Into the Unknown

An analysis of the various factors, both natural and political, that may have contributed to the slow expansion of the Old Republic throughout the Star Wars Galaxy, specifically as regards the area of space called the Unknown Regions.

By Matthew Trias

III. Politics and Human Agency

Often another factor overlooked in explaining the slow expansion of galactic civilization in the Galaxy Far, Far Away is the political atmosphere. Some proponents of the Halo Hypothesis (See Part I) like to insist that societies in the Galaxy Far, Far Away are so advanced that there is little strife; that all societies in Star Wars have access to high technology and strive to get along for economic benefits; that a harmony and stability driven by economic interests is, in their opinion, what allowed the Old Republic to be dominant for over twenty-five thousand years of history; that a never-before-seen equilibrium between societies should have been reached between the various member states that made up the Old Republic and that the only real conflict would have come from the “supermen” Force-users that, every now and then, would try and oppress lesser beings.

This is quite a stretch in reasoning. The first opposition to such a statement comes from the fact that no source has ever stated that the Old Republic encompassed the entire Star Wars Galaxy since its inception. The idea that it had is actually a supposition based on two presumptions, both being of a dubious nature. The first presumption is that the Old Republic encountered no natural barriers when it expanded outward from its birthplace in the Core. The second presumption is that the Old Republic, enlightened as it was, suffered no political strife that stunted its growth. Since we have already dealt with the first presumption in depth, we will now contend with the second.

The idea that only an enlightened civilization can develop faster-than-light space travel and colonize a galaxy is a favorite one amongst sci-fi enthusiasts. It can find its roots in the sometimes-rosy optimism of such notable people as H.G. Wells, believing science will eventually bring about an age of rationalism and create an utopia for mankind. There is little support for that idea in Star Wars, however. Indeed, there is little historical support for that idea. Many years have passed since the death of Wells and the Earth is still as stained by greed and ambition as ever. It is at least as likely as not that we will still take our petty disputes with us into the age of space colonization as well.

It is argued by some supporters of the Halo Hypothesis that a race which is aggressive and warlike in nature would eventually deplete its wealth and destroy itself, and if that is the case, how could a society like that still exist in Star Wars? However, if one can ask that question, then one should also ask how societies like this have thrived in real life. The Roman Empire, while not always relying on war to avoid unrest in its civilization, was still an aggressive expansionist state which lasted for five hundred years. The Mongol hordes, a nomadic society, terrorized Asia centuries ago and eventually conquered China and set up their own dynasty that lasted many years. Even the downfall of a modern expansionist power, say the USSR or Nazi Germany, is not perfect proof of the Halo Hypothesis claim. If Nazi Germany had consolidated its holdings and shored up its political standing with other nations, rather than overextending itself and exhausting its war machine by failing to take advantage of recently gained territory, it could have stood as a bastion of power for many years. Nazi Germany was eventually brought to ruin by poor leadership and a lack of patience on the part of its primary leader, Adolf Hitler. The USSR, meanwhile, was failed by its economic policies.

History has shown that expansionist policies do not immediately mark the death of any government. Though it can eventually lead to the dissolution of a government, it may take years or centuries for that dissolution to come. As long as the government has the resources and means to continue its expansionist policies, pleases its primary citizenry, and creates policies to wisely manage its possessions, it can continue it can continue. Admitting this, we should conclude that with the resources of a galaxy to plunder, an expansionist government could continue for a very long time indeed. This means that there is no compelling reason to believe that all space-faring civilizations in the Galaxy Far, Far Away were enlightened enough to see the advantages of working together. In fact, the civilizations of many races probably attempted to gain power at the expense of the welfare of other races. As with the interaction between planetary governments, governments of a galactic scale should be no different if one believes that greed would be common to all species, whether they be mammalian, reptilian or otherwise. Greed is, after all, a very natural instinct, the instinct that drives a species to attain everything it can possibly attain in order to just survive and not worry about being at a disadvantage compared to other species. Even among humans, the instinct is only overcome after much discipline. No doubt it would be a powerful instinct for other sentient species throughout the Star Wars Galaxy. It is an instinct that would certainly put interstellar governments at odds with each other.

