Thor's Unwise Ideas

Thor May
Uni­ver­sity of New­castle, NSW
@10 June 1986

We kid­ded our­selves for a while that Star Wars had gone away. We pre­tended that flower power was win­ning. But in our heart of hearts, in our 3 a.m. night­mares, we knew that no toy of destruc­tion, once con­ceived of, has ever been left to rest. Like Mordor’s ninth ring of power*, hid­den forever deep in a dark river beneath a moun­tain, some Gol­lum was sure to chance upon it, and once set free it would again cor­rupt all who care­lessly picked it up; (*J.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings). Below is a com­puter engineer’s report on the tech­ni­cal via­bil­ity of Star Wars I, circa 1986. Judge for your­self how rel­e­vant it is to Star Wars II, mil­len­nium edi­tion…

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