Your opinion on Curtis Saxton

So, I don't want to start a flamewar between Michael Wong and Curtis Saxton and the other fans, but honestly what is your opinion on Curtis Saxton's ideas, his novels, the firepower of the Munificent's 2 front guns, just what do you think about him?

This isn't a literature question.

 

Not everyone knows who Wong or Saxton is, you know. Do you care to bother with some more info or links? Even the best Star Wars book buyer doesn't always know where I draw my obvious phrases from.

And what does it matter, anyway? I revile hardcovers, some hug them to bed, others find Vader absolutley sexy. We're a menu of diverse flavours. Who cares what two mere people think . . . and you know where this thread will end up.

 

Oh yes, let's!

 

we might as well discuss the lenth of the super star destroyer while were at it..............

 

And Ewoks on fire...

 

And the Potentium Heresy, too.....

 

It'll take me a while to put together a full, detailed reply here... but to be going on with, I think there are three basic points in my POV:

1.) I only know Curtis Saxton through SWTC and his work on Incredible Cross-Sections and Inside the Worlds. I can't claim to have any opinions on the person behind the material. And by the same logic, if the material is right, then it doesn't matter that other fans aren't always civil in posts in which they cite it. The two issues should be kept seperate.

2.) On close inspection, many of the arguments put forward at SWTC are neither as compelling nor as canonical as they appear.

For instance, there is no fundamental reason whatsoever why the Executor shouldn't be classed as a "Star Destroyer" or "Super Star Destroyer". Or to take another issue, I'm very sceptical of SWTC's claim that the suburbs of "the comfortable Australian city of Perth" have a population density of 10-20,000 per square kilometer, and I'm sure that a city-planet won't be all suburb: these two seemingly minor issues have important ramifications for fan estimates of planetary and galactic populations.

If this thread lasts long enough, I hope to be able to post a broad range of detailed examples to show what I mean here. For the present, however, I'll stress one thing: it's important to remeber that the mistakes on SWTC could be simply put down to enthusiasm, rather than a deliberate desire to mislead. Everyone makes mistakes like that.

3.) Whatever criticisms might be levelled at Saxton, the sheer range of his work remains impressive, even unparalleled; it's encouraged others to broaden and deepen their knowledge of the "technology" side of SW continuity, and SWTC remains uniquely useful in many ways - as a resource for visual material on Star Wars warships and uniforms, for instance, it's second to none.

A supplimental fourth point: Star Wars is ultimately a human story; it's important not to lose sight of that.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

We mustn't forget the 3 million clones either, can we!

 

Or the population of Coruscant...

 

I don't really have an opinion one way or another on Saxton. On one hand, I like his 'maximalist' views, on the other, his ignoring canon on matters like "Star Dreadnaught" are irritating.

So I mostly stay out of debates.

And who cares about Mike Wong?

 

Wait, you're a member of his website. You should care. Yeah, I also like large numbers and things also.

Curtis Saxton:
http://starwars.wikicities.com/wiki/Curtis_Saxton

Michael Wong:
http://starwars.wikicities.com/wiki/Michael_Wong

 

He collects and publicises your negative comments on him?

 

Saxton is just about the only SW writer who understands the size and scope of the SW galaxy, and tries to make sense of things. You won't find any BS about the "Grand Army of the Republic" being same size of the People's Liberation Army of CHINA, or the Executor bankrupting the Empire.

The PURPOSE of a classification is to order things in a useful way. If the term "Star Destroyer" applied to ships that varied in size by orders of magnitude, then it is useless and ridiculously stupid. At least Saxton ATTEMPTS to come up with a definition of "Star Destroyer." Other writers haven't, and "Star Destroyer" was left as a vague, undefined term that fans were just ASSUMING to mean a dagger-shaped ship.

Saxton was using places like Perth as to show an extreme LOWER limit of what Coruscant should be, not what it actually is. Real life cities DON'T have buildings more than a mile tall. The way you try to imply that Saxton is not to be trusted here is such a load of bull. What kind of population do your precious WEG sources state, 10 billion?

A completely irrelevant "point" that you're bringing up here, likely to imply that SW is just "fantasy" that you shouldn't analyze rationally and consistently.

 

I post on the message boards attatched to his site; that doesn't mean I care about the guy. My point is he's simply a fan/webmaster, like whoever owns TFN, or T'bone, or the guy who owns MF.com, etc., and his opinions presented on his site revolve around sw/star trek, which has little to do with the EU.

Saxton, on the other hand, is acutally a published EU author, and thus his opinions/work is relevant.

 

Ugh. Not this again.

Saxton did NOT ignore canon when he made up "Star Dreadnaught." Previous writers were lazy, and no one EVER got around to coming up with a definition for "Star Destroyer." Old WEG sources even state that there are multiple systems of warship classification. Saxton simply added to canon, bringing sense to an area that no one bothered to go into detail with before.