Not only have we observed in history that governments tend to oppose the progress of each other, we have observed that governments in a so-called alliance will also oppose each other. Political commentator John Gibson quoted German newspaper editor and commentator Josef Joffe on the status of the post Cold War NATO Alliance in his book Hating America. In it, Joffe claimed to be stumped as how America had gone unopposed by the international community seven years after the Cold War had ended. Joffe stated that, “no one has flung down the gauntlet. None has unleashed an arms race, none has tried to engineer a hostile coalition. The United States faces neither an existential enemy nor the threat of encirclement as far as the eye can see. History and theory tell us that the international system abhors primacy. Hence the United States should have become the object of mistrust, fear, and containment. Its Cold War alliance system should have collapsed, and its members should have defected to aggregate their power against the United States. The signal from Nos. 2, 3, 4, etc. should have been: We shall draw a new line in the sand; you shall not enjoy the fruits of your exalted position.” As we have seen from recent history, that was exactly what happened eventually. The United States was not opposed militarily but politically. Both the United Nations and the European Union have been used by countries as political power blocks to blunt the power and influence of the United States, old alliances soon forgotten when the opportune moment presented itself to gain political and moral clout over that of the United States.

What supporters of the idea that civilizations of the Galaxy, Far, Far Away are enlightened and non-confrontational are trying to have us swallow goes against all common sense and observation. No equilibrium in which most beings and the governments that they run are satisfied with their status has ever existed. History has shown us that the trend is to grab more power, usually at the disadvantage of other people and governments. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the interaction of various governments also played a role in the expansion of the Republic. There is no reason to assume that as the Old Republic was expanding from its birthplace in the Core, it did not also encounter opposition from other governments as large as itself, or perhaps larger; governments that were perhaps founded by non-human species or even humans that had goals that ran counter to that of the humans who founded the Old Republic. The primary opposition to the human founded government were quite possibly the governments established by alien species. Humans have a difficult enough time finding enough common ground to avoid hostilities, it is not hard to imagine that when dealing with alien species, the task of finding common ground would be magnitudes more difficult. After all, the cultures of sentient alien species would have evolved completely independently from that of humans, sometimes with no undercurrents of familiarity and similarity whatsoever, as the cultures would be developed under the guidance of different biological drives and imperatives. What can be found to be important in most human cultures may not have any importance in most alien cultures. Would an insectoid alien species that valued a hive-mind civilization value individuality as much as humans? Would they not believe that their way of living is superior to all forms of social orders? Would some of these insectoid species not feel that it is their responsibility to see their way of life flourish? Space-faring alien governments that this hypothetical insectoid species already established would not likely appreciate a new upstart human government expanding throughout the cosmos, spreading its “alien” values and morals and becoming a possible threat. Governments would set up barriers, political and military, in an attempt to contain the fledgling Republic. The presence of the fledgling Republic would also unite governments previously in conflict with each other against it. It could take years to usurp the positions of these already established governments. Thousands of years if we are speaking of a galactic scale.

We know that such governments existed in the Star Wars Galaxy. According to the New Essential Chronology, a rival human-dominated government was founded in the Tion Cluster of the Galaxy Far, Far Away hundreds of years before the Republic was forged (Wallace and Anderson 4). The Tionese had even developed a form of hyperdrive not dependent on the hyperspace cannon network that worlds of the galactic Core used. This hyperdrive was developed years before the Republic developed a similar type of technology. Even after the Hutt Empire halted the expansion of the Tionese with military force, the Tion still remained a power to respect, well after the Republic was founded. The Tion eventually declared war on the Republic. The respective capitals of the two worlds were bombed during this war. The Republic declared victory when its agents stirred up trouble in the Hutt Empire causing it to take out its wrath on the Tionese. (Presumably the Republic framed the Tionese, making them appear responsible for whatever was done to the Hutts.) The then powerful Hutt Empire declared war on the Tion Cluster and within a century most of the Tion Cluster had joined the Republic so that it could be protected from the Hutts (6). Here we see an example of politics, the conflicts between governments limiting the expansion of the Republic. For seven thousand years, the space the Tionese controlled was not a part of the Republic. It was only in the aftermath of the Tion/Republic war that the borders of the Republic expannded to include the Tion Cluster.

We are given another example of shifting borders in the Star Wars movies themselves. In The Phantom Menace, Tatooine is in the possession of the Hutts and resides in Hutt space. However, by the time of the Galactic Empire in A New Hope, the Hutts have apparently lost official political control of Tatooine. While the Hutts still operate as crimelords and direct many of their operations from the planet, Tatooine seems to officially be under the authority of the Empire and is within Imperial space. Maps of the Star Wars Galaxy seem to confirm this apparent shrinkage of Hutt territory, as Tatooine is well outside Hutt borders on official maps.

