EDITORIAL
My 2 wupiuipis

A New Discourse on the Public Direction of the “Official” Star Wars Universe

By Gus L. Odgers II

 

It is beyond my wildest dreams.  And I once dreamt an alternate ending to The Empire Strikes Back, in which I dueled with Darth Vader on a cleverly disguised plank on Cloud City, while the Emperor looked on from a throne at the end of that bridge to nowhere.  Aayla Secura, Simon Greyshade, Jedi and Sith Holocrons, Stone Mites.  This is only some of the promise Episode II: Attack of the Clones holds for the devotees of the Expanded Universe.  There will be more.

 

    But there are other promises.  What is the Star Wars community to think now, the so-called canonists ask, the so-called purists ask, in light of Attack of the Clones’ revelation that Owen Lars is in fact Anakin’s brother, of Ben’s statement to Luke that Owen was actually Obi-Wan’s brother in the Return of the Jedi novelization?  And we, the inclusionists, are left groping for a response, for a justification of Obi-Wan’s words.  But when did Ben ever need any help?

 

    The ancient philosopher and poet Parmenides once wrote about a journey he took guided by the goddess Truth, in which she presented him with three paths: 1) What is 2) What is not 3) And a third path, to which she barred Parmenides passage.  She barred his passage because the third path was beyond poor Parmenides comprehension.  After all, he, along with the rest of humanity, had barely been introduced to the notion of logic and contradiction.

 

    Obi-Wan, however, has the luxury of coming after Parmenides.  Beyond a Jedi Master, the specter of Obi-Wan understands clearly what is and is not.  It is just not always clear to us, the Padawans, the Parmenideans, just how the hell he can be telling the truth.  By the Emperor’s black bones! how can he always be telling the truth?  When we saw Darth Vader slice through Obi-Wan aboard the first Death Star, just who among us believed that Obi-Wan had been telling the truth when he said: “Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”?  But when Luke brought his attack to bear on the Death Star, his lone 30-foot X-Wing against a moon, and destroyed it, suddenly we knew Ben was a bearer of truth.  Just who believed Luke when dueling Vader for the first time, the real first time on Circarpous V, he said to his father, “I … I am Ben Kenobi”?  Indeed, how many of us believed Vader when, with the roles reversed, he now declared to his son, “I am your father.”  If we didn’t, we should have.  Obi-Wan always tells the truth.

 

    Like Obi-Wan, I have the privilege of writing this second discourse on canon, coming after the foundation of logic has been laid.  My predecessor argued well, if at times erroneously and always stiffly, for absolute inclusion in Star Wars continuity.  After all, he demanded that the “fabric” of Star Wars continuity be mended by the authors who contribute to the universe.  But how can an author alone be expected to bear the complete burden of this unyielding god that is Star Wars continuity?  It is the collective “fabric” of contributors that keep the universe from fraying.  To this end, we have seen Lucasfilm better itself ten-fold.  But we have also seen what can happen when a brave uninitiated soul ventures to tame this god himself.  In spite of this overwhelming task, K.W. Jeter, like his dealster Kud’ar Mub’at, managed to spin an incredible yarn in The Mandalorian Armor.  But in the parts that followed, Jeter, like his Assembler, spun a web from which only the community of tailors, Lucasfilm’s editors, both official and unofficial, could disentangle him.  Alas, they were nowhere in sight, and the Star Wars community ended up with The Bounty Hunter Wars, the greatest tragedy since Corellia’s Uhl Eharl Khoehing – only it was to our dismay rather than our melancholy delight.

 

    My predecessor also seemed a bit overly cautious.  He seemed careful not to insult, to make sure to include in his “spectrum of inclusion” everyone, including the exclusionists.  In short, he was still Parmenidean.  He was afraid of conflict, afraid of contradiction.  Ah, but with his brave quibble about “Jar Jar Killers,” he showed us that he might yet have some potential.  Not simply an emperor’s pawn, but a Knight, or rather, a Mantellian Savrip (or for the more astute, a Kalhar Monster).

 

    We may now dispense with the pleasantries.  We are no longer Padawans.  We have moved beyond the Late Zahns and Young Stackpoles who would try to shrink our universe by extinguishing old stars or ignoring those that do not seem to shine.  We embrace the Veitchs, the Salvatores, the Daleys, the Macans, even the Jacksons and the Morans, who like Socrates are philosophers willing to wage war, that fight through the encroaching hordes of clones to expand the bounds of the universe such that we will never be able to restrain it all.

 

    The prospect is of course frightening.  But then the Crispins, the Lucenos, the Lewises, the Hidalgos, and the Wallaces, “crazy wizards,” quietly manifest and somehow make all the stars seem aright and we believe like Anakin that we can see them all.  Indeed, I would say these wizards would be so bold as to map the entire galaxy, except, against all probability, one of them already has.

