Domus Publica
On Methodology
This site operates principle on the basis of suspension of disbelief, in that for the purposes of analysis it assumes that
the fictional realities being discussed are ‘real’ and coherent. To that end, it seeks to maintain continuity among the
many sources and the evidence. The natural question, then, is: “What is and what is not evidence?” Closely related to
that question is the natural followup: “How does one handle inconsistencies and contradictions between pieces of
evidence?”
The primary evidence for Star Wars is of course the films themselves, which are inherently supreme. In terms of
‘evidential weight,’ or the degree of credence they receive as evidence, they surpass all other sources. Whatever is seen
(or is required to exist by what is seen) in the films is the absolute and definitive portrayal of the ‘true’ state of the
reality of Star Wars, any thing in any other source notwithstanding. This reflects the official policy of Lucasfilm Ltd.
and its subsidiaries and divisions, as it has been repeatedly stated.
This should not be mistaken as a hard-and-fast ‘tyranny of evidence.’ Elaboration that is not disallowed by the films’
evidence is perfectly admissible, even if it may seem counterintuitive. Perhaps the clearest example of this can be
found in the eventual fate of the Imperial Senate. In A New Hope, it is made clear that the Galactic Emperor has
recently dissolved the Senate and that the “last remnants” of the old Republic have been “swept away,” implying that
the Senate has been permanently abolished. The Imperial Sourcebook and “The Empire Strikes!”, however, clarify
that the Senate has merely been dissolved “for the duration of the emergency” (as claimed by Grand Moff Governor
Tarkin in the novelization of A New Hope, Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker).
Likewise, the ending sequence of Return of the Jedi: Special Edition seems to imply pandemic jubilation at the death of
the Galactic Emperor at the Battle of Endor in 39 rS, but a thorough examination of the evidence reveals that he was in
fact overwhelmingly popular, prompting a reevaluation of the crowds on Tatooine, Bespin, Naboo, and Imperial
Center (it is after all only assumed that they were celebrating the Galactic Emperor’s death specifically).
Contradiction – that is, the mutual exclusivity of facts, where one fact cannot be true if the other is – is unhesitatingly
resolved in favor of the films, at all times. Consequently, when the claims of two pieces of secondary evidence (i.e.,
evidence other than the films) cannot be reconciled, the claim that better portrays the reality seen in the films takes
precedence.
The most obvious example of this is the various claimed lengths overall of Darth Vader’s command ship, HIMS
Executor. For many years she was said to be five times the length of the commoner Imperial Star Destroyer (i.e., 8
kilometers), despite the clear visual evidence of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi that she was at least
eleven times as long. In the event, this particular error was corrected, and the official length is now said to be 19
kilometers. This in turn raises another question: Is the correct length of ‘greater than 11 times the length’ only ‘valid’
because it has been published officially?
Mature reflection assures us that this is not so. In the first place, consider ‘Rostoni’s Law’:
Here one sees that the canonical history of Star Wars is ‘authentic’ provided that it does not contradict the films; to
wit, evidence that contradicts the films is not evidence. When the Expanded Universe secondary sources advanced
claims that the Executor was 8 kilometers long, they contradicted the films, and as a result never had any evidential
weight when it came to the length of the ship. An official correction was unnecessary; the films automatically
overruled the incorrect figure.
How does one approach these contradictions? Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker has eight officers
and Senators in the Death Star’s conference room before the arrival of Tarkin and Vader; A New Hope has only six. In
the former, High General Cassio Tagge vocally criticizes Vader and faces the Sith Lord’s invisible, intangible
chastisement; in the latter, it is Rear Admiral Motti (who has only a non-speaking appearance in the novelization, in a
subsequent scene). It is not possible for both versions to be true; therefore there were only six present and Vader
strangled Motti, not Tagge.
It is fallacious to extend this nullification of evidence to the entire source. Many of Motti’s lines in A New Hope were
taken from the character named Romodi in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker; if he appears at all in
the film, Romodi is both speechless and anonymous. Since we are certain that he did not say what the novelization
claims he did, shall we further conclude that he was not present, or does not even exist? Assuredly not. Here one
makes use of ‘Cerasi’s Foggy Window’:
We know that the novelization is not correct and the film is, but the contradiction is not as severe as that of the
Executor’s length. The novelization contains a “nugget of truth,” and it is possible to resolve the discontinuity in a
way that does not throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead of merely declaring him a victim of continuity and
consigning him to the oblivion of apocrypha, one may simply say that Romodi was present and entertained the
opinions he expresses in the novelization, but that he did not say them aloud and instead silently agreed with Motti.