Another hostile government that formed outside of the Republic is the nefarious clan government of the Mandalorians. The Mandalorians apparently amassed enough military might four thousand years before the Battle of Yavin that they were able to conquer a vast expanse of territory outside Republic space. They then used the resources of that territory to launch a war of conquest against the Republic. According to one oif their top tactical advisors who later became Mandalore, leader of the Mandalorian clans, the Republic only outnumbered the Mandalorians five to one in the Mandalorian Wars (Knights of the Old Republic PC Game). The Republic certainly did not have that much of an edge when it came to the numerical strength of their military, indicating that the size of Mandalorian space must not have been inconsiderable in order to field such a large force. These facts show there was a large swathe of space under the control of governments other than the Republic up until four thousand years before the Empire.

The New Essential Chronology also tells us that there were internal fights between member worlds of the Republic that halted expansion of the Republic. One of these scuffles involved the world of Alsakan which attempted to usurp Coruscant as the capital of the Old Republic. The conflict between the two worlds was carried out through political and economic actions in its first stages. Eventually, military forces belonging to the two worlds traded shots in the Expansion Region. Alsakan would attempt seventeen more uprisings over the history of the Republic (6).

Another factor that would have cemented resistance to the expansion of the Republic is when it came under the control of a theocratic sect thanks to the influence of Supreme Chancellor Contispex. Contispex sanctioned a number of crusades against alien species in the Outer Rim of the Galaxy (7). This could have possibly caused many governments to band together to oppose the Republic, and could have caused a number of Republic controlled planets to secede on moral grounds.

    When it comes to political reasons, one should also consider the expansion policies of the Republic. Just what was its policy? Could potential member worlds join the Republic easily, or was it a difficult process? If the Republic founders were wise, they would have realized that the more territory a government gains jurisdiction over, the harder it is to control that territory. It is implied in the New Essential Chronology that early on, the leaders of the Republic wished to keep down its rate of expansion. According to the Guide, at twenty-five thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, the Republic, “grew for a millennium, faster than Coruscant would have desired , mostly due to independent states that petitioned for membership in an effort to protect themselves from the Hutts” (6). Of course, the Old Republic could hardly deny the petition of these states. If it did, it risked marring its reputation and risked the possibility that the independent states it denied would form their own alliance, an alliance hostile to the Republic. The only other evidence for the possibility of the Republic attempting to slow its own advance comes from the Tales of the Jedi Companion. According to the Companion, “Starships attempting travel at lightspeed must fly established hyperspace routes demarcated by jump beacons. These beacons contain information about spatial phenomena, galactic drift, and destination coordinates that enable it to calculate a current and (hopefully safe) spacelane between its location and the desired end point. Each jump beacon can send a vessel to only a limited number of other jump beacons with which it is configured. This network of beacons allows a starship to travel to virtually any location, but the length of time required to do so might take months or even years depending on the number of mid-point beacons, especially with the rate of beacon degradation. The Republic Spacelane Bureau maintains a force of jump beacon patrols on constant repair and inspection duty, but the sheer number of beacons limits optimal levels of performance to around 80 percent” (Strayton 111).

    During the Imperial era, it is obvious this system is no longer in use. Instead, navicomputers are placed on board each starship. A navicomputer contains astronomical coordinates and performs the calculations required in order to travel through space, operations that millennia ago were performed by jump beacons. There is no reason why the Republic four thousand years before Yavin did not also rely on navicomputers. It could not have been related to cost. Surely, after twenty-one thousand years, navicomputers could be acquired at cheap prices. It is known that navicomputers were in use five thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, but only licensed hyperspace explorers have been observed using them. So the question is, why does the majority of the Republic use jump beacons? It is known that the Chiss Ascendancy uses a similar jump beacon system, designed to control its citizenry. It is possible that the Republic used their jump beacon system for the very same purpose: to limit the exploration of new territory by private organizations, and thus limit the expansion of the Republic, making it more easily controllable. The Republic would be allowed to license as many hyperspace explorers as it wanted to, but always it would license just enough. It would also be able to grant special dispensations to favored corporations, allowing their vessels to have navicomputers so that they could conduct limited exploration programs in search of new resources. As per the implication of the Tales of the Jedi Companion, the hyperspace jump beacon system would have eventually fallen into disuse as the territory of the Republic grew to be too unwieldy. Such abandonment of the jump beacon system was probably encouraged by megacorporations that desired unrestricted movement throughout the Republic and unrestricted exploration of the greater galaxy as resources in the Republic began to dry up after twenty-five thousand years of usage.

