Tarquelne

Actually, it's "Um Dark Matter" and "Um Dark Energy". "The local groups are acting like there's a lot more matter around." "There is more! It's just, um, dark matter." "Good one. And for the universe as a whole?" "Um, "dark" energy?" There are a number of intersting theories floating around as to where that mass is and what she... er, it, is up to. Lots of happy physics/cosmo grad students.

The bullets have enough velocity to bounce cleanly off him. The gun, OTOH, might get soot and oil all over his tights. When you're invulnerable and invincible, the only challenge left is always looking good.

Depends on what you mean by "semantics". Speaking of space opera, and Foundation: Have you read the novel "Psychohistorical Crisis" by Donald Kingsbury? Set in a somewhat revamped "Foundation" universe, IMO it makes Foundation look like space opera. (And I did enjoy "Foundation.") It's set a while after the foundation of the 2nd empire. The most significant change revolves around the removal of the Mule from "history". He's replaced with a "neural tuner", or some such. A device that allowed the warlord known as (IIRC) "Cloun the Stubborn" ( " ) to create a widespread alteration to the Plan. (And, as one would expect from good sci-fi, much of the story revolves around the implications and social/technological reaction to such a powerful piece of kit.)

That sound is made by tachyons intersecting the lightsabre "beam." The tachyons are knocked to sub-light speeds, pick up a little mass, and thus make that distincitive sound. A gamma-ray lightsabre, for obvious reasons, would emit ultrasonic sound, and so it'd be effectively silent, too. C'mon people, this is just common sense. Hmm... how about a near-ultraviolet lightsabre? Blind your opponents! You wear sunglasses. Ooo, ooo, no, I've got it! Wear clothes, plus a billowing cloak, the same bright color as your lightsabre! When it's between you and your opponent it'll usually be effectively invisible! Yeah, that's what I'm doin'!

Because they make an effort to create a realistic setting - one that is at least possible, and hopefully plausible - while fantasy authors don't. OTOH, I think the best fantasy authors do make a big effort in making their settings as realistic as possible given whatever fantastic elements they include. I think it'd be correct to call such fantasy "realistic"... as long as you supply the needed caveats. Hard sci-fi is about possibilities more than it's about prediction. IIRC the wiki page even described the concern you seem to have as a "semantic trap." Sure, new knowledge may reveal that a hard sci-fi story is impossible, but that means the science with in the "hard science fiction" story is wrong. It's the same with actual science - if a scientist is proven wrong that doesn't mean he's been a "fantasist" - he's just wrong. The method and approach are what's essential. I think "shown to be innactuate hard sci-fi" or simply "dated hard sci fi" is far closer to the truth than "fantasy that was formerly hard sci fi." If it turns out the future ends up looking just like the SW universe that doesn't make GL a "hard science fiction author" - it just makes him lukcy. Sure. I'd call anything with spaceships OR energy weapons OR droids or any of that other stuff included in SW a "sort" of science fiction, no matter what else it did or didn't contain. Sure. For you it seems the high-tech "feel" of SW is of central importance. Just as - if not more? - important as the events or characters. I can understand that - especially if you really like the setting. Me, I wonder about things like the RoF of blaster weapons, why the Deathstar was such a big deal, how those 3D holograms are supposed to work, and the mechanics of starfighter combat. (Not to mention the sound things make in space....) The setting is a little hard on my suspension of disbelief. (Most espeically whenever Anikin says anything...) I'm glad SW has an at least "sort of science fiction" sci-fi setting. I think it's fun, in spite of that disbelief problem. But if you made it Middle Earth Wars I think you'd just have to change the superfical stuff with regard to character and action. IMO the high-tech setting is incidental to the story. Hmm... given that, I guess it'd be most accurate to say SW is a fantasy story (for example: It'd take magic for me to think anyone would go to the Dark Side for N. Portman's Princess A.) set in a "soft" sci-fi world. Or, simply put: Science fantasy. (I'm reminded of the 1996 Keneth Branagh production of Hamlet. I thought the "Age of Empire" setting was a great choice. That setting was as modern as you could get and NOT need any signficant changes to make the play fit it's world.)

Awesome! (I refer to most everything, with the explicit exception of the spelling-error critique ) No, three "!", and all caps! AWESOME!!! ahem, sorry for the outburst.

