I hate those pesky little midichloridians
A reader writes in with not a bad comment:
“I would, however, like to offer one thought: while the Dark Times made it clear that force power and midichlorian count correlate, it was never actually demonstrated that midichlorians have a causal relationship to Force powers. For all we know, they’re the Force equivalent of radiation, the by-product rather than the source.”
My reaction is a little sardonic, I am afraid:
Let us assume you took five seconds to come up with this thought about midichlorians. It is not a bad thought; it might be true. It would explain why jedi are not stuffed into the jedi juicer to get blood transfusions to go into promising padawans.
But I notice you have now officially thought through the implications and ramifications of midichlorian bodies in the bloodstream for exactly nine hundred percent of the amount of time George Lucus (to judge from the scene involved) spent thinking about it.
I am not criticizing! I am a fan myself, and fans like thinking through the implications of ideas.
But I am also a science fiction writer. In order for me not to cheat my customers, my job is to think through the implications of an invented technology or an invented world, and come up with amusing and startling ramifications that only seem obvious in hindsight.
To use an old example: it is startling when John Carter is transported to Mars and finds he can jump tremendous distances, but, in hindsight obvious, because Mars has a lower gravity, and so everything, including his own body, weighs less there. This idea has been around since Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A PRINCESS OF MARS back in the gaslamp days. But it is still a science fictional idea: an implication not obvious at first.
The shocking beginning and the surprise ending of H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS only does not seem a surprise to us because we read Wells or saw the movie based on it. The shocking beginning does not seem a surprise to us because we are used to the idea, but the Wellsian logic was that, if evolution does not stop with man, there may be races as far above us as we are above apes on an older world not far away. The surprise ending is a perfectly logical ending, given that the Martians were so advanced that they, millions of years ago, eliminated from their planet all deadly germs and diseases, and therefore evolution did not maintain their resistance to such things. Wells thought the through the implications of Darwinian logic.
But when I see STAR WARS, I am not really seeing science fiction of this kind. It is not speculative fiction. It is an homage to Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The galaxy long long ago and far far away was 1940, in a darkened theater, when they showed a short cliffhanger reel starring Buster Crabbe before the main picture ran.
And so, much as I love STAR WARS, much as I love the splendor and the action and romance of swashbucklers amongthe stars, those prequels cheated me.
Yes, you are I or any other reasonably intelligent fan could think of some likely reason to cover the gaping plot-potholes cratering the bumpy road of the prequel trilogy. I can swallow a camel as well as the next fan, and strain at a gnat.
But then all that is going on is that the fans are doing the writer’s work for him. The fans are punching the timecard for their beloved yet tardy writer who has not shown up to work yet. We are covering for him.
If we can do his job — and making science fiction look like it makes sense is the science fiction writers job — and do it better than him, why are we paying him?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
