the prime of their youth, and not likely to die of old age.

 

I would like to see a Hutt named Leto.