JdeBPMay 7, 2023

What if they'd handed the #StarWarsExpandedUniverse to @cstross instead of to Kevin J. Anderson, Zahn, et al.?

Obviously there are plenty of dead #Jedi to go around. How many other ghosts are there? Who are they haunting? Obviously even the Sith get to haunt people. Out of the living, can only Jedi see or be haunted by them? Who is the Emperor now haunting? Who haunts Leia?

Are they more easily visible on the jungle and wood worlds? We didn't see them on Hoth.

#StarWars

Show threadCharlie StrossMay 7, 2023
@JdeBP I am utterly uninterested in Star Wars. It's basically high fantasy in space opera drag. A lot of people have fallen in love with it and done good work in that universe but the inherent weaknesses are George Lucas's fault and while you can paper over cracks you can't paper over a bottomless abyss.
Show threadJdeBP

@cstross In some ways, that's for me the amusing thing to idly speculate about. The Charles Stross of 2023 would have recognized it as a poltergeists in space story and taken the Expanded Universe down a _completely_ different path. (-:

If an android isn't an artificial intelligence but a haunted mannequin, it's a very different kettle of fish. And it explains why none of the other I.T. systems in #StarWars are anywhere near as good as the androids.

You might even have added exorcisms. (-:

May 7, 2023 at 11:44amWeb
Show threadJdeBPMay 7, 2023
@cstross Another thing that I find amusing is that Timothy Zahn actually _did_ the whole advanced-technology-turns-out-to-be-ghosts thing, elsewhere, at roughly the same time as the #StarWarsExpandedUniverse books.