    The New Essential Chronology tells us that the Republic saw its borders decreasing for the first time in millennia (presumably since the Second Sith War four thousand years before the Battle of Yavin) two thousand years before the Battle of Yavin (Wallace and Anderson 26). Eventually the galaxy was plunged into a so called “Dark Age” thanks to the wars instigated by a new Sith empire controlled by the Brotherhood of Darkness. It is important to note that this is the second time its borders shrank, the first known time being the Second Sith War. During the Second Sith War, abandonment of the Republic by member states was not merely done because of intimidation by the Sith state. The game Knights of the Old Republic shows that many non-Force-users supported the new Sith Empire, feeling that the Old Republic had grown bloated and corrupt and that any healthy society needed change. The New Essential Chronology states that many in the galaxy admired the take-charge attitude of the rulers of the Sith Empire (24). We are shown by this that the Republic was not always politically stable and that during certain periods there was much political unrest. No doubt that during its twenty-five-thousand-year history, the borders and influence of the Republic waxed and waned considerably. There has been no indication that the Republic remained in some hypothetical equilibrium for most of its history. In fact, as the various examples presented in this section have shown us, the Republic has gone through periodic bouts of political instability, bouts that have occasionally had catastrophic effects, effects that would limit its expansion and prevent it from engulfing the galaxy at a stable continuous rat—as Halo Hypothesis supporters propose.

We near the end of our analysis of the objections of the Halo Hypothesis. We have but two more objections to address. The first of these is concerned with the role of technology in exploration. Halo hypothesis supporters often ask how any part of the galaxy can remain “unknown.” Even our primitive telescopes can spot stars light years away. By studying the UV spectrum of a star, we can even determine what elements are contained in a star, since elements emit certain colors that will show up when the light of a star is analyzed through a prism. This method, Halo Hypothesis supporters contend, should show the Republic what systems have valuable resources. This is certainly true, however it would tell the Republic nothing about the cultures or political situations of interstellar nations that may rule those systems, nor could it tell them if those nations possessed any significant military might. To illustrate this, let us revisit the scene in Attack of the Clones in which Obi-Wan is searching for Kamino in the Jedi Archives. The archives could have an exhaustive topographical record of the Unknown Regions, but without knowing anything about the societies that inhabit the systems of the Unknown Regions, the knowledge would be useless. Let us suppose that Kamino is in the Unknown Regions. How could the archive stewardess know that a star labeled A/23GI/F8945 is called “Kamino” by its inhabitants and is the center of a cloning industry? She doesn’t, explaining perhaps how Kamino is basically an unknown variable in an Unknown Region. Of course, probes and droids could always help with that problem, which leads us to the second objection of Halo Hypothesis supporters.

Halo Hypothesis supporters are quick to remind us that a civilization as advanced as that in the Galaxy Far, Far Away should have no problem exploring the galaxy with probes and increasing the rate of colonization with droids. They need only to send probes out to explore the galaxy and get a lay of the land. Construction droids can be sent ahead of the expanding borders of the Republic and prepare new worlds for colonization well before any sentient organic beings arrive to take possession of those planets. This theory neglects two things. First, it neglects the fact that other governments may not like probes scouting their space and would definitely not like droids building colonies for impending human colonization. It may, after all, be rather difficult for a probe to determine whether a deserted planet was claimed by a foreign government or not. Many governments could see any attempted colonization of that planet as an act of aggression and thus an act of war. Any such colonization methods would have to be used with extreme caution which would effectively limit the effectiveness of those methods.