Thus, one preserves the “nugget of truth” that was slightly distorted by the novelization’s “foggy window.”
How does one approach conflict between two sources within the Expanded Universe itself, rather than between the
Expanded Universe and the films? What does one conclude when one secondary source contradicts another? Here there
is considerably more ambiguity. In the first place, one must consider ‘Cerasi’s Law’ (stated in the same Ask the
Lucasfilm Jedi Council article as the ‘Foggy Window’): “The further one branches away from the movies, the more
interpretation and speculation come into play.” The evidential weight of a secondary source depends on its closeness
to the films; to wit, the source that is closer to the films – to include the source that is more firmly anchored in the
films’ reality – takes precedence over the more distant source.
In the event that conflicting evidence is equally close to the films, there are several options. If a cardinal fact or concept
in one source – a major plot point, or a piece of information about which the story turns – is contradicted incidentally
in another, the preference must obviously go to the cardinal evidence. The incidental evidence should not be nullified,
however; every reasonable effort to accommodate it should be made, provided that one does not compromise the
integrity of the preferred evidence. In cases where the contradiction is mostly cosmetic – e.g., the particular
appearance of Bothans or of smuggler chief Mazzic – and there is no clear priority of evidence, it is largely a matter of
personal preference.
Special mention must be made of ‘in universe’ sources. The argument can be made, of course, that any source treating
the Star Wars universe as being ‘real’ assumes a certain degree of ‘in universe’ perspective, but it would be fatuous to
consider a source written under the pretense of suspension of disbelief to be no different from a source that is written
under the conceit that it is an actual document available to characters within that same fictional reality. A large number
of secondary sources are notionally written by characters like Major Arhul Hextrophon, Lieutenant Voren Na’al,
Rivoche Tarkin, Pollux Hax, Obo Rin, the scribe, the scholars, and the New Republic Historical Council. These
documents must be treated with special care, in that by their very nature they are subject to a much greater degree of
bias, inaccuracy, and even outright fabrication, without prejudice to the fact that they are canonical.
Incidentally, this inherent fallibility allows one to easily correct errors found within ‘in universe’ documents (e.g., the
scribe’s torturously bad description of Soontir, Baron Fel’s rise through the ranks of the Imperial Navy, riddled as it is
with errors and lubberly conflation of naval and military ranks). Corrections to continuity found within these sources
should be accommodated when it is practicable, but unnecessary and baroque claims can be safely disregarded.
It is this author’s policy that discontinuities are best resolved when they leave the maximum of evidence in continuity.
This is sometimes achieved by reducing contradicted foreground evidence to the status of admissible background
information (e.g., Romodi, various details in the novelization of Revenge of the Sith), at other times by faulting the
notional author for insufficient information, bad research, or political/social bias (e.g., the scribe’s, the scholars’, and
the Historical Council’s glosses; hence it is canonical that the scribe wrote that the Imperial Navy’s Captain Soontir
Fel was promoted to major, but it is not canonical that a post captain was actually promoted to an inferior grade). In
some cases, the enormity of the Star Wars universe – with its galaxy-spanning interstellar community – offers a
satisfactory solution.
For example, The Bacta War includes a claim that former Imperial Navy officer Captain Uwlla Iilor served in the
Unknown Regions under a “Colonel Thrawn,” which was almost certainly intended to refer to Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Unfortunately, there is no reasonable explanation as to why a senior naval officer would bear the inferior military rank
of colonel. One can easily resolve the matter by saying that Colonel Thrawn is a different man from Grand Admiral
Thrawn, and that they simply happen to have the same surname. Similarly, the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook
mentions a “General Veers” at a time when the Princess Leia of Alderaan was still Imperial Senator for Alderaan (i.e.,
before 35 rS), but “Side Trip” shows that Maximilian Veers – who would later serve as the commanding general of the
amphibious assault force that won the Battle of Hoth in 38 rS in The Empire Strikes Back and is almost certainly
supposed to be the same man mentioned in the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook – was still a colonel as late as the Battle
of Derra IV (ca 36 - 37 rS). The more senior officer simply becomes another general named Veers, with no further
relationship to the more famous general necessary. Cf. “Admiral Jerjerrod” from the Imperial Sourcebook and “Moff
Jerjerrod” from Return of the Jedi.