Edit: Well bloody H. I could have just linked to the wikipedia article on science fiction. I've just read the first section and it looks good, and I think the last paragraph of the first section addresses one of your points, jedipodo. Science Fiction (wikipedia) The great majority of the below doesn't directly concern SW. I take no responsibility for time wasted should anyone continue reading this message. There's lots of pessimistic sci-fi, and yet there's lots that isn't. Personally I'd have trouble justifying the characterization that sci-fi is "very pessimistic". (I'm also not sure just how that's supposed to relate to failing to forsee future technologies. Optimism certainly isn't equivilent to good foresight) And (see below) the degree of accuracy in crafting a future-world isn't as important as the methods used. No one is going to anticipate every technical innovation or implication, but what's important is how the author does handle those that do crop up in the story. The significant difference is the degree to which the fiction tries and/or succeeds in 1) Presenting a coherent, consistent world. 2) Presenting technologies/cultures that are theoretically and practically plausible. It's a more elusive factor, but I also look to how much the fictional technologies matter to the story. I'm tempted to just call SW "fantasy" because the Force is the only fictional "technology" that really matters to the story. Based on my far less-than-complete knowledge of SW fiction the rest is essentially window dressing. (Hmm... except maybe the Deathstar. Though if the SW setting was say, a fictional 1600-1800s, the DS could be a big ship with an enormous "sci fi" cannon.) SW doesn't seem to care much about either 1 or 2. For example: computers. It's true I did brush over the existance of all those driods... They'd completely slipped my mind. (Yea! I'm successfully blocking much of the previous two movies!) the thing is, if they've got AI (or it's appearance) then they're missing a LOT of tricks by confining that high level of information technology to running those clunky driods. For example: Flying self-aiming blasters. In the SW universe they're pretty much just yet another type of "actor in a rubber suit." Another section in the Monster Manual. Hmm... maybe a good exercise would be looking at how hard it'd be to shift a story to a full fledged and somewhat stereotypical fantasy. The sort with orcs and elves and mages and dragons. Doing that with SW would, I think, be a trivial exercise. Doing that with say, most of Niven's "Known Space" books, Greg Egan's stuff, or all but the _last_ book of G. Benford's "Galactic Center" books would be tremendously difficulty, if not impossible. Difficult/impossible because too much of the stories revolve around things based very strongly on our non-magical reality. And that's just some of the more "techie" stuff. There's lots of fantastic sci-fi that deals more with how tech. (or distance/seperation from the past) might change the "human condition" than the gorey details of the tech itself. Such fiction often has a number futuristic techs in the story, but only one or two key technologies have their implications examined. Hmm... a simple example would be Niven's "Teleporter world" (not the official title) stories. In the stories cheap teleportation exists. What's interesting for the purpose of this discussion is that Niven has explicitly stated that he thinks teleportation is a fantasy - that science is never going to give us teleportation. Yet he tries to construct a completely realistic world, taking teleportation as a given. He concentrates on the social and economic changes that might be caused by his fictional teleportation. Given the existance of only 1 "imponderable", and one with a decent "fake science" background, I'm happy with calling the stories sci-fi, and good sci-fi. J. Varley's "Steel Beach" tells quite an interesting story of one persons life in a world with 1) Great longevity tech 2) Incredible medical tech 3) High dependancy/use of AI. The sci fi tech is there, but the book is quite focused on one persons life. What he does and why, and how he feels about the whole thing. Gadgetry isn't just there to be entertaining - it opens up new opportunities, and the center of the story is how people choose to receive those opportunities. So the story keeps to the classic "examination of the human condition" that's supposed to be the focus of good literature. Hmm... J. Barnes has several books that ask the reader to swallow several technoligies (plausible to a greater or lesser degree) but concentrates very much on the resulting society. How various cultures clash, and how people cope (or don't) with the options made available by the sci-fi tech. A lack of "magical" explainations is a key part of the stories - all the stuff that might seem "indistinguishable from magic" has a strong, real, theoretical foundation, and characters don't resort to science-babble (made famous by Star Trek) when figuring out problems. The strange stuff the character encounter is generally figured out through applying a mix of fact and real yet-to-be-disproven theory. I mentioned "all the stuff" having a theoretical foundation. Sorry, overstatement. Lots of sci-fi stories have a few "imponderables". Picking on Niven again: The "Known Space" stories have FTL travel with no real scientific foundation. Yet he does provide a fake scientific provenance, and his "hyperdrives" follow a consistent vaugly plausible set of rules. Fake science it is, magic it isn't. Personally, I'm always willing to simply swallow a few "fantastic" elements in a otherwise completely solid sci-fi story, especially if the author goes through the motions of supplying a "fake scientific" background, and when the "fantastic" thing concerns technology, not character.

