Star Wars on Trial

by David Brin

  The point is that the single sentence above about the telephone communicates the same information as a multipage explanation of the prevalence and usage of the telephone in our society.

  Herein lies the help Star Wars has given us. It has placed a number of science fiction concepts into the realm of the familiar for the broad mainstream audience. In so doing it allows present-day writers to say things like:

  The ship jumped into hyperspace.

  The hologram showed their battle tactics.

  The evil overlord killed his third subordinate of the morning.

  Star Wars was by no means the first popular sci-fi to do this favor for the field in general. It is thanks to Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon that we can casually use ray-guns in stories, and thanks to Star Trek that people can teleport all over the place (as long as you call it beaming). Post-Star Wars movies like Bach to the Future have done the same thing with time travel, drawing it down into a commonplace.

  So what's the benefit to writers?

  We are relieved of the need to explain those concepts Star Wars placed in front of the audience. This gives us more space in our writing to talk about other things we want to talk about. Everything that need not be explained is a savings to writers, giving us more room to work. This is also of benefit to readers, who don't have to slog through explanations to get to the meat of the story and are not forced to waste mindspace taking in basic ideas when the author would rather explore beyond those ideas.

  One can think of Star Wars and other popular sci-fi as labor-saving devices like electric mixers or power drills. They reduce the work of some tasks, leaving us time, space and energy to concentrate on our stories, characters and those aspects of our worlds that are interesting and unique.

  It might be argued that the above only works if we make our worlds like the worlds of sci-fi, but even if our worlds are radically different, we can take advantage of the familiarity they have created.

  Consider the following possible line from a piece of hard SF:

  "No, we can't get around the speed of light. Listen to me! There is no hyperspace, no warp drive, none of those damn cheats. Einstein found the limit and we're stuck with it. Now shut up and drive; it's a long haul to Alpha Centauri."

  The above example uses our readers' awareness of these sci-fi tropes to say they don't exist in the story being written. We don't have to explain the speed of light limit or talk about the ways it can't be broken; we only have to reference the canonical cheats and say they don't work.

  This is by no means the limit of the ways to use the familiar. We can draw upon these tropes to put in twisted variations:

  "You want to fly in hyperspace, girl, you try it. It ain't like the vids have it. Hyperspace isn't some flat safe place. It's like a river. It's got currents and eddies and falls and it's got, well, let's call them fish for want of a better word."

  This paragraph creates a kind of hyperspace wholly unlike the Star Wars concept, but it still exploits the conception portrayed in the movies. Since the idea of space travel through an alternate space is already in the reader's mind, we can change it.

  Consider the panoply of things presented by the six Star Wars movies, good, bad and indifferent: space battles, robots, aliens of many shapes, clones, tepid systems of spirituality and magic powers, cyborgs and so on. None of these are original, but that's not important. They have become familiar, and that is all we need to exploit them for our own ends.

  Uh, and the interests and amusements of our readers. Yeah.

  STAR WARS SPELLS DOOM FOR CINEMATIC BOOKS

  Having been canonical, I'm now going to become all heretical and stuff (insert obvious dark side joke here). Star Wars was and is astoundingly visual. The first movie was, if not the marker point, certainly one of the points at which special effects came of age and emerged as a strong, vital part of moviemaking.

  Many writers' reaction to Star Wars-in particular the reaction of the generation of writers who grew up on it-was to create strongly cinematic writing, books and stories that were heavily visual because the strongest impressions made on the authors were visual. This tendency has grown even stronger in recent years with the increase in quality of movie, TV and video game special effects. It is becoming canon in the teaching of writing, particularly SF/F writing, that one must be visual and concrete.

  I would like to venture the opinion that this is fighting a losing battle. Visually, books cannot compete with movies anymore. The special effects have become good enough that, in terms of pure, inyour-eyes imagery, imagination fails in comparison to the best work that comes out of Henson's Creature Shop, the various animation studios and the specialty CGI workshops. Furthermore, since these effects are continually improving, I think that the movie creators have not only edged out the book authors on this one point, but that the gap is only growing to grow. In the field of visuals, we who write books will be left behind.

  Writers therefore have three courses of action: try to outdo the movies in SFX (this is no longer possible), treat books as farm teams for movie scripts (that is, write books for the purpose of having them adapted as movies), or (and this is the one I favor) concentrate on the non-cinematic strengths of writing. In other words, write not for the superficial sensory imagination but to the deeper aspects of imagination.

  I favor the third option for several reasons. First, it's the kind of writing I like to do and to read (which is why you should distrust everything I say on this point). Second, it plays to the strengths of writing as an art form. Third, in the long run I think it's the only thing that will help writing to survive as an independent art form (as opposed to being an adjunct to moviemaking). And fourth, writing was never the best visual art; it never succeeded well when it directly competed with painting, dance and sculpture-let alone with movies and TV

  What are the strengths of writing that I'm talking about?

