Star Wars Books Thread
- Thread starter Mr Light
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Yeah, I found the whole thing to be pretty scattershot. Unfocused. The second one is an improvement though as I at least started to buy into what passes for the core characters.
I've made it through to The Battle of Hoth in Lost Stars, and another thing I haven't mentioned yet that I like is the fact that it's showing us Imperial officers who are real, decent people, and not just eeeevvvviiiiillllll. We even got some acknowledgment of all of the innocent people on the Death Star who were killed, which I don't think I've ever come across outside of Clerks, although rewatching the scene I see that was about the Death Star II, but I think the point still stands.
Pretty sure serving on a battle station that just obliterated a planet of billions rather stretches the definition of "innocent." Just by being there they were all complicit and the rebels that killed them were also about to be obliterated by said station. That's retaliation and self defence all in one.
I agree though, it was refreshing to see Imperial officers with realistic personalities and understand why some of them served. For most it seems it was about having a safe and secure society, free of the corruption and endless dithering of the Republic. That martial spirit of public service was helped along by the absence of the war weariness that usually follows after such a massive conflict, which is exactly what the clone wars were designed to foster in the Empire's new citizens.
Think about it for a second: most of the fighting was on the outer rim. The armies were all either clones or droids, so no grieving widows, no lines of caskets being repatriated. All of the war crimes could either be blamed on the "criminal" Jedi on one side or the cybernetic monster Grievous on the other. Most of the ire from that wounded parties in that war is intentionally directed away from the Empire.
It wouldn't be until a decade or so later that major planets started to feel the squeeze and by then it was normalised.
Well, that's encouraging. I'm around 100 pages into it now and 'scattershot' is definitely a good way to describe it.
I think Bloodline also touches on this, with one character who is something of an Imperial fanboy commenting on the fact that the greater majority of people on both Death Stars were just low or mid ranking officers and not actual decision makers.
Well, not everyone on board was directly complicit with the destruction of Alderaan, as I'm sure there's likely some who never realized why they were there until they themselves see the planet attacked, or hear about it after the fact. And the second Death Star hadn't destroyed any planets at all, and yes, since it was still under construction there would have been civilian contractors present. But I take your point the Rebel Alliance can't afford to be considerate about them when taking down a legitimate threat to the galaxy.
To my way of thinking, if you're working at Auschwitz and you're not a prisoner, then you're complicit. I don't care if you're the Commandant, his secretary or the bloke that changes the lightbulbs. "I was just doing my job" is never a valid defence for participating in mass genocide. Worse still if you're working on the second one since you can no longer claim ignorance. By that point everyone there knows what they're signing up for.
The only tragedy here would be if the Death Star were carrying prisoners.
What about Dianoga? He's innocent of genocide, all he did was find a dumpster he liked and made it his home. He didn't know he was renting space inside a weapon of mass destruction, and as he didn't have a window or viewscreen to tell him what was going on outside, he didn't know a planet got blown up. For all we know he was just enjoying a nice quiet afternoon in the trash compactor when, boom, Death Star blow up. Or does the fact that he nearly killed or raped Luke make it okay?
On a more serious note, didn't Legends establish the Empire used a slave labour force to construct both Death Stars? If so, then when the second Death Star blew up there's a bunch of innocent people killed who were literally being forced at gunpoint to be there.
On a more serious note, didn't Legends establish the Empire used a slave labour force to construct both Death Stars? If so, then when the second Death Star blew up there's a bunch of innocent people killed who were literally being forced at gunpoint to be there.
Well if it's Legends then isn't not exactly relevant. Remember that Legends also had a cheaper Death Star knock-off inexpertly constructed by particularly dim telepathic space-ferrets.
As far as canon goes, it seems to be implied that at least the early phases of the first Death Star's construction was carried out by the enslaved Geonosian population, though they were wiped out about 4 years before the final phase of construction to cover up the secret.
So far as I know nothing specific has been said about the construction of the second on in any of the canon materials, but if I had to guess I'd say as with the first station, slave labour would only have been during the early more dangerous phases with actual technicians and droids taking over the later more sensitive phases. Though it wasn't structurally completed, the primary systems were online. If I had to guess I'd say the way the Emperor was driving Jerjerrod, he'd already abandoned finishing the exposed habitat sections and instead put all the personnel he had into getting the main reactor and the super-laser operational. At that point a slave work force might be more of a liability than a help.
It's all academic though, since the moment you refuse to attack a genocide machine because it has a not "100% directly culpable" population aboard then you're opening the gates to sentient-beings used as shields. Which in the long run would be worse because 1) you've let said genocide machine run around the galaxy, vaporising rebelling worlds and 2) your every victory now comes at a heavier cost because the Empire decided to place hostage populations aboard every station and ship in the Empire.
I can see what you're saying, but with the Death Star we are talking about thousands of people, a lot of whom seemed to be unaware that it was more than just a space station, and really had nothing to do with what happened to Alderaan.
I don't know if I'd find a WWII concentration camp a fair comparison, since that would have probably involved a smaller number of people, and it would have probably been clear from the moment you stepped foot in there exactly what it was.
Just wanted to remind everyone that Catalyst came out today. I original planned on buying the e-book and starting it today, but I decided to wait until I'm done with Lost Stars first.
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I don't know. I'd say there's a difference between a high ranking official who is devoted to the group's philosophy and a grunt who doesn't know any of that and just wants to protect his home or thinks joining them will get him/her a better life. Now if that grunt knows about the philosophy and joins anyways I would agree with you.
The situation with The Empire seems to be the former, with the lower level members of the military not being aware of how bad they were.
The situation with The Empire seems to be the former, with the lower level members of the military not being aware of how bad they were.
Didn't Han kill the Dianoga during the escape?
They're serving on something called the "Death Star". That really should have been a clue, no? Regardless, it's not like the Alliance had a choice. That thing had to go, one way or the other and it's only thanks to the force that they pulled it off at all.
Well we know they were using them on Kessel, though I don't know that there's been any mention of them elsewhere.
We do know from Catalyst (liked the book, incidentally), that, during the initial stages at least, many of the designers and workers didn't know what they were working on;
the project was extremely divided under various subprojects with "need to know" information chains and some outright lies.
Yeah, while I'm sure there were "innocents" onboard the station, it was a legitimate military target during a war.
I thought it escaped to another compactor when the compacting started to happen?
I do agree the Death Star was a legitimate target and threat that needed to be dealt with, but I don't think every single person who was on it should be held responsible for what it did. If I'm in a low level non-combat position at a military base in a warzone and I get killed in an attack, then it was OK for the base to be attacked, but that doesn't mean I was in any way responsible for the attacks that other people launched from the base.
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