OTHER SUNS SF JOURNAL12

The Five Most Racist Star Wars Characters

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Don’t get us wrong attorneys; we’re not saying that George Lucas hates all minorities. After all, his first bunch ofStar Wars movies handled the subject pretty well with a notable exception or two. But somewhere between the first and second Star Wars trilogies, Lucas’ imagination seems to have deteriorated to the point where he started basing all of his alien races on stereotypes.

Watto and the Toydarians

tto runs a pawn store in Mos Espa where he owns Anakin Skywalker and his mother. He’s is a greedy merchant, so obsessed with money and property that he even buys and sells humans as slaves. George Lucas obviously thought long and hard about what characteristics to give his ultra-capitalistic greed alien, and then decided that the most important feature was a long, hooked nose.

The B’nai Brith isn’t going to like this one.

As if the nose and the noticeable Middle Eastern accent didn’t beat the audience over the head enough, in the second movie, Watto has gained both a beard and a spiffy hat that somehow looks familiar.

Well that’s really not so ba…

Oh.

That’s right, Watto is Jewish. And apparently, he’s also embraced Hasidism by the time of Attack of the Clones. Perhaps that’s why Jedi mind tricks, associated with Christianity in The Phantom Menace via Anakin’s virgin birth story, don’t work on him? He obviously doesn’t accept the Midichlorians as his personal lord and savior.

4.

The Sandpeople

Sandpeople, or Tusken Raiders, are Tatooine-based vicious brutes who live out in the desert. They wear long pale robes and keep their faces covered. And they’re apparently so incompetent and backwards that Ben Kenobi calls their blasting skills less accurate than those of the Imperial Stormtroopers.

Yeah, these sharpshooters.

And then there’s the fact that they are called sand people, for god’s sake. It’s no huge leap to figure out which ethnic group Lucas is trying to smear with this particular race of aliens.

They have much nicer robes though.

That’s right, the Arabs are next on the long list of groups that Star Wars apparently has a problem with. And when it comes to the new trilogy’s depiction of Sandpeople, it’s no longer enough just to embrace racial stereotypes. Lucas must also make his main characters act towards them with chilling bigotry. After Anakin attacks a village of Sandpeople, ruthlessly slaughtering their women and children, he confesses the act to Padme, one of the enduringly ‘good’ characters who we’re presumably meant to find heroic. “They’re like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals,” he says. “I hate them!”
“Anakin,” Padme responds to his anguished confession. “What’s wrong?”
In other words, a man has just told her that he has slaughtered a bunch of innocents of a different race, and she’s asking him what the problem is.

3.

Nute Gunray and the Neimoidians

Neimoidians are the race who ran the Trade Federation, several members of whom conspired with Emperor Palpatine and several other evil dudes to undermine the Republic. They tend to talk in a funny accent, mixing up their ‘l’ and ‘r’ sounds. Their colony planets had Japanese-sounding names like Cato, Deko and Koru. They also wear funny hats and gowns that make them look like a cross between Chinese emperors and felt elephants.

Also, a chin butt that would make Ben Affleck blush.

We’re a bit confused about these aliens, though. Sure, they’re evil, cowardly and scheming like all the non-white races in Star Wars are, but Lucas didn’t really go for any of the ripe ethnic stereotypes that he could have. Nute Gunray is at no point shown enjoying Sarlaac tentacle porn, and the Neimoidians never once come at Anakin one by one to beat him with their kung-fu skills. But hey, maybe these scenes were just left on the cutting room floo

OTHER SUNS SF JOURNAL13

Six Badass Fictional Space Ships

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Space ships are a staple of science fiction, and a favorite of geeks and nerds everywhere. But not all fictitious space ships are created equal. Some are big, some are small, some are fast, some are slow, and some are so ridiculously badass that if you ever saw one up close you’d soil yourself from the sheer awesomeness of it all. These are no dinky exploratory vessels like Star Trek’s USS Enterprise. These are mighty interstellar harbingers of manliness and destruction, and we here at Weird Worm have brought you a selection of some of most badass of the badass.

1.

The Galactica:

Don’t let the goofy name fool you. The titular ship of the sci-fi TV series Battlestar Galactica is as tough as they come, especially if we’re talking the version from Ron Moore’s gritty reboot of the series.

The Galactica survived the first war with the Cylons — evil robots out to destroy humanity — and was eventually retired as a museum ship after decades of service… only to be pressed back into the fight when the Cylons returned and wiped out almost every human being alive. Being the last ship with computers old enough to be unaffected by the Cylons’ computer virus, Galactica went on to provide the only source of defense for the remnants of the human race, single-handedly holding back the Cylon hordes and surviving violent atmospheric reentries, boarding parties, and countless battles. This is a ship that takes a lickin’ and keeps on killin’.