Heh!

Melee shields, disrupters and ion weapons don't necessarily make shields (or the theory) "obsolete". If all of those things are considerably more expensive and/or less common than blasters and shields become less-usefull - since you may encounter one of those anti-shield items - but not necessarily not-worthwhile. Given the claimed use of shields they must be uncommon. OTOH, they weren't very uncommon in the game. So: A screwy thing with the game? Or with the game's world? Or both? Personally, I was too busy wondering why everyone didn't just use those massive numbers of grenades floating around to worry to much about the shields I never used. Has anyone tried going through the games (at least KOTOR I) using nothing but grenades? I'll never forget my first view of KOTOR combat. Guys dressed funny looking gold foil shooting at some guy wearing the most godawful hat. All of them stading no more than a dozen or so paces apart, slowly squeezing off shots and missing more often than not, it seemed.... "What the heck do thy think they're doing!?" To tell the truth I shelved the game for a few months after that. This blasters thing has GOT to be because everyone loves the sound blasters make, and their colorfull sfx. Obviously sheer lethality is not a major concern. In the future everyone recognises the overridding importance of style - the military uniforms are anamolies... ... or we have to accept there's some practical reason not to use slugthrowers, and we have to come up with it on our own. Maybe in the SW universe normal clothing includes something like a perfected "ballistic weave" as a matter of course... /smartbullets/ ...and everyone wears jammers... /ECCM/ ...that can overcome any counter measures... /optical-ATG smartbullets/ ... and, um, the clothing also has, ah, "mico-refractive optical camo" built into the fibers, and constantly releases a cloud of them around each person... /optical+infrared-ATG fired at 600 rounds per minute, with explosive payloads, plus rounds carrying a quickly decaying toxic gas and other exotics/ ...and... err... everyone's personal telecommunications gear interferes with the magnetics used in linear accelerator slug-throwers... /the bullets use chemical propellants/ ...and the gear also suppresses chemical reactions!... /why isn't that used as a deathbeam?/ .... I think we just have to impotently shake our fists at GL and take blasters as a given. Slap the most adequate, simple excuse on the inconsistencies and get on with the game... Though, actually, what I did in KOTOR II was greatly increase the damage blasters do. I spent less time wondering why everyone seemed so fixated on the slow, clunky things, and since my party still used lots of melee weapons - 'cuz we're cool! - overall it just made the game harder (I avoided high blaster deflection skill) - which is a move in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. Of course that's modding the game/setting... but I always need to mod CRPGs to suit my tastes, anyway. Game developers can't please everyone, but given some mods and or modding tools I can please myself. It's a little known fact, but Jedi find it easy to make heads explode. Including each others heads. They agree to use lightsabers because the old head-explode thing cuts both ways, so to speak, and it's just... well, it's just gross.