Halo Hypothesis supporters have also overlooked the possibility of a cultural stigmatization against droids having such an important role in the expansion of Republic space. Droids entrusted with the task of preparing planets for habitation by Republic citizens should have an intelligence at least somewhat superior to that of normal droids. The hazards of space are many after all, and the taming of new environments may require creative power and a touch of ingenuity, something not possessed by automatons that merely follow their rigid set of programmed instructions. Yet, we have seen the results of giving droids too much free independence. Droids with too much independence have on various occasions overridden programming preventing them from turning against their living-breathing masters. Four thousand and fifteen years before the Battle of Yavin, the Great Droid Revolution occurred on Coruscant ( Wallace and Anderson 13). Thanks to the leadership of the assassin droid HK-01, thousands of droids rose up against their masters Though the rebellion was put down, the situation repeated itself thousands of years later on the planet Bakura. A droid uprising there killed many of the early settlers that arrived on the planet. Thanks to that incident, droids are banned on the planet. Most recently, the assassin droid IG-88 attempted a galaxy-wide take over. He managed to take over the Death Star II before the rebels destroyed it, preventing IG-88 from using it and sending the signal that would launch his galactic revolution, thus ending rending his bid for galactic domination. Obi-Wan Kenobi in the movie Attack of the Clones remarks to his four-armed Besalisk friend Dexter that if droids could think, “there’d be none of us here.” It is worth wondering just what he meant by that. Does he mean that if droids could think, there would be no need for sentients to do the work that Dexter and he are engaged in, that is, there would be nothing for sentients to do but lay back and relax? Or does he mean that if droids could think, they would have long ago attempted to conquer organic beings? It is interesting to speculate that droids attempted to do such a thing early in the history of the Republic resulting in the extreme droid prejudice seen in the Star Wars universe, a prejudice that seems to have existed before the Clone Wars and the legions of droid armies that participated in it. It is certainly reasonable to suspect that the cultural prejudice against droids resulted in policies that limited their role in the construction of the early Republic.

    Finally, we come to the end of our exhaustive analysis of arguments for and against the Unknown Regions existing in the galactic disk. We have examined natural reasons and political reasons. Of the two, it is the political reasons that this author feels are the most compelling reasons for why the Republic, after twenty-five thousand years would not have not have expanded to include all of the galactic disk. Technology is wonderful, but one cannot create a theory of the evolution of any government on what technology alone is capable of. That is ignoring the human (or in the case of the Star War galaxy, the sentient) element. Thinking beings do not simply invent a revolutionary technology, and then use it without consequences. If a particular technology can make a particular civilization successful, then other civilizations will look upon it with wary and envious eyes. They will attempt to impede the progress of that civilization in any way possible. This is the lesson of history and there is no reason to believe that the Republic did not experience this very situation. Yes, the Republic became the dominant form of government after twenty-five thousand years, but this most likely happened through the strength of its governing policies rather than all alien societies coming together under one banner without conflict to forge ahead. That single assertion of the Halo Hypothesis is its most unbelievable aspect. There is no compelling reason to believe that technology will reduce strife between societies; there is not even a definite indication that advanced technology is readily available to most planets in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, which further weakens the hypothesis, since its own claims cannot be substantiated. Even if the claim were true, it still does not take into account what we will for the sake of simplicity call the human factor, despite the fact that the Galaxy Far, Far Away is made up of many sentient species. Contentment amongst a civilization can reduce strife, but it can also produce it. All it needs is a person or group of persons who feel that society is not moving along as it should, that it should advance instead according to their beliefs. All they need do is convince a portion of society that it has been victimized and suddenly you will have great unrest. We have seen this happen in our society as well. How does one explain the ideas of the socialist Herbert Marcuse gaining prominence amongst intellectuals in a country such as the United States, a county successfully built on capitalism? These intellectuals who work in colleges around the country in turn influence a good portion of the young people in the population, influencing the future of the U.S.; and who could have predicted it? Who could have predicted that socialist ideology would influence the culture of one of the richest and most pampered countries in the world, a country that owed its success to a way of life completely contrary to the ideals of socialism? Not only does it do that, but it influences a particular group in the society of the United States that is reaping the benefits of the capitalist ways of the country: young middle- and upper-class U.S. citizens. What possible reason could they have for their discontent with the current capitalist system of the U.S.? Who knows. It is the influence of the human element. However, if we took the assertion of the Halo Hypothesis, that absence of strife produces content, such a development should be impossible. Yet it is not. One must assume that the same applies to the Galactic Republic.

