Is Karen Traviss just a latter-day Michael P. Kube-McDowell?

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2006-07-04 06:40pm

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.

Of course, this was before TPM came out and completely shattered his depiction of Coruscant, but Curtis Saxton soundly debunked his FAQ on the SWTC even before that and the other EU authors simply ignored K-Mac in their post-BFC novels.

Can we expect the same to happen to Traviss and her clone/droid bullshit?

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-07-04 08:27pm

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.

Traviss is a completely different story. Her Guide to the Grand Army of the Republic was not minimalist out of mere ignorance (like the works of a number of other SW writers), it embraced the minimalism in universe and tried to explain it with wank. And when Traviss was called on this stupidity, she made it her goal to reshape the entire SW universe just to support on retarded number. There was no other purpose that I could see behind Odds, which spends more time raping the SW than it does trying to entertain the reader.

Eventually, I do believe that Traviss's wanky minimalism will go the way of K-Mac's oceans. But I think the comparison ends there.

General Soontir Fel · Post by **General Soontir Fel** » 2006-07-04 08:45pm

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.

On the other hand, Luke's quest to find his real mother in the same novels was exactly that. I wonder if Lucas dictated that it fail....

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2006-07-04 08:54pm

Yes, but MPK (to my knowledge anyway) never harped on his depiction of Coruscant as the correct depiction and how George Lucas would be wrong if he ever said otherwise (as he did in TPM).

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2006-07-04 08:55pm

Well, those novels were written before the prequels even came along, so George Lucas could just change it on the whim.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2006-07-04 09:09pm

'Trantor' Coruscant was established well before the PT. For starters, TTT and the abominable JAT come to mind as do the Rogue Squadron novels.
That being said MPK went nowhere as far as Traviss in saying 'but my vision is true even if it makes no sense whatever! WHAAA!' Truth be told I don't know MPK went an inch beyond simply writing them books.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2006-07-04 09:25pm

Well, he did write that FAQ and spent some time discussing it on RASSM.

Perhaps Traviss has the same "failure of imagination."

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2006-07-04 09:28pm

Looks I was wrong then. Thanks.

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2006-07-04 11:32pm

I also recall Star by Star retconed the Great Western Sea on Courscant to be an artifical lake on stilts, over parts of the cityscape. Afterall we never see all of Courscants surface from orbit. The only areas NOT built over are parts of the planets poles which are there simply because they are water storage (though the sking is also good apparently)

Still I take great delight in how aggressivly Lucas embraced the Courscant idea in the prequals, you really feel like Zhan, Stackpole and hell even Anderson got it down pat in their books.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-07-04 11:39pm

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

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.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2006-07-05 12:15am

If anything the diference is that KMac embraced realism. Oceans play a vital part in making a palnet habitable - see their role in sustaining the environment as a rejection of the nuclear winter myth for example. So he tried to mesh the fact that the planet must be habitable and recieve the requisit resources while making it a city planet as best he could.

Traviss just said fuck it and wrote whatever the hell she felt like.

KMac laid out what he felt were realistic reasons behind his decision.

Traviss has a new reason and justification every week to replace the old one that got shot down.

KMac was reasonable in his criticism, establishing a FAQ to deal with it

Do I even need to touch Traviss reaction?

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

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2006-07-05 12:23am

And KMac also didn't try to rewrite canon. When he was writing about Coruscant there was no G-canon beyond partial and discarded script ideas on it. He accepted the G-canon change. He's really the opposite of Traviss in how he handled the mess. He embraced realism, accepted criticism and didn't try to rewrite G-canon to fit his own vision.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2006-07-05 12:31am

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

What's why I asked the question. Here's another post from K-Mac that caught my eye...

Byss

Too bad Traviss doesn't have an errata list.

Then he says in yet another post...

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.)

I do recall him writing some excellent fleet battles. I vividly remember one about a maverick New Republic fleet commodore engaging a Yevethan warship. That was cool.

Cyborg Stan · Post by **Cyborg Stan** » 2006-07-05 01:14am

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

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2006-07-05 02:02am

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

What?

Cyborg Stan · Post by **Cyborg Stan** » 2006-07-05 02:44am

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.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2006-07-05 02:50am

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.

Ah, I see.

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2006-07-05 04:17am

I never had a problem with Coruscant's appearance in BFC.

I always "blamed" the sudden existance of oceans on the remaking of the planet after the devastations it suffered during DarkEmpire. And while K-Mac stated other reasons, i never viewed his FAQ as canon. Its admirable, that he put some thought into his work, even if his reasoning was wrong.

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?

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-07-05 01:26pm

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?

I've never heard any reference to Coruscant's "ecosystem" failing; hell, even after the Vong tore the place apart, the oxygen production systems in the undercity were still functioning.

By the way, how would it "revert" without a major restoration effort? Even if the planet's oceans still existed somewhere, they'd be buried under miles of cityscape, built up over tens of thousands of years. To bring them back, one would either have to destroy a signficant fraction of the planetary city all the way down (even at the height of DE destruction, it didn't get that bad), or build new, artificial oceans on top of the older skyscrapers.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2006-07-05 02:15pm

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.

I also really liked General Etahn Abaht. K-Mac filled his stories with lots of interesting new characters that were later ignored.

I didn't start this thread to attack K-Mac's character, merely to see if there was a possibility that Traviss's heresy would be similarly ignored in later EU tales.

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2006-07-05 08:16pm

I always considered K-mac's Coruscant a passing fad for 'rustic naturalism' on Coruscant, leading to the building of the artificially made but naturally functional lakes, forests, and mountains, etc. which were shipped in, and then just as easily shipped out when the fad passed.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2006-07-05 11:28pm

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.

Well, it is a lot easier to regulate the environment of a lot of small enclosed spaces than a whole planetary atmosphere. Besides, don't most sources give the Death Stars have pretty small crews compared to their sizes (millions IIRC, my guess would be most of the volume was taken up by the power systems and the superlasers)?

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2006-07-05 11:50pm

There's several differences between KM's interpretation of Coruscant and Traviss' Grand Army screwup... Most of them already covered by others. Also recall that this was placed in largely before the massive effort at "continuity-keeping" we get with people like Chee and his Holocron. Back then alot of authors did things like that (The Executor error is one, but there's also the fact that alot of earlier novels tended to ignore or disregard details or elements in other series. )

And to be honest, given the "devastated Coruscant" post Dark-Empire less than a decade before, it could be quite reasonable to expect it ot have "changed" in some ways (perhaps the damage affected the life support mechanisms that allow trillion+ populations to exist, for eaxmple.)

000 · Post by **000** » 2006-07-06 12:26am

Yeah, people tend to forget that Coruscant was absolutely shattered during the Civil War of 45. It wasn't quite as bad as the Vong, but it was damn close-- the world was even mostly depopulated.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2006-07-06 07:10pm

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.

True. I was referring to her assertion that the Clones Wars were merely "brushfire conflicts" despite, you know, the opening crawl of ROTS saying that it raged across the galaxy.

For all his minimalism and that useless Qella subplot, MPK was never a dick. Plus, the focus on some of the nasty NR politics was interesting.