SF Signal: SF Writers Weigh In on Star Wars

SF Writers Weigh In on Star Wars

A New York Times article, Episode VII: Revenge of the Writers (free registration required ), talks to real, live science fiction writers (as opposed to the fake, dead ones) about Star Wars.

Some interesting quotes:

"Anyone who is a practitioner of science fiction is constantly dogged by the ghettoization of the genre. And a lot of that comes from the very simplistic, 2-D Lucasesque view of what science fiction has to offer." - Richard K. Morgan

"It started out 30 years behind. Science fiction was doing all sorts of thinking and literary experiments on a totally different plane. Star Wars was just sort of fun. It takes these very stock metaphors of empire in space and monstrously bad people and wonderfully good people and plays out a bunch of stock operatic themes in space suits. You can do it with cowboy suits as well." - Ursula K. Le Guin

[Ray Bradbury said that the end of "Star Wars" was long overdue. Mr. Lucas should have quit while he was ahead.] "The problem was he made a sequel. People have tried to get me to do a sequel to The Martian Chronicles, but I've never done it. Sequels are a bad idea." - Ray Bradbury

"I fell asleep during the third one, when they brought out the Care Bears" - Mary Doria Russell

Richard K. Morgan also goes on to say the Blade Runner is one of the best movies ever made. "You've got the gun battles and all that stuff but the movie is very much about internal factors, like robots yearning to be humans. And even now, 20 years later, it still looks like the future. That's a neat trick."

[Link via Fred @ EternalGoldenFanboy...er...I mean EternalGoldenBraid ]