The known existence of pandemic polylingualism in the galaxy offers another useful explanation of minor
discontinuities, such as the apparently synonymous titles of President of the Republic (Star Wars: From the
Adventure of Luke Skywalker and most other sources predating 1998) and Supreme Chancellor of the Republic (The
Phantom Menace and all subsequent sources), or those of Vice Chair of the Senate, Vice Chancellor of the Senate, and
Speaker of the Senate; it serves just as well to clarify some of the apparent redundancy of the Imperial State’s agencies
and their functions. We implicitly acknowledge that there is a multiplicity of languages and writing systems in use in
the Star Wars universe, and many are ‘magically’ translated for our benefit (to wit, what we see and hear as English is
not, in theory, what the characters themselves see and hear).
There remains, then, the issue of realism, an important aspect of fiction. The constraints of realism do not prohibit
such things as superhuman abilities or impossibly advanced technologies, because such things are allowed by the same
suspension of disbelief that allows us to accept the reality of Star Wars as being ‘real.’ Such things are part and parcel
of that reality; scientific wonders like hyperspace travel and even metaphysical concepts like the Force and its ability
to perform feats incomprehensible to modern science are perfectly permissible within the constraints of realism vis-à-
vis suspension of disbelief. There is even room for a certain amount of fairy-tale idealism in Star Wars, permitting
such things as organizations that are competent, homogeneous, and uniform to a degree that is not (strictly speaking)
realistic. In this context, realism refers to the demand that certain aberrations and irregularities – one might very well
call them absurdities and ridiculosities – do not receive a general amnesty.
Here, for example, one must include such things as impossibly low population figures. It is simply incredible (in the
proper sense of the word) to believe that the construction of the Executor “nearly bankrupted the Empire” (as Vice
Admiral Gilad Pellaeon claimed in Darksaber) or that a mere 1.2 million clones constituted the entire Grand Army of
the Republic (as claimed by Master Jedi Mace Windu in Shatterpoint). These things are absurd on the face of it; they
are profoundly flawed suggestions whose inherent nonsensicalness refutes them. One can hardly be expected to fight
an interstellar war against an enemy the scale of the Confederacy of Independent Systems – in Attack of the Clones the
Count of Serenno speaks casually of ten thousand more star systems joining the CIS – with fewer soldiers than fought
in the strictly Earth-bound siege of Stalingrad. This is a grotesque abuse of realism.
(Indeed, if Windu’s claim in Shatterpoint is to be believed, the Clone War was fought on a smaller scale than the
Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, and Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus captured, killed, or defeated more than ten
times the GAR’s total strength by the time of his third triumph in 61 AC.)
Ultimately, abuses of realism are characterized by a gross inconsistency with what know is or must be true of the Star
Wars universe, as portrayed in the canon (the films and the Expanded Universe) or as derived by rigorous analysis.
When one calls something ‘unrealistic,’ one does not refer to fantastic elements like the Force, ghosts, and ‘suitably
advanced’ technology indistinguishable from magic. Rather, one refers to nonsense that simply cannot be true because
it does not conform to the known reality. Such elements must be considered carefully so as to salvage as much as
possible, but Cerasi’s Foggy Window is only applied as a last resort. In many cases (such as the Imperial Sourcebook
and its claims about the Imperial Army’s manpower), abuses of realism can be simply dismissed as Imperial
misinformation or even shameless lying. Other cases are not so cleanly cut; it may be possible that some of the more
bizarre claims are irreparably and irredeemably flawed.
Ultimately, of course, this is the author’s methodology, and it is presented to make clear how the author approaches
analysis of fiction, and what methods he uses to arrive at his conclusions. It is not the strict suspension of disbelief
advocated by some, nor is it the intellectually bankrupt, all-inclusive postmodernist idiosyncrasy of others. The
purpose of all this is to be rational and consistent. Scholarly, scientific analysis is only possible with a rational and
consistent system. A scholar has no need for crystal balls and undefined concepts.
the fictional realities being discussed are ‘real’ and coherent. To that end, it seeks to maintain continuity among the
many sources and the evidence. The natural question, then, is: “What is and what is not evidence?” Closely related to
that question is the natural followup: “How does one handle inconsistencies and contradictions between pieces of
evidence?”
