Star Wars on Trial (44 page)

For forty centuries, most of humanity lived under one form or another of elitist feudalism. Wherever people discovered both metallurgy and agriculture, some big men picked up metal implements and used them to take away other men's women and wheat. And just as predictably-some nerdy guys in cloaks would follow those warlords, waving their arms and chanting about how good this was. The alliance of aristocrats and cleric-magicians was so pervasive, only a few societies could claim to have escaped the almost universal pattern.

We carry echoes of that long era, deep inside. Generation after generation, when most of our ancestors bowed low to the king and shaman, partly in fear and partly in sincere devotion ... because that sincerity was a survival trait. Indeed, we are all descended from those kings, who got lots of extra breeding privileges. Is it any wonder we have a weakness for stories about anointed ones, princes or heroes who are destined, by blood, for greatness?

And yet, despite that pull, a couple of hundred years ago something happened. Our greatest minds started imagining a new way of doing things. One that emphasized both fair competition and open cooperation among people who are mostly equal and free. One in which you would be judged according to your deeds and character, and not who your father was. Where nobody could predict your destiny from blood or heritage, leaving it at least partly in your hands to shape, as your talents and courage and hard work might allow.

Is it any accident that true science fiction emerged at the same time as the Enlightenment? As democracy and industrialism and education and science-for all their flaws-started changing all the old rules? Science fiction is the literature of this revolution. It considers the possibility of change-both good change and horrific mistakes-but, either way, it looks change in the eye, and keeps asking, "Where do I fit in all this?"

Many people find this frightening. Their motives may be religious or economic or artistic ... but the reactionary sentiment always boils down to the same thing. "We've gone too far. We need to go back. To old ways. Better ways. When people were in touch with their...."

Well, fill in the blank. Souls? Feelings? Proper place in the cosmos? Call it certainty, the one thing that science fiction abhors ... but fantasy revels in. Certainty that good is pretty and evil ugly. That leaders are born and common folk should follow. That elites do not have to explain themselves, or answer to institutions, or face accountability.

Why are Anne McCaffrey's novels true science fiction, instead of fantasy, for all their dragons and bards and swords and such? Because, over the course of her series, her characters learn that once, long ago, there were things called "flush toilets," and printing presses, and factories, and computers, and universities ... and what is their reaction?

They want all those things back! They demand them back. And you know they will succeed. Feudalism will fade, because it must. It must, no matter how frantically it tugs at our racial memory.

And that's why Star Wars is fantasy. Because, as George Lucas has publicly avowed, it takes the older path prescribed by Joseph Campbell. The path of kings.

DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover?

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: What?

DROID JUDGE: Don't you wish to cross-examine Mr. Wharton? Or Mr. Brin?

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Why would I?

DAVID BRIN: So the Defense concedes this charge?

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: What charge? I thought the accusation was that Star Wars pretends to be science fiction, but is really fantasy. Mr. Wharton has eloquently made the case that Star Wars, in clear fact, makes no such pretense. The Defense has already stipulated it's fantasy. What are we arguing about? If you can't prove that Star Wars is faking SF credentials, there's no point in mounting a defense.

As for Opposing Counsel's impassioned speech-which he really should have saved for his closing argument-I believe the point has already been made that the Prequel Trilogy can be read as a cautionary parable, warning against precisely the "certainty that good is pretty and evil ugly. That leaders are born and common folk should follow. That elites do not have to explain themselves, or answer to institutions, or face accountability." After all, every instance of following those dictates in the Prequel Trilogy leads inexorably to galaxy-wide destruction, as Opposing Counsel has pointed out; in Star Wars, certainty breeds arrogance, and arrogance breeds disaster.

Some folk of a moralistic bent might choose to find a lesson for our time in that, as well.

Seeing as how Opposing Counsel seems to be so passionately engaged in defending the essential virtue inherent in the Saga, it would be impertinent to question him.

DROID JUDGE: Then you have no questions for Mr. Wharton, either?

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Oh, what the hell. If you insist.

Dr. Wharton, you claim that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally incompatible-that, and I quote, "You can't both ask `why' and not ask `why' about the same premise, any more than you can try to seek the same piece of knowledge through both di vine revelation and the scientific method, any more than you can answer `Just because' and `Because' to the same question." Do you have any actual evidence to support this preposterous assertion?

KEN WHARTON: Evidence? You mean ... hard evidence? (Looks around desk) Well, I have here a Magic 8-Ball. Let's say that'll double for divine revelation in a pinch. And here I have a pencil, with which I can do a scientific experiment. (Holds pencil in air) Based on my experience, and the universal law of gravitation, I hypothesize that when I release the pencil it will fall to my desk. (Drops pencil) Yup, chalk up another confirmation for Newton. But if I had asked the Magic 8-Ball instead... (Shakes 8-Ball) ...it says "No." Whatever that means.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Let me put it another way. A thought experiment, as Einstein would say. If, say, Magellan had prayed to God to tell him whether the world was round, and then (on God's assurance, real or imagined) Magellan went out and experimentally verified his world-is-round hypothesis by sailing around it (well, his ships did, anyway), wouldn't that qualify as "seeking the same knowledge through divine revelation and the scientific method"?

KEN WHARTON: Ah, you mean what if I had a Magic 8-Ball that happened to say "the pencil will fall to the desk"? The point is that, much more often than not, those two methods give you different answers. In that case you have to choose one method or the other. The best you can do, as you suggest in your example, is to use divine revelation to form a hypothesis, but then use the scientific method to test it. But even then, you're asking two different questions: "What hypothesis should I test?" and "Is this particular hypothesis correct?" I have no problem with assigning some questions to one method and other questions to another-so long as you don't use both methods to answer the same question.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Are you familiar with Schrodinger's Cat? According to the best representations of quantum mechanics, the cat is both alive and dead simultaneously until the observer collapses the wave function by opening the box. Do you understand that quantum mechanics requires us to accept paradox as an inescapable feature of reality? That either/or logic just doesn't work in the real world? Which is another way of saying that it can often be scientifically legitimate, even necessary, to answer "Just because" and "Because" to the same question!

DROID JUDGE: Is there a question in this, Mr. Stover?

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Not so much. What there is, in fact, is an introduction to an alternate interpretation of Star Wars as science fiction of the highest order. Please allow me to introduce my next witness, scientist and hard-as-nails SF writer Robert A. Metzger.

TAR WARS IS NOT REAL.

But that does not make it any less a scientific marvel, or its visionary creator, George Lucas, anything less than a scientific genius to rival Newton and Einstein. You see, the simple fact of the matter is that you, too, are not real just a simulation residing in some advanced alien civilization's computer.

And that is the whole point of Star Wars.