Almost all science fiction falls under fantasy, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Regardless of whether Lucas cares/cared about technical accuracy, people like Ralph McQuarrie and Doug Chiang did, and sought to design elements that would fit together in a visualization of the Star Wars universe. This is how we got Vader's iconic mask. Furthermore, if Star Wars is a "fairy tale in space," why can't people breathe in space? Simply declaring "hur hur, it's really SPACE FANTASY" with overtones of "you all suck for talking about this" is unhelpful and uncontributive.open_sketchbook wrote:You realize, of course, that Star Wars really IS just fantasy in space, right? Lucas never, ever gave a shit about technical, strategic or scientific accuracy; he set out to make a fairy tale IN SPACE and that's exactly what he made.
No, KJA and Stackpole are hacks that failed to put enough effort into their works. Many of the other writers' minimalism comes from failing to fully understand the scope of the galaxy and the consequences of galactic civilization, (excepting Troy Denning) but KJA and Stackpole are simply hack writers. In Stackpole's case, he decided to use the X-wing game as the primary source for combat, rather than the films, but he went a step further and decided to add his own numbers, with "terajoules" of energy taking down a Golan III defense platform. From what I've read from Imperial Overlord and other Battletechers, he did the same thing with his novels for that universe. In my book, if I wanted to say, include an aspect of espionage, I'd do research. And if I was writing for a franchise, I would try to make my works consistent with the original work that inspired the franchise. And if I needed numbers and had no idea what would be appropriate, I would ask somebody who did have an idea! (p.s. Michael P. Kube-McDowell did do that on USENET in 1996 and 1997, where he interacted with a number of more tech-minded fans, like Curtis Saxton.Darth Hoth wrote:No shit, really? But nasty, evil EU authors KJA, Stackpole et al absolutely, positively, undeniably wrote purposely minimalistic and/or retarded books with malice aforethought and took great pains to think things over and intentionally portray numbers they considered wildly inappropriate to the scale of the setting, for the sole purpose of irritating the analyst fans/VS debaters. This is why most people see nothing wrong with lambasting them while Lucas is immune to criticism.open_sketchbook wrote:You realize, of course, that Star Wars really IS just fantasy in space, right? Lucas never, ever gave a shit about technical, strategic or scientific accuracy; he set out to make a fairy tale IN SPACE and that's exactly what he made.
What point did you aim to make here, exactly?
Anyway, I lambast KJA because of his "flipping burgers" comment and Stackpole because I had the misfortune to read his original fantasy series, which was good when I was about ten to eleven, but after reading more fantasy, it came upon me that he was highly unoriginal.