Skallagrim's ramblings

Frank Herbert's masterful Dune offers a science-ficton saga unlike any other. Not only is the story intelligent, gripping and thematically interesting, the sheer depth of the world-building is staggering. I have loved it since began reading the first book at an impressionable young age, and I can talk about it at length. What I want to talk about right now, however, is what I perceive to be a logical flaw in the underlying plot. This flaw can be attributed to an oversight on the author's part, or can be explained as an error committed "in-universe", as it were. Before I go into it, be advised that I'll be spoiling some big things here. If you haven't read Dune , go do that. Read the first book, and then come back here. (And talk to me about it.) So, you've read it? We're set? Okay, here it is: the Bene Gesserit want the Kwisatz Haderach to be born, and they want him to be under their exclusive influence from the outset. To this end, Jessica was expl...

Several months ago, over at alternatehistory.com , we had a discussion thread inspired by the oft-noted similarities between Roman history and Star Wars . In particular, of course, the fact that the Roman Republic turned into the Roman Empire much as the Galactic Republic turned into the Galactic Empire. In particular, the question being asked was: what if Roman history had more closely resembled the plot of Star Wars? What would you have to change for that? Not as much as some might think, although certainly a bunch of things would have to be shaken up considerably. All in all, though, the actual history of Rome is already a lot more like that of Star Wars than one might expect at first glance. To begin with, George Lucas used certain recurring historical motifs that we see throughout history. Some people see Augustus in Palpatine, since he ended the Republic and created the Empire. But keep in mind that Caesar was murdered because people suspected (with good reason) that he was...

Suppose that (perhaps instead of the sequel trilogy, or at some other point in time) it had been decided to make a trilogy of films about Palpatine's youth and his ascent to power? Well, if that's the plan from the get-go, nixing the old Expanded Universe won't be in the cards anymore. After all, James Luceno already wrote roughly two-thirds of what you could put in such a trilogy, and did it better than anyone else realistically could. Just take Darth Plagueis , Darth Maul: Saboteur  and  Cloak of Deception . That's a pretty solid start. Include  Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter  by Michael Reaves and The Tenebrous Way by Matthew Stover, too. Then you can add what you like from The Wrath of Darth Maul by Ryder Windham, Restraint (a short story by Luceno), Jedi Council: Acts of War by Randy Stradley, Star Wars: Darth Maul by Ron Marz and Maul: Lockdown by Joe Schreiber. Simply hire Luceno to weld this all together into one coherent narrative, and to fill in the ...

In previous posts, I've looked at how thoroughly rotten the leadership of Palpatine's Galactic Empire was, and explored the underlying reason for this. The short answers are: " so rotten that you'd have to kill off almost the entire leadership just to get some half-way decent people in charge " and " because Palpatine was an evil space wizard who powered his dark voodoo by causing untold suffering ". None of that sounds even remotely attractive, and yet there were entire cohorts of people who fought avidly to defend and maintain the Empire. What's more, there were even quite a few who held on to "the Imperial way" long after Palpatine had been vapourised for good. The obvious question is: why? The Empire was undeniably terrible. So what drove the people who fought for that Empire? And what would possess someone to set up an Imperial Remnant, out on the fringes of the galactic disk? Let's try to find an answer. First, we must lo...

In some sections of the Star Wars fandom, there is this persistent and deeply unfortunate notion that the Empire was right. Maybe it's the fact that the bad guys get the cool uniforms. Maybe it's just that a lot of people who have never lived under an authoritarian government really believe that such a system is "more efficient". Either way, the Empire wasn't right. It wasn't efficient, either. It was tyrannical system that neither functioned in anything resembling a proper manner nor was even designed to do so. I have outlined this reality here and here , and I have described why authoritarian governments (of any sort) can't work out on a galactic scale here and here . Others have raised these arguments before me, often in far more detail. And yet, the myth of the "good Empire" persists. Personally, I blame Timothy Zahn. Not that he argued that the Empire was so great, but he did invent the character of Grand Admiral Thrawn, who over time...

Emperor Palpatine had a plan, and it had nothing to do with any kind of responsible government. I've previously outlined that his Galactic Empire was so horribly-run that one would have to kill off almost the entire leadership before getting to the chance of someone capable gaining the throne. By all normal metrics, the Galactic Empire was a disaster, and while the actions of the Rebels were instrumental in hastening the collapse of the regime... one might safely assume that it would have collapsed within a few decades (at most ), anyway. For a normal dictatorship, that would certainly be accurate. The truth is, however, that Palpatine deliberately designed his Empire to be the way it was. And if it hadn't been for the actions of the Rebel Alliance, the unsustainable nature of his despotic regime would have become a moot point. On the face of it, there appears to be a serious discrepance between Palpatine when he's scheming to establish the Empire, and Palpatine after he...

In my previous post, I discussed the inherent authoritarianism of centralist rule on a galactic scale . It is my contention that the only remotely ethical way to govern a united galaxy is to dedicate yourself to radical decentralism. In other words, the old adage "he governs best who governs least" more or less holds true, at least on a galactic scale. I say "more or less", because there are several ways to approach decentralism, and they are not all equally virtuous. My aim here is to compare the Old Republic (in various stages of its long history) with the New Republic. The Old Republic existed for thousands of years, and for almost all of that long existence, it was firmly dedicated to decentralism and local sovereignty. The (typically, but not always, brief) periods of exception to this rule were, without exception, violent and tyrannical in nature. We have ample evidence of secessions during periods where the Old Republic became to authoritarian, which impl...

In many ways, Star Wars presents us with a millennia-spanning historical cycle that is defined by the struggle between centralism and decentralism. (I base myself purely on the original continuity here, given the massive amount of information that the old Expanded Universe provided. The new Disney continuity is so muddled and under-developed that any attempt at analysing it in this way would be pointless.) There is clear evidence that, intentionally or otherwise, the history of the galaxy far, far away was written with a cyclical model underpinning it. In one way, this is reflected in the recurring threat of the Sith. They are ruthless, competitive and power-hungry. Over time, they fight a struggle for dominance among each other, which leads to the strongest and most ruthless of them assuming overall leadership. That one establishes a Sith Empire, and goes on a campaign of conquest. If he is defeated, the Sith warlords almost immediately turn on each other, and their internal stru...