The primary evidence for Star Wars is of course the films themselves, which are inherently supreme. In terms of
‘evidential weight,’ or the degree of credence they receive as evidence, they surpass all other sources. Whatever is seen
(or is required to exist by what is seen) in the films is the absolute and definitive portrayal of the ‘true’ state of the
reality of Star Wars, any thing in any other source notwithstanding. This reflects the official policy of Lucasfilm Ltd.
and its subsidiaries and divisions, as it has been repeatedly stated.
This should not be mistaken as a hard-and-fast ‘tyranny of evidence.’ Elaboration that is not disallowed by the films’
evidence is perfectly admissible, even if it may seem counterintuitive. Perhaps the clearest example of this can be
found in the eventual fate of the Imperial Senate. In A New Hope, it is made clear that the Galactic Emperor has
recently dissolved the Senate and that the “last remnants” of the old Republic have been “swept away,” implying that
the Senate has been permanently abolished. The Imperial Sourcebook and “The Empire Strikes!”, however, clarify
that the Senate has merely been dissolved “for the duration of the emergency” (as claimed by Grand Moff Governor
Tarkin in the novelization of A New Hope, Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker).
Likewise, the ending sequence of Return of the Jedi: Special Edition seems to imply pandemic jubilation at the death of
the Galactic Emperor at the Battle of Endor in 39 rS, but a thorough examination of the evidence reveals that he was in
fact overwhelmingly popular, prompting a reevaluation of the crowds on Tatooine, Bespin, Naboo, and Imperial
Center (it is after all only assumed that they were celebrating the Galactic Emperor’s death specifically).
Contradiction – that is, the mutual exclusivity of facts, where one fact cannot be true if the other is – is unhesitatingly
resolved in favor of the films, at all times. Consequently, when the claims of two pieces of secondary evidence (i.e.,
evidence other than the films) cannot be reconciled, the claim that better portrays the reality seen in the films takes
precedence.
The most obvious example of this is the various claimed lengths overall of Darth Vader’s command ship, HIMS
Executor. For many years she was said to be five times the length of the commoner Imperial Star Destroyer (i.e., 8
kilometers), despite the clear visual evidence of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi that she was at least
eleven times as long. In the event, this particular error was corrected, and the official length is now said to be 19
kilometers. This in turn raises another question: Is the correct length of ‘greater than 11 times the length’ only ‘valid’
because it has been published officially?
Mature reflection assures us that this is not so. In the first place, consider ‘Rostoni’s Law’:
- Canon refers to an authoritative list of books that the Lucas Licensing editors consider an authentic part of the
official Star Wars history. Our goal is to present a continuous and unified history of the Star Wars galaxy, insofar
as that history does not conflict with, or undermine the meaning of Mr. Lucas’s Star Wars saga of films and
screenplays. [quoted in Star Wars Gamer no. 6]
Here one sees that the canonical history of Star Wars is ‘authentic’ provided that it does not contradict the films; to
wit, evidence that contradicts the films is not evidence. When the Expanded Universe secondary sources advanced
claims that the Executor was 8 kilometers long, they contradicted the films, and as a result never had any evidential
weight when it came to the length of the ship. An official correction was unnecessary; the films automatically
overruled the incorrect figure.
How does one approach these contradictions? Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker has eight officers
and Senators in the Death Star’s conference room before the arrival of Tarkin and Vader; A New Hope has only six. In
the former, High General Cassio Tagge vocally criticizes Vader and faces the Sith Lord’s invisible, intangible
chastisement; in the latter, it is Rear Admiral Motti (who has only a non-speaking appearance in the novelization, in a
subsequent scene). It is not possible for both versions to be true; therefore there were only six present and Vader
strangled Motti, not Tagge.
It is fallacious to extend this nullification of evidence to the entire source. Many of Motti’s lines in A New Hope were
taken from the character named Romodi in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker; if he appears at all in
the film, Romodi is both speechless and anonymous. Since we are certain that he did not say what the novelization
claims he did, shall we further conclude that he was not present, or does not even exist? Assuredly not. Here one
makes use of ‘Cerasi’s Foggy Window’:
The analogy is that every piece of published Star Wars fiction is a window into the ‘real’ Star Wars universe. Some
windows are a bit foggier than others. Some are decidedly abstract. But each contains a nugget of truth to them.
