(no subject)

[skygiants]

On 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.

Comments

[kore]

respect for Nnedi Okorafor for choosing to write from the POV of the trash monster.

OH MY GOD, I MAY NEED THIS.

[sovay]

OH MY GOD, I MAY NEED THIS.

I read that one! It's convincingly alien!

[skygiants]

She saw her path clear and SHE COMMITTED.

[larryhammer]

No, Empire is less than a year after Hope. That timing does not work out.

I may need this for the trash monster story, though.

[pedanther]

Official sources usually put Empire three years after Hope, although I don't recall off-hand if that's established anywhere in the movies themselves.

[larryhammer]

I'm surprised, but given I'm basing this off the Empire novelization, which I read when it came out lo these mumblety years ago, my memory could well be faulty. (Assuming canon hasn't been retconned...)

[skygiants]

I had a vague memory it was a number of years that was ... more than one and less than three? Enough time for everyone to get moved in and up and running on a whole new base, not enough time to build a new Death Star.

[larryhammer]

Clearly, we need a survey with a larger sample size. That or an official source.

[melannen]

I have been struggling to get through it for awhile after hearing about the trash monster story awhile back, it sounds like your experience is similar. Do you suggest just skipping to the trash monster then?

[skygiants]

Honestly, maybe yes? Skimming/skipping any story that doesn't immediately grab would probably be a respectable way to approach this anthology. There are SO MANY.

[sdelmonte]

That might be worth tracking down for the writers I like. Rucka hasn't done that much Star Wars but he's good at it.

[skygiants]

It might be worth it! Rucka's story is one I think I would have liked if I had not been kind of burnt out on the book by then; as is, it didn't super register with me. But it was well done!

[sovay]

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

That does sound great.

"An Incident Report," in which the officer who was force-choked by Vader files an HR report about being force-choked by Vader.

Is that Daniel Mallory Ortberg's?

[edit] Does the book actually hold up as an anthology retelling of the film? Or do you need to come in knowing who everyone is?

[skygiants]

It is Daniel Mallory Ortberg! I meant to say that and then forgot, but the story is unsurprisingly hilarious.

Unfortunately, I do not think the book actually holds up as an anthology retelling of the film; as someone who hasn't watched it in a couple years, there were a couple times when I definitely got lost in events and a couple stories that made me go "I don't understand who these people are or why this is here." It's a shame, because I think it would have worked better if it actually did hold together that way.

[sovay]

It's a shame, because I think it would have worked better if it actually did hold together that way.

Oh, well. That would have been neat.

(It seemed unlikely with all the stories from the cantina, but I was hoping.)

[rachelmanija]

There are FORTY stories. Probably that's twenty-five too many. Possibly thirty-nine too many. (Obviously the trash monster story is essential).

[skygiants]

IT'S SO MANY. I mean, I knew, but I was reading it on Kobo so I just kind of kept trucking, and then I actually saw how many pages were in the physical version and I was like "oh no wonder it felt like this went on forever."

[castiron]

I checked it out and skipped straight to the trash monster story. Okorafor did a brilliant job.

[skygiants]

Probably the correct way to go about it!

[musesfool]

The incident report was my favorite one, and I did like that Yoda wanted to train Leia instead of Luke (and also that he kept an old ugly pot that Obi-Wan made as a child??? How did that get to Dagobah with him after the purge of the temple???) but yeah, the signal to noise ratio wasn't great. And it spent way too much time in that damn cantina. There were a few I couldn't read at all (the mouse droid one, for example, was terrible).

[skygiants]

Yeah, I enjoyed the Yoda story way more than I expected to -- Yoda is not a favorite of mine, but the ugly pot was cute and so was his side-eye at the very notion of training Luke.

WHY DID WE SPENT SO MUCH TIME IN THE CANTINA.

[ceitfianna]

Yeah, I felt the same way. There some good stories but I feel like they committed to forty stories when they would have done better with a much smaller number. I like the one from the point of view of the flight deck Alliance person and the alien story was really one of the best. You might like the Legends of Luke Skywalker book with all the different takes on him. Not my absolute favorite as even though its all one author, the tone goes odd places but good conceit. These anthologies seem to work better when they're fewer but better stories.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it feels like a little more curation would have gone a long way. Like, okay, forty years, forty stories, we get it, but .....

[aberration]

I mostly couldn't stand that ~50% of this is just rewriting lines from A New Hope. I get that it's supposed to be the point, I guess - but I don't think it had to be and I own. the movie. I could just. watch it. again. I don't really think there's that much to get out of twelve other people's thoughts on Luke and Obi-Wan entering the cantina. And there's a point where while I can love random side character canon, it becomes a bit much. (The red droid didn't just want to be loved by a family, but intentionally malfunctioned so R2 would be picked instead like, come on. A malfunctioning droid can just be a malfunctioning droid.)

But - the time between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back is three years. I think that's plenty of time for Lando to fall into his Cloud City Administrator role.

[skygiants]

WE SAW THEM ENTER THE CANTINA SO. MANY. TIMES. Like, I get maybe you thought you were doing Rashomon but it's not Rashomon when we literally did see what happened and you are just retelling the same exact events!

(The red droid story had me rolling my eyes pretty much every other paragraph.)

I did always get the sense that Lando was pretty well-established in Cloud City -- three years to get from the absolute down-and-out that he's at in this story to Trusted, Responsible And In Charge feels pretty short to me, though of course that may be an interpretation thing.

[sapote]

There were a bunch of "Tales from" anthologies back in the day - like, back pre-Phantom Menace, in the good days of Mara Jade and the X-Wing Trilogy. I remember Tales from Jabba's Palace making me happy because it was back when women who read scifi had to make our own fun, and it took the Twi'lek dancer very seriously.

[skygiants]

I would like to see someone take the Twi'lek dancer very seriously! Some of the side character POVs definitely were fun to see, but a little moderation would have I think been helpful here.