  That this question can even be asked shows how far we in the field have become dominated by the visual. If you consider what writing does best, you can quickly see that it is the art that has the easiest time dealing with and playing with the meaning of things. Words are the strongest conveyers of meaning; they are weak at conveying image, appearance and even sound. Meanings are what words were created to convey, and words are our raw materials as paint is for painters and stone for sculptors. Wordsmith is a synonym for writer, and we work words the way a blacksmith works iron.

  Writing is also the best medium for conveying the processes of thinking. In every other art form, giving the audience the thoughts of the beings involved is hideously hard. It is considered a great tribute to a painter if you can look at an image in one of his or her works and figure out what is supposed to be on the mind of the person depicted. The same difficulty applies to acting; it is the epitome of an actor's art to let the viewer into the character's mind.

  But in writing, this is so easy that we don't even notice that we're doing it:

  Fred hated Wilma. The fire truck's sirens brought back the air raid fears of Charlie's youth during the Blitz. Agnes wished Walter wouldn't talk to their children in that squeaky voice; it was creepy, not funny.

  Writing is strongest at getting inside of things, of seeing below the surface into the depths, into the associations of things and thoughts, because that's how words work. Words are themselves associative, drawing out memories and ideas in multiple ways.

  Consider these two words combined to create another word:

  Death

  Star

  Death Star

  The thought that is elicited by the third word is not the combination of the thoughts from the first two; it is a distinct remembrance. The same of course applies to Millennium and Falcon.

  Even if one is not playing around with names, one can see how association changes meaning.

  Red means a particular color.

  Red light means stop.

  Red light district means a place you shouldn't go but are tempted to.

  The absolute be
st writing uses these connections and associations, as well as burrows into the minds of characters to create a scene that exists mostly below the visible surface. But so does mediocre, adequate and bad writing. There is no need to be a genius writer in order to write about the connections of people's thoughts, the associations, the emotions, the feelings, the ways people think, the paths they follow that lead to their salvation, damnation and day-to-day living. To bring these out does not require great writing as it does great acting, great painting or great dancing.

  This is a good test for what is easiest in a particular art: is genius required to do it?

  Let us return to Star Wars and consider the character of Anakin Skywalker. The most recent three movies have been about Anakin's fall into darkness and his taking of the Jedi with him. I do not propose to do more than hint subliminally, using the subtle arts of writ ing, as to how well I think this was portrayed (badly). The portrayal of such a fall on the screen would take a combination of great actor, director and screenwriter. But in a purely written story, it's not much work. The conflicts and confusions of such a character could be easily put down on paper. I don't think there's a need to give examples since the number of literary characters who fall believably into darkness is enormous (particularly in Russian literature).

  It may sound like I am advocating the removal of all visual elements from writing, which I am not. Rather, I think that writing has never been strongest at the purely visual. I think we are better off putting our efforts into those parts of writing that writing does best and that are hard for other arts.

  Here's another such strength: movies take great effort to create a mood from their visual environments, using lighting and atmosphere to make things feel a certain way to their audiences. But a writer can do so in a single line.

  Consider rain:

  Bone-bit, coat-soaked, Harry ducked into the archway to shiver away from the winter's-coming-and-you-can't-stop-it rainfall.

  And rain:

  Slipping down and rolling over together in the no-longer-mist, May and Oliver reveled in the spring rainfall.

  Not great prose, of course, but it doesn't have to be; that's the point. Mood is easy for writing, hard for movies.

  What does all this have to do with the effect of Star Wars on the consciousness of our audience? Here we enter the realm of prediction ... and I must confess that my track record on predictions is not a good one, so take everything to follow with a decent-sized ocean's worth of salt.

  It seems to me that Star Wars and the movies and TV shows that were created because of its success have molded an audience that will soon no longer find special effects special. They will come to expect impressive effects as a matter of course. Indications are that they probably already do. The special effects-heavy moviemakers have been handling this rising expectation by targeting their movies at a particular demographic, mostly teenaged boys. This gives us a growing audience beyond this age that will be slaked on visual effects.

  Several different desires are likely to rise up in the minds of such an audience. Some will want to get a new fix of SFX, but they are bound to disappointment as the next dose will seem duller than the last. Others will find themselves dissatisfied with the simple presence of SFX and want something more in their entertainment. Those are the ones that writers should go after.

  This segment of the audience will be amenable to books that will feed the parts of their minds that the movies have neglected. The moviemakers will not notice this audience since they have set their sights on a demographic, not a group of individuals. They are catering only to an age group, not asking what those same people will be doing for entertainment when they are beyond that age group. I think that written science fiction and fantasy can bring them in if it does not try to be second-rate moviemaking. If the books this audience is given are too cinematic, they will only disappoint, whereas if the books show what the movies cannot and do not, they can bring in, hold and nurture the orphans of Star Wars who will grow up as SF readers.