Like the great Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi said, ‘many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of
view.’ [quoted in the Official Site’s Ask the Lucasfilm Jedi Council]
We know that the novelization is not correct and the film is, but the contradiction is not as severe as that of the
Executor’s length. The novelization contains a “nugget of truth,” and it is possible to resolve the discontinuity in a
way that does not throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead of merely declaring him a victim of continuity and
consigning him to the oblivion of apocrypha, one may simply say that Romodi was present and entertained the
opinions he expresses in the novelization, but that he did not say them aloud and instead silently agreed with Motti.
Thus, one preserves the “nugget of truth” that was slightly distorted by the novelization’s “foggy window.”
How does one approach conflict between two sources within the Expanded Universe itself, rather than between the
Expanded Universe and the films? What does one conclude when one secondary source contradicts another? Here there
is considerably more ambiguity. In the first place, one must consider ‘Cerasi’s Law’ (stated in the same Ask the
Lucasfilm Jedi Council article as the ‘Foggy Window’): “The further one branches away from the movies, the more
interpretation and speculation come into play.” The evidential weight of a secondary source depends on its closeness
to the films; to wit, the source that is closer to the films – to include the source that is more firmly anchored in the
films’ reality – takes precedence over the more distant source.
In the event that conflicting evidence is equally close to the films, there are several options. If a cardinal fact or concept
in one source – a major plot point, or a piece of information about which the story turns – is contradicted incidentally
in another, the preference must obviously go to the cardinal evidence. The incidental evidence should not be nullified,
however; every reasonable effort to accommodate it should be made, provided that one does not compromise the
integrity of the preferred evidence. In cases where the contradiction is mostly cosmetic – e.g., the particular
appearance of Bothans or of smuggler chief Mazzic – and there is no clear priority of evidence, it is largely a matter of
personal preference.
Special mention must be made of ‘in universe’ sources. The argument can be made, of course, that any source treating
the Star Wars universe as being ‘real’ assumes a certain degree of ‘in universe’ perspective, but it would be fatuous to
consider a source written under the pretense of suspension of disbelief to be no different from a source that is written
under the conceit that it is an actual document available to characters within that same fictional reality. A large number
of secondary sources are notionally written by characters like Major Arhul Hextrophon, Lieutenant Voren Na’al,
Rivoche Tarkin, Pollux Hax, Obo Rin, the scribe, the scholars, and the New Republic Historical Council. These
documents must be treated with special care, in that by their very nature they are subject to a much greater degree of
bias, inaccuracy, and even outright fabrication, without prejudice to the fact that they are canonical.
Incidentally, this inherent fallibility allows one to easily correct errors found within ‘in universe’ documents (e.g., the
scribe’s torturously bad description of Soontir, Baron Fel’s rise through the ranks of the Imperial Navy, riddled as it is
with errors and lubberly conflation of naval and military ranks). Corrections to continuity found within these sources
should be accommodated when it is practicable, but unnecessary and baroque claims can be safely disregarded.
It is this author’s policy that discontinuities are best resolved when they leave the maximum of evidence in continuity.
This is sometimes achieved by reducing contradicted foreground evidence to the status of admissible background
information (e.g., Romodi, various details in the novelization of Revenge of the Sith), at other times by faulting the
notional author for insufficient information, bad research, or political/social bias (e.g., the scribe’s, the scholars’, and
the Historical Council’s glosses; hence it is canonical that the scribe wrote that the Imperial Navy’s Captain Soontir
Fel was promoted to major, but it is not canonical that a post captain was actually promoted to an inferior grade). In
some cases, the enormity of the Star Wars universe – with its galaxy-spanning interstellar community – offers a
satisfactory solution.
For example, The Bacta War includes a claim that former Imperial Navy officer Captain Uwlla Iilor served in the
Unknown Regions under a “Colonel Thrawn,” which was almost certainly intended to refer to Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Unfortunately, there is no reasonable explanation as to why a senior naval officer would bear the inferior military rank
of colonel. One can easily resolve the matter by saying that Colonel Thrawn is a different man from Grand Admiral
Thrawn, and that they simply happen to have the same surname. Similarly, the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook
mentions a “General Veers” at a time when the Princess Leia of Alderaan was still Imperial Senator for Alderaan (i.e.,
before 35 rS), but “Side Trip” shows that Maximilian Veers – who would later serve as the commanding general of the
amphibious assault force that won the Battle of Hoth in 38 rS in The Empire Strikes Back and is almost certainly
supposed to be the same man mentioned in the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook – was still a colonel as late as the Battle
of Derra IV (ca 36 - 37 rS). The more senior officer simply becomes another general named Veers, with no further
relationship to the more famous general necessary. Cf. “Admiral Jerjerrod” from the Imperial Sourcebook and “Moff
Jerjerrod” from Return of the Jedi.