    If strife did not come from outside the Republic, it would have come from within; if not from within then from without, from other governments. Considering that the Star Wars Galaxy has over a million different species, many having populations numbering in the trillions or more, those populations having different political and religious sub groups, and those political and religious sub groups being even further divided into smaller groups, is it any wonder that the Republic took twenty-five thousand year to engulf the majority of the galaxy? Technology would not be the deciding factor, but progress in the interaction between the various species of the galaxy would be. In his book Intellectual Morons, author Daniel J. Flynn quotes social theorist Eric Hoffer. Though Hoffer refers to humans, his thoughts should apply to the unpredictable nature of any advanced sentient race, such as the ones found in Star Wars. Hoffer states,”To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give pattern to the past.” Flynn elaborates the point by stating, “Systems fail because the notion of a single idea directing, ordering, and planning the lives of vast numbers of people is an absurd one. Human beings are too independent, and the fact that there are more than six billion of us makes applying one system to all of mankind an idiot’s endeavor.... The same impulse that pushes men to believe arrogantly that a system can plan the affairs of whole nations leads them to think that a theory can explain all of history. Single-bullet theories of history rarely pan out. The attraction of such explanations is their simplicity (emphasis mine). They relieve adherents from any obligation to think. The answers are preordained. ‘Human nature,’ sociologist Raymond Aron reminds us, ‘is not very amenable to the wishes of the ideologists’” (Flynn 4-5).

    Supporters of the Halo Hypothesis should be content with one thing. Four thousand years before the battle of Yavin, the Republic encompassed only a quarter of the Star Wars Galaxy. With the discovery of the Perlemian Trade Route, the Republic expanded exponentially, seemingly without the interference of any competing foreign governments or any natural barriers. Despite the fact that its borders shrunk briefly two thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, by the time of Attack of the Clones, the Republic encompassed eighty percent of the galaxy. In three thousand years, the Republic went from controlling a quarter of the galaxy, to controlling eighty percent of it. Fifty one years after Attack of the Clones, over eighty-five percent of the galaxy had been explored and/or settled, leaving only fifteen percent of the galaxy with the label Unknown Regions. This is an incredible rate of expansion and does seem to support the idea that had the Republic encountered no political or natural barriers twenty-five thousand years ago, it would have colonized the entire galaxy within a few thousand years, possibly only a few centuries. It should be noted that the main factor that keeps the successor to the Galactic Republic, the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, from spilling into the remainder of the Unknown Regions, is the fact that it is not known how much of the territory is claimed by possibly hostile territorial interstellar nations such as the Chiss Ascendancy which, though small, guards its borders jealously. Once again, the human element comes into play and slows what should be the speedy expansion of an advanced civilization.

A Note on this Essay

As you have no doubt noticed, this essay does not source all its material. This is mainly because most of the material about the idea this essay is meant to refute comes from personal conversations with people who support it and from Star Wars message boards across the net. There is, to this author’s knowledge, no “official” fan article or essay that puts the Halo Hypothesis in a coherent form. That is, there is no one fan site that can claim to have written the essay that “started it all.” The halo idea got its start on Star Wars message boards some time ago and has grown since then. It has been the observation of this author that most of its adherents hold at least one of the ideas I mentioned as being a part of the Halo Hypothesis to be true. Sometimes they hold several or all the ideas to be true. This essay is meant not only to be an objection to those ideas, but it is also intended to present alternative explanations for the existence of the Unknown Regions.

You may also notice that this essay does not list the Star Wars movies in its bibliography. This is because this author assumes that most readers will have at least a passing familiarity with the six Star Wars films and the majority will have watched all six films. If some of the readers are not Star Wars fans and have no knowledge of the movies, then this author is perplexed as to why a non-fan would even take the time to read this behemoth.

This essay was completed on November 13, 2005, and all information included within it is up to date so far as this author is aware.

The characters, devices, and situations mentioned in this essay are the creative property of George Lucas and Lucasfilm Ltd. This essay is in no way authorized by him or his company.

This author would like to dedicate this work to his new wife, Leah Marie Coe. I love you, babe.

This author would like to thank Abel Pena for inviting me to write this essay. You can also blame him if you feel it’s an unnecessary twenty-one page horror unleashed upon the internet. ;)

This author would also like to thank Julius Nile “Ulic” Sykes. When one reads your articles, one realizes that the full potential for developing the Star Wars universe has not yet been realized.

Finally, this author would like to George Lucas for providing us with such interesting ways to waste our time.

This author realizes that he likes to use the phrase this author....

Bibliography

Flynn, Daniel J.. Intellectual Morons. New York: Crown Forum, 2004.

Gibson, John. Hating America. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2004.

Wallace, Daniel and Anderson, Kevin. Star Wars: The New Essential Chronology. New York: Del Rey Books, 2005.

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