A review by pushingdessy
The Science of Star Wars by Jeanne Cavelos
5.0
THIS BOOK WAS SO MUCH FUN!
"Wait Dessi seriously, are you calling a book trying to look scientifically at a made up world that is obviously going to prove how silly and nonsensical and impossible that world is, *fun*?"
HECK YES.
See, Cavelos is ahuge nerd big Star Wars fan. So against what you might think, this book doesn't go through Star Wars point by point just to say "in conclusion, this would never happen". She considers many expert arguments, including her own, to explain why something would be likely to happen or not, and what conditions would be necessary for it. Nothing is deemed impossible. Maybe that's overly optimistic in the future of science as we know it, like some readers suggest, but shouldn't science be overly optimistic?
Of course, the book is heavy on science, but even if I didn't fully understand some concepts, it still felt easy to read. And fun - did I say it was fun? The thing for me was, I like science, but I'm still a lay person and I don't spend enough time reading up on scientific developments. This book, using something fictional I enjoy, let me in on a lot of real life information I didn't know about - and it also reminded me just how creative science is, how creative it *needs* to be, by default.
Since this book dates from 1999, I really would love an updated version from this author, both to include more recent scientific discoveries and the new information about the GFFA we've received since then (the book was written before TPM was released, although the author still managed to include TPM in some of the chapters. Yes, she tackled the midichlorians question!)
I only take half a star back for some spelling mistakes - guess the editor was not a SW fan.
"Wait Dessi seriously, are you calling a book trying to look scientifically at a made up world that is obviously going to prove how silly and nonsensical and impossible that world is, *fun*?"
HECK YES.
See, Cavelos is a
Of course, the book is heavy on science, but even if I didn't fully understand some concepts, it still felt easy to read. And fun - did I say it was fun? The thing for me was, I like science, but I'm still a lay person and I don't spend enough time reading up on scientific developments. This book, using something fictional I enjoy, let me in on a lot of real life information I didn't know about - and it also reminded me just how creative science is, how creative it *needs* to be, by default.
Since this book dates from 1999, I really would love an updated version from this author, both to include more recent scientific discoveries and the new information about the GFFA we've received since then (the book was written before TPM was released, although the author still managed to include TPM in some of the chapters. Yes, she tackled the midichlorians question!)
I only take half a star back for some spelling mistakes - guess the editor was not a SW fan.