This May, the movie franchise with perhaps the largest fan base of them all, has turned 30 this May. Looking back on the three decades that have passed ever since, we’ll have to admit that it had its ups and downs – think the “remastered” versions released over the years, the casting of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, replacing Sebastian Shaw with him in the “Jedi ghosts” scene, and the list could go on forever. Star Wars also has perhaps the most amazing fans, continuously expanding the knowledge available about the galaxy far-far away. Yet these fans don’t always stop at fiction and cosplay. Sometimes, their dedication goes beyond the usual, and they create things that show true devotion to the Star Wars universe. Like in the cases below.
The science of Star Wars
It is clear that Star Wars creators are willing to sacrifice scientific accuracy for the story. After all, it’s not called 3 space myths debunked, right? Yet there are quite a few things about the franchise that are not only possible – think holograms and cybernetic prosthetics – but have already been created – like security ‘droids and landing on a different celestial body.
Ahead of the release of “The Force Awakens”, faculty members of Georgia Tech have discussed quite a few elements of the movies that are more science than fiction. Among the topics covered by the scholars of the university, we can find light speed, The Force, habitable worlds, and sentient robots. Read the complete discussion here.
Sabacc
Sabacc is a highly popular card game in the Star Wars galaxy – among others, it is the game that cost Lando his ship, the Millennium Falcon, which has become Han’s ship at by time we met him on screen. The game is not covered in detail in the movies, and neither does it have a detailed description in the vast library of official and fan fiction. Unless it has, of course – and it does, thanks to the folks over at West End Games, the makers of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game.
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, created by role-playing legend slash science fiction writer Greg Costikyan, is nothing short of a masterpiece. The game, that has contributed a great deal to what later becomes the Star Wars Expanded Universe, was an Origins Award Winner for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1987. It was recognized by Lucasfilm itself – Timothy Zahn was sent a box of its sourcebooks to base his Thrawn novels on the background information in them. Which is amazing, considering the level of detail.
Sabacc was described in detail in “Crisis on Cloud City”. It’s a game played with a deck of cards based on Tarot but it has a complex set of rules described here.
Speaking of the Expanded Universe
The whole Star Wars Expanded Universe (called “Legends” today) is an amazing feat of the fandom on its own. Hundreds of novels, novellas, short stories, comic books, video games, audio dramas, and fan-made movies make it a complete, living organism with millions of hearts. Unfortunately, Disney declared most of it “non-canon”, likely willing to create its own mythology around the Star Wars universe – this doesn’t make the pure extent of Star Wars Legends any less awesome.
