Yoda Is Dead but Star Wars’ Dubious Lessons Live On

We didn’t say “break the Internet” back in 1999, but if we did we could certainly say that science-fiction author David Brin broke the Internet when he wrote in Salon that “Stars Wars belongs to our dark past. A long, tyrannical epoch of fear, illogic, despotism, and demagoguery that our ancestors struggled desperately to overcome, and that we are at last starting to emerge from, aided by the scientific and egalitarian spirit that [George] Lucas openly despises.” According to Brin, whose best-selling novels include The Postman, Earth, and the Hugo Award-winning Startide Rising, he received 900 emails on the first day his article appeared, many of which “had (ahem) very little good to say.”

Since then Brin has published a steady stream of critically praised novels, including . He is also a planetary astronomer who It’s suffused by his love and passion for space and adventure—both real and imagined. That devotion explains why he has remained an ardent observer of the films—he is the “prosecuting attorney” in the book , a mock court case about the pros and cons of the films, featuring other writers—and so we couldn’t resist checking in with him about the new trilogy. His feeling for the subject was apparent in our conversation.