In addition to its durability, the sheer scale of the Galactica is incredible. For perspective, its side-mounted landing pods, relatively small compared to the rest of the ship, house whole squadrons of fighter craft and can accommodate large passenger ships comfortably.

And this is how it looked before it got really beat up.

2.

The Death Star:

Star Wars’ Death Star may not be a ship in the strictest technical sense, but we’d say it counts on the grounds that it’s in space, it can move around and it’s badass as all hell. In fact, if the god of badassery were to pass out after wrestling some polar bears and then have an exceptionally badass dream, it might almost be half as badass as the Death Star.

This is a station the size of a small moon whose sole purpose is to blow up planets that happen to have gotten on the Galactic Empire’s bad side. Its whole purpose is to dispense death on a cosmic scale — it’s even in the name.

Of course, the Death Star does have some flaws. Like that one little exhaust vent that, when targeted by an extremely skilled young Jedi apprentice, causes the entire thing to explode. But hey, let’s see you build a planet-destroying super station and not miss a few little details.

The Empire doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as “overkill.”

3.

The Scimitar:

Star Trek: Nemesis, the last of the Star Trek movies using the Next Generation cast, has a mixed reputation among Trekkies… some believe it sucked, while others insist that it was in fact the suckiest film that ever sucked in the history of sucking. However, one thing that no one argues about is the Scimitar, the massive warship employed by the film’s villain, is a fine example of badassery.

The Scimitar is massive and armed to the teeth, carrying dozens of attack fighters, hundreds of nightmarish alien soldiers, and countless weapon systems. It can also cloak so as to render itself undetectable to other ships, and unlike other cloaked ships in the Star Trek universe, the Scimitar can still fire its weapons while cloaked, allowing it to devastate its enemies with impunity.

And if all else fails, the Scimitar is also equipped with a radiation weapon capable of killing every living thing on a planet in minutes. Definitely not the sort of thing you’d want to cut off in traffic.

Eep.

4.

Atlantis:

In the mythos of Stargate: Atlantis — the second TV spin-off of the ‘90s sci-fi action movie, Stargate — Atlantis is a super-advanced alien city in the distant Pegasus Galaxy. However, Atlantis is more than just a city. It’s also a space ship equipped with a hyper drive capable of taking it to other planets and potentially even other galaxies.

While not intended for war, Atlantis is no slouch in a fight, either. The city has an energy shield capable of rendering it virtually impervious to harm, and it is armed with hundreds of psychically controlled drone missiles that can annihilate virtually any attacking ship. When worse comes to worse, it can also submerge itself miles beneath any available ocean to evade attacks.

For surviving tens of thousands of years and several brutal wars and still being the prettiest ship on the list, Atlantis has definitely earned its badass status.

It has lots of ocean view condos for mega cheap.

5.

The Hyperion:

Hailing from the Starcraft franchise of video games, the massive battle cruiser Hyperion was once the personal vessel of rebel leader turned self-appointed emperor Arcturus Mengsk. As such, it comes appointed with not only the latest and greatest in 26th century weapons technology, but also spacious interiors and luxurious accoutrements not normally seen on a war vessel.

Unfortunately for Arcturus, it hasn’t belonged to him for some time, however. Shortly after his rise to power, James Raynor, a former underling of Mengsk’s disgusted with his betrayals, stole the Hyperion right out of its shipyard and proceeded to use it as a base for a years long rebel campaign against Mengsk’s rule.

The Hyperion has survived battles with alien armadas and tyrannical governments, and it even comes equipped with a rustic cantina complete with a jukebox (playing such hits as “Terran Up the Night” and “A Zerg, a Shotgun, and You”), a video game arcade, holographic strippers, and rare Umojan beer. Now that’s what we call badass.

Rides don’t get much more pimped than this.

6.

The Millennium Falcon:

One of most recognizable ships in all sci-fi, Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon may look rough, but, as Han Solo famously said, “she’s got it where it counts.”

The Falcon played a crucial role in overthrowing the Galactic Empire, but it was wanted by the authorities even before then, having long been used for various acts of smuggling. It is also renowned for its speed, famously making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

The parsec is actually a measure of space rather than time, so this statement doesn’t actually make any sense, but who’d dare mention that to Han? He’d just sick his wookie on them.

The Falcon never let age or hard life slow it down, and for embodying the adventure and excitement of the Star Wars universe, it most certainly qualifies as badass.

The fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

THE UNFUFILLED PROMISE OFGRITTY SPACE OPERA

Everybody talks about the fact that there's no more space opera on television, and only the occasional movie. What's easy to forget, though, is that just a decade ago we appeared to be on the verge of a brilliant new era of space adventure.

