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Michael P. Kube-McDowell wrote:How did Coruscant acquire oceans?

The same way it acquired mountains--a novelist took us somewhere we hadn't been before.

The geography of the whole of Coruscant has never been definitively laid out--just a few word sketches here and there, and the illos in the comics.

I would (and did, to Lucasfilm) argue that a city covering all of a planet's surface area is as unlikely to be ecologically viable as a planet with no large bodies of water. You've got to have a water cycle, you've got to have a carbon/oxygen cycle, you've got to have seas to moderate the extremes of temperature. Coruscant is supposed to be (have been) a wonderful place to live--it's not Mars or Ganymede covered with city, but something much more earthlike.

Economics also argue against the "Trantor"-type planetary city. The sheer volume of food and other consumables, raw materials, and manufactured goods required by an enormous urban population would turn the skies black with space freighters.

So consider the image of Coruscant as a planet-sized city a bit of Imperial propaganda. Instead, picture a planet with two continents, a major and a minor; the major continent is dominated by an admittedly grand and impressive Imperial City, but it also has the Manari Mountains, a western coastline that's something like Miami Beach in its prime, and frigid northern latitudes which are largely uninhabited. The minor continent is much more sparsely populated--the largest population centers having perhaps no more than a million inhabitants.

Jim Raynor wrote:I think the analogy is weak at best. K-Mac underestimated what a civilization with SW tech could do, so he gave Coruscant oceans. However, to the best of my knowledge, at the time that he wrote his books, descriptions of Coruscant didn't completely rule out the presence of oceans (this was before the planet was depicted in TPM). Regardless, this was just a minor detail in his books, not something that the entire plot hinged on. And at the very least, K-Mac's writings were based on some form of logic.

never harped on his depiction of Coruscant as the correct depiction and how George Lucas would be wrong if he ever said otherwise

Ender wrote:The two are not at all the same. And saying they are is a great insult to KMac.

K-Mac wrote:I really disapprove of all the planet-destroying weapons people have been introducing into the arsenal. Planet-destroyers not only render moot all of the interesting tactical questions about planetary siege and defense, they also retroactively diminish the Death Star to just another
big gun.)

Cyborg Stan wrote:I'm wondering why Coruscant would've had a problem when Death Stars exist.

Cyborg Stan wrote:From the movies alone, the Death Stars are already giant, 'city-covered' ecosystems with a non-trival population. While not exactly the same scenario, much of MPK's comments on Coruscant would be already answered the mere existence of the Death Stars.

FTeik wrote:Since we are at it: Can't it be that at that time the artifical systems, that keep Coruscant as a full city-planet habitable aren't working (again DarkEmpire-destructions) and the NR had to resort to a more "natural" surface?

StarshipTitanic wrote:The Black Fleet Crisis books have a lot of minimalism, but they also portray a fairly well thought-out military for the New Republic (Which is unfortunately ignored by future authors). Traviss merely wanks out clones.

Cyborg Stan wrote:From the movies alone, the Death Stars are already giant, 'city-covered' ecosystems with a non-trival population. While not exactly the same scenario, much of MPK's comments on Coruscant would be already answered the mere existence of the Death Stars.

Anguirus wrote:Did Traviss actually say this? I thought that her argument/excuse was more along the lines of "LFL told me 3 million." Clearly, she's never paid attention to the implications of he movies, but I don't think even she's loony enough to say that Lucas would be wrong if he issued a statement otherwise.