 

So thaaats what Saxton looks like. Been wondering about that for a while.

 

"Your Opinion on Curtis Saxton"...

Joins other great trolling titles like

"The Executor is 5km long! Proof inside!"

"There is no Dark Side! Proof Inside!"

"Anakin/Luke/Leia/Palpatine/Jacen/Wicket is/is not the Chosen One! Proof Inside!"

 

Well, to be fair, that wasn't actually Saxton; to date, IIRC, no canon source has referred to an Exectur-class as a Star Dreadnaught. I don't have a problem in the least with the Mandators, although I wish we had more information on them. My irritation with the star dreadnaught thing is more a matter of certain fans insisting on that designation, and doesn't have much to do with Saxton himself. So I guess I don't dislike much of anything he's written.

 

I'll reply to JimRaynor later... but right now, I'm rather puzzled why everyone associates "maximalism" with SWTC...

I mean... it was WEG invented it. The movies gave the Empire a fleet of about forty mile-long battleships, and a single Manhattan-sized command ship.

WEG, on the other hand, gave the Empire twenty-five thousand of those mile-long battleships, each with a patrol area of, on average, forty civilized worlds and a lot of empty space...

As they said in one of the early RPG manuals, setting the tone:

This is Star Wars

Think big!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

okay

the largest Imperial warships are 13 miles, though.

okay.

And I wasn't trying to troll anyone, just asking a question.

 

WEG thinks big? Who are you trying to fool? In the movies, those mile-long "battleships," are strangely used for patrol, escort, and chasing down hotrodded freighters (which they're faster than!), and can be defeated with a couple shots from one ion cannon on a tiny Rebel base. We saw a mere dozens of them at Endor, but that was a TRAP. WEG claims that there are 1 million member worlds and 50 million colonies, protectorates, etc. in the Empire (one of the few non-idiotic numbers they came up with). Divide 51 million by 25,000.

 

I agree. If the thread starter isn't a complete noob, then he's got to be trolling.

 

JimRaynor55: WEG thinks big? Who are you trying to fool?

Why are you saying they don't?

In the movies, those mile-long "battleships," are strangely used for patrol, escort, and chasing down hotrodded freighters (which they're faster than!),

Whereas we see the Executor...

... operating unsupported to intercept the Falcon at Bespin...

... and serving as a picket ship at Endor, with the command crew dealing in person with the passage of tiny personnel shuttles...

... and forming part of what are described in ESB and ANH alike as combat formations of "Star Destroyers"...

and can be defeated with a couple shots from one ion cannon on a tiny Rebel base.

What reason is there to suppose Executor would have fared better?

We saw a mere dozens of them at Endor, but that was a TRAP.

How do we know they're not Palpatine's entire fleet?

The movie certainly suggests that their defeat leads to the end of the Empire. We have no G-canon evidence for any more ships in the Imperial fleet. We could speculate, but the ships seen are the hard evidence we have to work with.

WEG claims that there are 1 million member worlds and 50 million colonies, protectorates, etc. in the Empire (one of the few non-idiotic numbers they came up with). Divide 51 million by 25,000.

Um - I said forty civilized worlds for 25,000 Star Destroyers. Multiply 25k by 40? That's a lot of planets.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Never mind the fact that based off the films, the Empire fell instantly after Endor

As per the population of Coruscant, I've always found the upper limit of trillions to be a tad absurd, given already the presence of artificial (if they are) beaches, oceans, mountain ranges, and the polar ice caps, plus the fact that the surface and a great deal of these multi-mile high skycrappers have been abandoned or rendered uninhabitable for centuries.

As per the Star Destroyer, I find the relegation of the Imperial to a destroyer-type ship stupid and shortsighted. Yes, Star Destroyers go faster than the Falcon. So can Executor. Yes, Executor is insanely larger than Star Destroyers. That's why there's only ten of them instead of 25,000. Yes, Star Destroyers get shot out of the sky for a little bit by ion cannons from a "puny" Rebel base that apparently can create an impenetrable shield barrier against Executor, yet can't possibly be able to house effective land-based weapons against capital ships.

Star Dreadnaught? What's the point of this non-sensical change of replacing a fairly logical step-up from Imperial to a derivative of Earthian slang for really big battleships of the pre-WW1 era?

I don't find anything wrong with the man, but I do find his methods and choices somewhat perplexing. Moreover, it stems rather from an annoyance of the orgiastic maximalism displayed by several people in some sort of crusade to instate their own personal view of Star Wars through a manipulation of canonical sources and dismissal of other sections of canon in what is closest in appearance to Orwellian self-realized, concious insanity.

 

Well said.