In the early 2000s, space opera was being reinvented. Gone were the shiny sets and pastel uniforms — and in their place came a new gritty realism, with handheld cameras and flawed characters. Space opera was coming of age at last. And then, it was gone. What happened?

With space opera all but vanished from the mass media these days, it's actually kind of weird to remember how much the subgenre appeared to be renewing itself in the early 2000s. (This year, the only space movies arePrometheus, Gravity, and maybe Lockout. And on television, there's bupkis, unless Syfy hurries up and gets Untitled Robert Hewitt Wolfe Project on the air this fall, hopefully with a catchier name.)

Space opera had two big renaissances: one in the late 1970s, after Star Wars, and one in the late 1980s, starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the 1990s, there were multiple Star Trek shows on the air, plus Space: Above and Beyond, Babylon 5, Earth: Final Conflict, and the Stargate shows. These shows made occasional attempts to introduce edgier topics and themes, especially Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine. Edited to add: And Farscape, which launched in 1999, also explored some dark themes as well. Apologies to everyone who felt sad that Farscape was left out.

But in the early 2000s, it really felt as though space operas were becoming more realistic, both in their look and in the topics they were able to explore. The big, brass-band-and-ribbons feeling of 1990s Star Trek was replaced by something a bit more muted.

At the movies, our new space hero was Richard B. Riddick. There was a wave of semi-realistic Martian adventure movies. (Emphasis on "semi".) Space Cowboystried to give a somewhat realistic picture of space exploration. Stephen Soderbergh tried to revamp the less-action-oriented Solaris. (And, as LightningLouie points out in comments, theStar Wars prequels were becoming progressively grittier.)

Meanwhile, on television, Firefly andBattlestar Galacticacompletely changed how we saw space action. It's kind of amazing to remember it now, but when the BSG reboot first appeared, fans started accusing Ronald D. Moore of copying Joss Whedon. The handheld camerawork, the jerky zooms, the crumbling, falling-apart old spaceships, and the lack of sound in space... the feel of BSG seemed to owe a lot to Firefly.

Of course, the two shows couldn't be more different — one follows a band of outlaws, the other a military vessel with the last remains of a civilian government. They tackle very different themes, andFirefly is a lot more whimsical and self-mocking than BSG. But what they share is a rejection of the slickness and false jollity of a lot of the space adventures that had gone before. Both shows also include a healthy skepticism about social institutions, and a willingness to show the "bad guys" triumphing. The great accomplishment of Firefly and BSG's protagonists, at least week to week, is surviving.

And those, to a large extent, are the hallmarks of "gritty space opera." The flawed characters, the slightly nihilistic stories in which heroism is either downsized or questioned. There are still implacable villains, but you don't defeat them just by finding a handy exhaust port, or telling them to "Sleep." Moral issues are at least brought up, if not dwelt upon. People actually have sex. There's less of an emphasis on what people used to refer to as "happy, competent characters" who solve problems with technobabble.

Even Star Trek seemed to be trying to get in on the act, with the misjudgedEnterprise. It was still very Trek-ish, but the uniforms were less bright, the ship was less clean, and the theme song was a Country ballad instead of a rousing orchestral score. Unfortunately, Enterprise made nods towards the style of gritty space opera, but failed to capture much of the substance. (The other long-running franchise, Stargate, also tried the same thing withStargate Universe, with slightly better results.)

All of which raises the question: what is realism in space opera, anyway? In a lot of ways, space opera is similar to superhero narratives: too much realism, and the genre dies. For example, I'm not sure mass audiences would want to watch an ongoing space opera narrative without faster-than-light travel. (Or in the case of Firefly, a very heavily populated system with lots of planets.) Also, you don't want to worry too much about how these people have artificial gravity, or how they can all communicate. And so on. As with superheroes, you take a certain amount of stuff for granted, and then raise questions within that framework.

In any case, in 2003 or 2004, you might have been forgiven for thinking we were on the verge of bold new era in space opera, with more mold-breaking TV shows on the way. Obviously,Firefly had failed — but it was already a cult classic, with a movie spinoff in development.BSG was new and thrilling, in a way that few people had expected. Riddick was becoming an ongoing hero. Space opera was the hot new genre in books. And so on.

So what happened?

A couple of things come to mind:

1) 9/11 changed things. After 9/11, any narratives that questioned themes of heroism and explored flawed heroes, the wayBSG did, were automatically subversive. Even though a lot of the space opera of the early 2000s was reacting to pop culture of the 1990s, to audiences it looked like a reaction to the Bush era in American politics. And obviously, BSG took that and ran with it, doing increasingly daring stories in which the "good guys" became suicide bombers and killed their own people. This probably gave more creative juice to shows like BSG, but also ensured that a narrative like that would never appear on a major network, or as a major big-budget movie. Gritty space opera became a form of protest, by default — which is both energizing and marginalizing.