The known existence of pandemic polylingualism in the galaxy offers another useful explanation of minor
discontinuities, such as the apparently synonymous titles of President of the Republic (Star Wars: From the
Adventure of Luke Skywalker and most other sources predating 1998) and Supreme Chancellor of the Republic (The
Phantom Menace and all subsequent sources), or those of Vice Chair of the Senate, Vice Chancellor of the Senate, and
Speaker of the Senate; it serves just as well to clarify some of the apparent redundancy of the Imperial State’s agencies
and their functions. We implicitly acknowledge that there is a multiplicity of languages and writing systems in use in
the Star Wars universe, and many are ‘magically’ translated for our benefit (to wit, what we see and hear as English is
not, in theory, what the characters themselves see and hear).
There remains, then, the issue of realism, an important aspect of fiction. The constraints of realism do not prohibit
such things as superhuman abilities or impossibly advanced technologies, because such things are allowed by the same
suspension of disbelief that allows us to accept the reality of Star Wars as being ‘real.’ Such things are part and parcel
of that reality; scientific wonders like hyperspace travel and even metaphysical concepts like the Force and its ability
to perform feats incomprehensible to modern science are perfectly permissible within the constraints of realism vis-à-
vis suspension of disbelief. There is even room for a certain amount of fairy-tale idealism in Star Wars, permitting
such things as organizations that are competent, homogeneous, and uniform to a degree that is not (strictly speaking)
realistic. In this context, realism refers to the demand that certain aberrations and irregularities – one might very well
call them absurdities and ridiculosities – do not receive a general amnesty.
Here, for example, one must include such things as impossibly low population figures. It is simply incredible (in the
proper sense of the word) to believe that the construction of the Executor “nearly bankrupted the Empire” (as Vice
Admiral Gilad Pellaeon claimed in Darksaber) or that a mere 1.2 million clones constituted the entire Grand Army of
the Republic (as claimed by Master Jedi Mace Windu in Shatterpoint). These things are absurd on the face of it; they
are profoundly flawed suggestions whose inherent nonsensicalness refutes them. One can hardly be expected to fight
an interstellar war against an enemy the scale of the Confederacy of Independent Systems – in Attack of the Clones the
Count of Serenno speaks casually of ten thousand more star systems joining the CIS – with fewer soldiers than fought
in the strictly Earth-bound siege of Stalingrad. This is a grotesque abuse of realism.
(Indeed, if Windu’s claim in Shatterpoint is to be believed, the Clone War was fought on a smaller scale than the
Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, and Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus captured, killed, or defeated more than ten
times the GAR’s total strength by the time of his third triumph in 61 AC.)
Ultimately, abuses of realism are characterized by a gross inconsistency with what know is or must be true of the Star
Wars universe, as portrayed in the canon (the films and the Expanded Universe) or as derived by rigorous analysis.
When one calls something ‘unrealistic,’ one does not refer to fantastic elements like the Force, ghosts, and ‘suitably
advanced’ technology indistinguishable from magic. Rather, one refers to nonsense that simply cannot be true because
it does not conform to the known reality. Such elements must be considered carefully so as to salvage as much as
possible, but Cerasi’s Foggy Window is only applied as a last resort. In many cases (such as the Imperial Sourcebook
and its claims about the Imperial Army’s manpower), abuses of realism can be simply dismissed as Imperial
misinformation or even shameless lying. Other cases are not so cleanly cut; it may be possible that some of the more
bizarre claims are irreparably and irredeemably flawed.
Ultimately, of course, this is the author’s methodology, and it is presented to make clear how the author approaches
analysis of fiction, and what methods he uses to arrive at his conclusions. It is not the strict suspension of disbelief
advocated by some, nor is it the intellectually bankrupt, all-inclusive postmodernist idiosyncrasy of others. The
purpose of all this is to be rational and consistent. Scholarly, scientific analysis is only possible with a rational and
consistent system. A scholar has no need for crystal balls and undefined concepts.
This essay was written in September 2006. It was first posted on 24 January 2007, and is the first essay or article to
be posted to the site since its return from its long hiatus.
be posted to the site since its return from its long hiatus.
 |  |
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