Ask Steve Perry

[Undeadite]

No offense, Im just stubborn 

[The Diesel]

I would bet SM is right on the money.  The guy is a virtual Alien Encyclopedia.  I would trust him on Alien facts before I would trust myself counting while watching it.  I'm sure I would leave out something that he would know about.

[SM]

And thats a shame isn't it?

None taken.

You may notice something I missed (in spite of Diesels kind words).

[SM]

No question here for Senor Perry, just some comments about Death Star, what I just finished.

Not sure what to make of it.  It was readable enough, but I tend to like Star Wars books that actually have some warring in them.  In Death Star it all about setting up characters for 200 pages while very little else happened.  Once it really got going after this it was decent enough - decent enough that I sat up till 1 am to find out what happened.

However there were a couple of niggles:

- I was hoping that there would be some explanation as to why we can see a frame at the end of Revenge Of The Sith; then the book starts around 20 years later and it's still just a frame - which then seems to be completed in a matter of months.  Sabotage is inferred to have occurred in the past, but there's no real detail.

- 'Milking' is a truly awful curse word.

- A bit more debate between the main characters would've been nice I think.  Someone trying to argue the case for the Empire and the destruction of Despayre and Alderaan.  Some of the guys like Stihl and Vil and Tenn obviously have been serving the Empire and it's ideals for a while.  Would've been insteresting to see one of then wrestling with their doubts a bit more.

- The Death Star has florists - and lingerie shops???  A cantina makes sense - but the other stuff - on a "battle" station?

[Uncanny Antman]

If you serve on board the Death Star long-term, you wanna be able to romance your sweetie, dontcha?

[SM]

Well that was the other thing.  There was a considerable lack of chicks on both Death Stars - and yet two main characters were women.  I think their purpose and presence in the story was reasoned out well enough - but not to the extent of a there being knicker shop.  It's almost become the Death Mall.  I wonder if they were about to set up a House Of Hair Removal next door.  Brazillians for wookiees... 

[steveperry]

Death Star is the story we wanted to tell. Like Titanic, everybody knows how it ends, no tension there. We intended it to be a character piece from the git-go.

The DS was a small planet, and the idea of it being nothing but troops in barracks hanging around and waiting to fight didn't make any sense to us -- people are going to have to live on the thing for years, and there's no place to go for liberty -- nobody is allowed to leave -- so it has to be a city in space, with everything you'd find in any big city. Of course there were women on it, and women like to shop.

Just because they didn't focus on that in the movies doesn't mean it wasn't there. You ever see anybody using a toilet on the DS? Or eating? Taking a shower? Just because those weren't shown doesn't mean they didn't happen ...

It was a construction project. First time they take it off to war, Luke blows it up, so it wasn't ever going to be about fighting. It was going to be about who was on it, which of them survived, and answering a bunch of questions Reaves and I had about it -- who ran it, what people did when they were off-duty, how it got put together. Who fired the big gun ... in the original script, it was Darth Vader who pulled the lever.

Why that exhaust port was there ...

If you stayed up until one a.m. reading it, that works for me ...

[SM]

Don't get me wrong - I don't think it was a bad book at all.  But there was just some stuff that didn't really ring true from what we see in the films.  Lingerie was one of them.  It was just too comical.

I did think of a question though - How do you co-write a novel?  Was this different from writing with Danelle?  Do you say 'I'll do this chapter about x character and you do the chapter about y'?

I've co-written scripts with people almost solely via email and it's generally emails going back and forth thrashing out a story, then I sit down and write the screenplay, then more revisions, etc.  Is it the same with a novel?

[steveperry]

Don't get me wrong - I don't think it was a bad book at all.  But there was just some stuff that didn't really ring true from what we see in the films.  Lingerie was one of them.  It was just too comical.

I did think of a question though - How do you co-write a novel?  Was this different from writing with Danelle?  Do you say 'I'll do this chapter about x character and you do the chapter about y'?

I've co-written scripts with people almost solely via email and it's generally emails going back and forth thrashing out a story, then I sit down and write the screenplay, then more revisions, etc.  Is it the same with a novel?

You wear underwear? Your wife or girlfriend wear any? If you lived on an artificial planet, where would you get your clothes?

Dismissing stuff like this is easy, but it's a mistake. Both God and the Devil are in the details.

Because they don't show people peeing in the movies, you can't assume that in that universe, they don't need to do it. And if you are going to write stuff that resonates with readers, you have to know the answers to stuff like this, because even if you don't write it out per se, it is between the lines. If you never think about it, it won't be there.

Collaborating is different on each project. Mostly, Reaves and I get together, hash out some ideas, and then one of us does an outline or a draft and we kick it back and forth until we run out of time or we can't stand to look at it any more. But we have done alternating chapters, or taken different characters, it depends on what it is. We've written short stories, scripts, and novels, but since he's in L.A. and I'm in Oregon, most of it is over the net. Back in the early days, we sent stuff using 300 baud modems, and you can type just about as fast as the files would up- or download ...

[SM]

\You wear underwear? Your wife or girlfriend wear any? If you lived on an artificial planet, where would you get your clothes?

Standard issue uniforms and fatigues I woulda thought... 

Because they don't show people peeing in the movies, you can't assume that in that universe, they don't need to do it.

Sorry, but I don't really find this to be a valid comparison.  Toilets are a necessity and we take it as read that they exist.  Lingerie is a luxury.  An unnecessary one seeing as there's a marked lack of women on the Death Star anyway.

[Uncanny Antman]

An unnecessary one seeing as there's a marked lack of women on the Death Star anyway.

Based on what?  We only see like...what, 0.001% of it?

[SM]

And can extrapolate that the rest of the BATTLE station is similar, if not identical - at least based on other EU sources I've read about the Death Star over the last 15 odd years.  How many female Imperial troops or officers do we see in any of the films anyway?  Stormtroopers all speak with male voices, and any officers and crew we see are all male.  I think one of Palpy's purple friends on the second Death Star may have been a woman but it's hard to tell.

Compared to the Alliance which had women in the ranks as well as female leaders and non-humans.  i don't think this was a coincidence.

But here we have Bras 'n' Things in a battle station that caters to many different species no less - in spite of numerous mentions throughout the book that there were very few non-humans on the station apart from wookiee labourers.

[Uncanny Antman]

that caters to many different species no less

Yeah, that's abit more on the nose...everything we've seen about the Empire says that they're very "human"-centric.

I must admit though, I am not really well versed on the EU stuff.

[steveperry]

The battle station had all kinds of other folks on it other than stormtroopers. I know, because I put them them there, with LucasFilm's blessings.

So, when you get right down to it, the expert on who-where-what-when-why on events inside the Death Star? That would be me. There are restaurants, cantinas, entertainment workers, libraries, all kinds of stuff, and that includes the SW's version of The Gap. You don't have to like it, but that's how it is ...

[SM]

Uhm... okay...

Ultimately it's only a minor point.  Monsieur Perry is the dude getting paid to write the stuff - I'm the just schlub reading it so what do I know?

I had more issue with the book taking so long to really get going than the 'Death Mall' aspect.