2) You can only deconstruct your roots for so long
At least, that's what comics creators seemed to find. Right around the time that space opera was turning gritty, a lot of superhero creators were going the opposite way. Alan Moore may have done for superheroes what Joss Whedon and Ron Moore did for space heroes, withWatchmen and The Killing Joke — but by the early 2000s, he was doing America's Best Comics, including the bright, heroic Tom Strong. Kurt Busiek was making waves with colorful-but-introspective Astro City. You heard comics buffs saying the age of "deconstruction" had been replaced by "reconstruction." So at some point, gritty space opera was bound to stop being a challenge to the status quo, and just become... the status quo. What's sad is that we haven't seen a wave of "reconstruction" in mass media space opera, outside of J.J. Abrams' Trek and a few other things.

The original space opera was about meeting the transcendent and finding ourselves — think 2001: A Space Odyssey. The grittier space opera of the early 2000s was still about meeting ourselves, only we were shorter than we looked on television. It also added layers of space horror (and space madness) and drew on all of the intensity that creators like Ridley Scott and Douglas Trumbull had added to the genre over the years.

So it's a great disappointment that as soon as we got a spacefaring future that wasn't totally gleaming and antiseptic, it got taken away again. And we're still waiting to see what comes next.

NEIGHBOR IN OPHIUCHUS

NOMAD PLANETS

Galaxy May Swarm with 'Nomad Planets'

Our galaxy may be awash in homeless planets, wandering through space instead of orbiting a star. In fact, there may be 100,000 times more "nomad planets" in the Milky Way than stars, according to a new study by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. 

If observations confirm the estimate, this new class of celestial objects will affect current theories of planet formation and could change our understanding of the origin and abundance of life.

"If any of these nomad planets are big enough to have a thick atmosphere, they could have trapped enough heat for bacterial life to exist," said Louis Strigari, leader of the team that reported the result in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Although nomad planets don't bask in the warmth of a star, they may generate heat through internal radioactive decay and tectonic activity.

Searches over the past two decades have identified more than 500 planets outside our solar system, almost all of which orbit stars. Last year, researchers detected about a dozen nomad planets, using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which looks for stars whose light is momentarily refocused by the gravity of passing planets.

The research produced evidence that roughly two nomads exist for every typical, so-called main-sequence star in our galaxy. The new study estimates that nomads may be up to 50,000 times more common than that.

To arrive at what Strigari himself called "an astronomical number," the KIPAC team took into account the known gravitational pull of the Milky Way galaxy, the amount of matter available to make such objects and how that matter might divvy itself up into objects ranging from the size of Pluto to larger than Jupiter. Not an easy task, considering no one is quite sure how these bodies form. According to Strigari, some were probably ejected from solar systems, but research indicates that not all of them could have formed in that fashion.

"To paraphrase Dorothy from 'The Wizard of Oz,' if correct, this extrapolation implies that we are not in Kansas anymore, and in fact we never were in Kansas," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, author of "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets," who was not involved in the research. "The universe is riddled with unseen planetary-mass objects that we are just now able to detect."

A good count, especially of the smaller objects, will have to wait for the next generation of big survey telescopes, especially the space-based Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope and the ground-based Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, both set to begin operation in the early 2020s.

A confirmation of the estimate could lend credence to another possibility mentioned in the paper -- that as nomad planets roam their starry pastures, collisions could scatter their microbial flocks to seed life elsewhere.

"Few areas of science have excited as much popular and professional interest in recent times as the prevalence of life in the universe," said co-author and KIPAC Director Roger Blandford. "What is wonderful is that we can now start to address this question quantitatively by seeking more of these erstwhile planets and asteroids wandering through interstellar space, and then speculate about hitchhiking bugs."

THE UN IVERSE ACCORDING TO PHIILIP K DICK

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This may expose the total sci-fi nerd in us (or maybe that ship has sailed), but we were overcome with pleasant nostalgia when we saw these Philip K. Dick covers from the early 1990s over at artist Gavin Rotherty’s blog. Illustrator Chris Moore’s intense images glow with weird, shiny tension, and his colorful worlds are a perfect match for Dick’s intricate, metaphysical prose — not to mention that he’s a serious master of the epic sandscape. Looking at these illustrations makes us want to fill our bookshelves with nothing but Dick novels — so long as they can have these covers. Click through to see a few of our favorites, and then head on over here to see what must be close to the full collection.