Hello what? Electrons a finite resource? Oh, vibroblades? I'm not going to look up exactly who said what earlier, though I largely agreed with what most agreed (IIRC) so far as vibroblades and shields and driods. I wish the "protects against melee weapons" shields hadn't appeared in the game, though. One can assume such shields are too expensive to be issued to an army. Maybe not due to the cost being prohibitive so much as unwarrented - blaster combat still seemed to be the norm. But still, I was disappointed to see them. I liked the "shields are new and protect against blasters." explaination... though I did wonder about slug-throwers or, at the very least, some sort of ranged vibro weapon. The use of vibroblades might also demonstrate that VERY close quarter combat is extremely common in the SW universe. (Or at least during KOTOR times.) And a vibroblade is less likely to kill a bystander or friendly if you miss with it due to it's meter or two range. So perhaps lots of shipboard and urban combat? Meter ranges are common, and preventing collatoral damage a big concern. Vibroblades might also be significantly stealthier, too. Important when armor doesn't work well. Some cybernetic enhancements or combat-drugs might also make many soldiers very fast moving. Hard to hit with a ranged weapon, and they'll be on top of you (swining their swords) very quickly. Come to think of it, I like that better than the shields-centric explaination. Combat is fast and deadly, and a blaster is just too clumsy. Not supported by the movies, I think, but since I'm more concerned with the games than the movies (and not that concerned about this matter, anyway, for reasons given below) I'll just live in my own little fantasy, thank you. ENGAGE RAMBLING: I think the biggest hole in the SW combat, and universe in general, is the seeming lack of computers. I don't remember any smart weapons or "self aiming" weapons. (Or even high rate of fire automatic weapons?) It'd still be possible to inject some hummanity into a super-speed highly computerized battle, but I'm sure that's far more "techie" than GL wanted to go. I've read that GL, in fact, showed his people footage of WWII fighter combat to base the space fighter battles off. (True?) But even if a cadre of repected hard-sci fi authors offered their serves to GL, to add "realistic" high-tech stuff to SW (for free!) I'm sure GL would refuse - and rightly so. Whether the "WWII figher footage" thing is true or not, the battles certainly seemed like they were based on that period to me. And I don't think that's at all coincidental. Much of the reason WWII is so facinating to WWII buffs (such as myself) is that while the machinery of the conflect was both varied, powerful, and kewl (if you're into that sort of thing) the "human element" was still of overriding importance. Not that training isn't still exheedingly important, and won't be in the future... but I think there is a big qualitative difference - not just quantitative - between WWII-era combat and the more electronic/computerized stuff that's followed, so far as the importance of the human element goes. (IMO good flight sims show this difference well, btw.) If nothing else, reading the radar in your fly-by-wire jet and then pushing a button to lauch your missle at 20k range is far less visceral than, say, fighting the stick on your Bf-109 to make a 300 kph turn away from the Spitfire you've just noticed (with your Mk. 1 Eyeball) diving out of the sun. SW, with the mostly low RoF blasters, human piloted space "fighters", lightsabers (and vibroblades), driod armies and other such stuff has, I think, the same sort of balance between mechanism and humanity. The gadgets are highly varied and cool, but dwarfed by the qualities of the beings using them. The Jedi being the most extreme case. They're so powerfull they don't even use most of the tech around them. As science fiction I think SW pretty much sucks. Seen as space opera/"science fantasy", OTOH, it's good. I'm annoyed when people think Star Wars (or Star Trek) is representative of the whole of sci-fi. That's like taking the pulps of the 30's and 40's as representative of Western literature. But I don't think GL or anyone official has ever presented SW as being anything other than it is: A cash cow. Err, sorry, I mean a romantic (in the good vrs. evil, honor and swords sense) adventure, a world of magic and discovery. "Here there be Dragons". Even if there doesn't seem to be enough game to support a 2 ton carnivore. F'r example, given the BTW output of the flame, and assuming merely 1 flame per day, it'd have to take in over 60 goats a day. And that's just for the flame. If we include flight we have.....

I thought the "pod race" was a metaphor for the progress of human culture. I'm still waiting for my copy of the 2 volume Qui Gon Bible from LucasArts Publishing. I'll take a look at the exegesis when I get it. Seriously though, that cosmic string thing was exactly what you said it was, just another magical explaination for the Force. (I made it up on the spot.) Given the "science fantasy" nature of the SW universe I think that while asking "Why vibroblades?" is a interesting question, as it leans toward the "science" part of the setting. Hmm... actually, it's just that the Jedi aren't so much involved, so that a coherent socio-technological explaination should exist. Where Jedi powers are concerned, OTOH, anything goes. As you say, it's magic. Maybe the Jedi can stop bullets, maybe they can't, maybe only blue ones. There's nothing in the setting - short of a statment of what's cannon from the Lucas Apparatus or a clear statement in a movie on a particular subject - to tell us just what force users can or can't really do. It's magic. And while I think the SW movies have done a good job of keeping the magic consistent from scene to scene, and "cool" more often than not (cue discussion of Jedi as Samuri/Martial artists), I hope GL doesn't ever try to go deeper into how it works, the "technical" data. To be frank, I don't trust any of the writers - esp. him - involved with SW to come up with an explaination I'd think was "good" - plausible (even for fantasy), consistent (the hardest part, probably), and cool (personally, if something is implausible and inconsistent I have trouble seeing it as cool). I havn't seen anything statisfactory (IMO, of course) so far. OTOH, I'm far from well read in the SW fiction. Heh... it's not like I'm a big SW fan anyway. After upping the difficulty I've enjoyed the games, though!

Is that what he meant? I took it differently. I thought he was saying that the Force's origin is in almost 0-dimensional "cosmic strings" that exist within mitochondria. These ~0-dimensional bits of cosmic flotsam are left over from the creation of the universe, and the total number of such strings captured within living beings represent the total life