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Jul. 23rd, 2018 05:59 pmOn the topic of Star Wars, which is a topic I've been on a lot recently for aforementioned reasons, last week I read From a Certain Point of View - the fanfic anthology in which A Number Of Acclaimed Authors retell the events of Star Wars: A New Hope through the eyes of pretty much every side character encountered in the entire film.
I had pretty mixed feelings about this overall. Some of the stories were charming! Because I'm an easy sell, I enjoyed every parody piece that took the banality of Imperial bureaucracy as a central conceit (standout examples: Ken Liu's "The Sith of Datawork," in which a bureaucratic genius guides a hapless officer through filling out all the right forms to cover his ass when someone asks why he let two droids escape Princess Leia's ship, and "An Incident Report," in which the officer who was force-choked by Vader files an HR report about being force-choked by Vader.)
On the flip side, there were the stories that were quite clearly designed to Make Us Feel Sad, and sometimes that worked (Breha Organa) and sometimes that did not work at all (the little red droid who almost gets picked instead of R2-D2 and just! wanted! to be loved! by a family! sorry, my heartstrings were not tugged.) And, I mean, I certainly felt appropriately solemn when I hit the first short story from the POV of a doomed rebellion member who commits to dying for the cause, but then I subsequently hit a dozen more stories that followed the trajectory of "here is some backtory to make me lovable AND NOW WHOOPS THIS IS MY LAST MOMENT, GOODBYE FOREVER" and by the time I hit the halfway point I was sort of over this as a short story genre.
In general, I think there was perhaps just a little too much of everything in this. I liked the first short story from the point of view of a member of the cantina band, but then there were FIVE MILLION short stories about EVERY SINGLE PERSON in that damn cantina and by the end of it I was like "I DON'T CARE, PLEASE LET US MOVE ON."
Also, I was confused and mildly affronted by the Lando story where he's a random gambler who apparently hasn't yet become a responsible Cloud City administrator -- A New Hope doesn't take place that long before Empire Strikes Back, does it? Am I missing something?
But I do have a lot of respect for Nnedi Okorafor for choosing to write from the POV of the trash monster.
I had pretty mixed feelings about this overall. Some of the stories were charming! Because I'm an easy sell, I enjoyed every parody piece that took the banality of Imperial bureaucracy as a central conceit (standout examples: Ken Liu's "The Sith of Datawork," in which a bureaucratic genius guides a hapless officer through filling out all the right forms to cover his ass when someone asks why he let two droids escape Princess Leia's ship, and "An Incident Report," in which the officer who was force-choked by Vader files an HR report about being force-choked by Vader.)
On the flip side, there were the stories that were quite clearly designed to Make Us Feel Sad, and sometimes that worked (Breha Organa) and sometimes that did not work at all (the little red droid who almost gets picked instead of R2-D2 and just! wanted! to be loved! by a family! sorry, my heartstrings were not tugged.) And, I mean, I certainly felt appropriately solemn when I hit the first short story from the POV of a doomed rebellion member who commits to dying for the cause, but then I subsequently hit a dozen more stories that followed the trajectory of "here is some backtory to make me lovable AND NOW WHOOPS THIS IS MY LAST MOMENT, GOODBYE FOREVER" and by the time I hit the halfway point I was sort of over this as a short story genre.
In general, I think there was perhaps just a little too much of everything in this. I liked the first short story from the point of view of a member of the cantina band, but then there were FIVE MILLION short stories about EVERY SINGLE PERSON in that damn cantina and by the end of it I was like "I DON'T CARE, PLEASE LET US MOVE ON."
Also, I was confused and mildly affronted by the Lando story where he's a random gambler who apparently hasn't yet become a responsible Cloud City administrator -- A New Hope doesn't take place that long before Empire Strikes Back, does it? Am I missing something?
But I do have a lot of respect for Nnedi Okorafor for choosing to write from the POV of the trash monster.