  CLOSING ARGUMENTS FOR THE DEFENSE

  Star Wars has placed a set of tropes and visual expectations into the minds of a vast audience and has disseminated those tropes and expectations into the ambient culture.

  This has given SF/F writers a base of materials from which to more easily work and which we can more easily transcend if we choose to do so.

  Thus it can be argued that although Star Wars creates an overly uniform view of SF, we can use that uniformity in order to spring forth into a greater diversity of science fiction. In this way the influence of Star Wars on public consciousness has been a good one.

  The Defense rests without any obligatory Using the Force, Fandom Menace or New Hope jokes. Thank you.

  Richard Garfinkle is the author of two science fiction novels: Celestial Matters (which won the 1996 Compton Crook Award for best first novel in science fiction) and All of an Instant. At present he is engaged in the more dubious practice of writing non-fiction science popularization. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.

  THE COURTROOM

  DAVID BRIN: Let me see if I get this line of defense. Are you saying that special effects extravaganzas like Star Wars will help literary science fiction, because they will eventually tire people out, making them want something more than special effects?

  RICHARD GARFINKLE: Not quite. I am saying that SFX movies have two effects: First they make it impractical for written SF to rely on mindless action sequences since it is no longer possible for imagined SFX to be better than shown SFX. Thus writers are confronted with either giving up on writing books and only writing scripts, or moving away from SFX and toward what writing does best: delving into thought and meaning.

  Second, because SFX are the mental equivalent of empty calories, they do not in the long run satisfy their audiences. It is true that the adolescent demographic (from, say, age ten to eighteen) will likely always want SFX, but what happens to those same people when they grow older and are no longer satisfied with things going boom? If writers concentrate on audience, not demographic, they can catch those people as they age out.

  DAVID BRIN: Yes, films can familiarize concepts. But a good film, like Dr. Strangelove, can do that as easily as a bad one can (e.g., doomsday weapons and callback codes).

  Are we to be glad, then, that space fighters bank and slip, as if using airfoils in an atmosphere, simply because this hearkens to the earlier romance of World War I fighter aces? The cool retro-rocket maneuvers of the fighters in Babylon 5 were as fun to watch, but also offered something to the mature mind.

  Must we be grateful that Star Wars familiarized us with terms like hyperspace, when a show like Stargate actually explored it a little, too? After so many years, and billions of dollars, might one ask that the biggest sci-fi epic of all time at least give a nod toward our prefrontal lobes?

  RICHARD GARFINKLE: Of course, a good film can give more than a bad film, and if there were good films with the same popularity as Star Wars (for example, the Lord of the Rings films, which of course have a literary connection), more could be brought out from them than from the more superficial qualities of Star Wars. But the question was not were there better possibilities than Star Wars; the question was, is there a legitimate defense for the Star Wars films? I never claimed that Star Wars was the best vehicle for disseminating this understanding, only that it did so disseminate.

  DAVID BRIN: You suggest that, as the audience ages, they will move from SFX movies to more thoughtful forms of science fiction. Can you support this hope with any evidence? In the gaming industry, thoughtful, adventure-scenario games like Myst and Legacy of Time have been almost entirely replaced by action and effectsheavy offerings, like Halo, with no apparent end to the upward ratchet of effects-craving. Isn't this similar to what we contend has happened via sci-fi films and books?

  RICHARD GARFINKLE: Your own examples above serve as evidence. Stargate and Babylon 5 do not just introduce new concepts; they draw on older ones. Babylon 5 relied o
n hyperspace without having to explain it. Stargate also did so. Both of these expanded on the audience's familiarity with hyperspace. As for gaming, computer gaming is not yet a mature entertainment form, but even so, look at the socialization that is forming in the MMRPGs. Indeed, the makers of Star Wars Galaxies were annoyed to discover that people playing in their universe didn't just want a hackfest; they wanted to live in the world. To be moisture farmers and traders, not just Jedi Knights and Sith Lords. In short, even Star Wars fans want more than the superficial.

  ADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the jury: i

  Most people would agree that there's a difference between fantasy and science fiction-except, of course, for people who shelve books in chain bookstores-but what exactly is that difference? Unless we can agree on this basic distinction, there would be no point in arguing that Star Wars was one and not the other.

  At first glance it might seem like the key difference between the two is whether the story uses science or magic to explain any speculative story elements. But one problem with this approach, as Arthur C. Clarke famously pointed out, is that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There's some truth to this, which means that simply using science or technology is not enough to make a story science fiction. And, to take the other extreme, any system of "magic" that follows universal, well-understood rules would effectively make the study of this magic a science.