 

    To borrow a phrase from another popular Sci-Fi franchise, “Logic is only the beginning.”  It was an older, wiser, and resurrected Spock who spoke those words to one of his disciples.  Unfortunately she, like the Star Trek community, was plagued by logic, in love with the Young Spock, at the same time not realizing that love is not rational.  And the continuity of that mythos, if we may even call it such a thing, has crumbled beneath the weight of the rigid doctrine of Vulcan.  Their slavish adherence to the logic of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few – a conclusion Spock came to before death exposed him to possibilities never conceived – has caused them to abandon any hope of attaining order.  And thus, these scientists, these logicians, and while they would not appreciate the term, these canonists, these Vulcans – sons of Zeus who like Young Skywalker would scream “No!” at discovering their parentnage – have been betrayed by their monochromatic allegiance to probabilities, and like Vader did Palpatine, they have been hurled into Chaos.

 

    Ah, but you Spock, Late Spock, you saw the realm of possibilities!  Perhaps when you died you saw our haven, that of the poets and myth-makers, that galaxy far far away.  How brave of you to descend back into obscurity, to live again, so that you might teach our ways to the next generation of your universe.  Alas, at observing that generation of stiff cut-outs, I fear that, like Jeter, the weight of the universe proved too ponderous for you.  But then Q visits upon me, my doubts are dispelled, and at a symposium where blue milk and Romulan wine flow freely, we laugh together, along with Qui-Gon Jinn and your wise brother Sybok.

 

    When Emperor Palpatine’s “soul” was banished to Chaos by his pupil, it is said that the experience was “perpetual madness, as if to live forever like an open wound, experiencing terror without respite.”  But Chaos is the final resting place of Obi-Wan as well.  The reason Palpatine experienced endless anguish is because he refused to return to the Chaos, cloning himself endlessly, refusing to acknowledge that it was where he, where we all, came from.  Obi-Wan, however, did not.

 

    On the verge of Episode I, I thought Star Wars had entered its second Golden Age.  Then came the backlash, as hordes upon hordes of clones railed against this god who turned out not to be mighty wrathful Zeus as they’d expected, but like some stupid imp out of a swamp.  Indeed, by their conception, this god was not even divine at all.  And so, like the Emperor, they set out on a Great Purge to eradicate all memory of the existence of this god, only instead of the Inquisitors and Jedi Hunters, they sent out the would-be clone troopers of Atha Prime and the Jar Jar Killers.  And Star Wars seemed to have sunk to a torturous level of Chaos never before experienced.  But like the Jedi, we have survived the Purge.  Like Obi-Wan, we have realized the truth about Chaos.  And like the Rebels on Hoth, we have made a safe haven out of a frozen hell.  Even Dante found poetry in the Inferno.

 

    Ben always tells the truth.  He always did, and as Luke demonstrated when he spoke uncertainly – for he was still not a Knight, still a Padawan – the words, “I am Ben Kenobi,” he always will.

 

    There are no contradictions in Star Wars.  Maverick Moon, the Blackthorne 3Ds, Hoth Stuff and Jawas of Doom, skinny Jabba, Jaster Mereel, Skippy the Jedi Droid, the cloned Sate Pestage, the many rescues of Crix Madine, and the 1,001 recoveries of the Death Star plans – these are our icons, our heroes, our saviors, our plans.  What we have are questions, ambiguities, for while we are no longer Padawans, we are still only Knights, trying to understand this mystical Force, greater than can be thought.  And in understanding it, it may turn out ultimately that that far far away galaxy a long time ago was actually just an illusion, and you discover that there is a force beyond the Force, as Jacen Solo has begun to suspect – son of Han Solo, a non-believer turned believer – a bastard child born in literature, but whose potentiality was realized in cinema, a medium itself born of literature.  Now who is the bastard?  But Han Solo – raised by gypsies or by a murderer? – wouldn’t have it any other way.  Neither should we.

 

    The movie purists have denied the idea of a cohesive universe: in spite of the double-bladed lightsabers (“He could have made that up himself!”), in spite of the Coruscants (“It’s pronounced differently!”), in spite of the Aayla Securas (“Um…”), in spite of the Outriders and swoops, the infiltrations of the Expanded Universe into previously considered “untainted” canon sources like radio dramas and novelizations, the exclusionists have piled justification upon justification, screaming at the top of their lungs until Lucasfilm bows to their demands and revises its supposedly immutable canon laws yet again, for fear … fear that the screamers will withdraw their wupiupis.  The canonists, the logicians, have no system for dealing with contradiction, thus fear it like Palpatine feared Chaos.  We, the inclusionists, invite it, and fear nothing.

 

    George Lucas and Star Wars are no longer synonymous.  Star Wars has grown larger than its creator could have ever imagined.  It is, like the Force, greater than can be thought.  He is now but one of its contributors.  I don’t know that he would have it any other way.  In any case, the decision is no longer his.

 

    “Do not be afraid,” the specter of Obi-Wan, in a dream, would say to us about the journey we must now undertake. “It is your destiny.”  And at the end of the dream, when we open our eyes to a mirror and see that they are still closed, he will speak to us again, only his voice will emanate from our own larynx:  “When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master.”

 

 

Click here for: The original discourse on canon