8. Two step backs because Star Wars lacked either the extrapolative rigor of hard SF or the avante garde ambitions of New Wave SF.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
9. In terms of literary SF, Star Wars belonged to a tradition that had been disdained since the 1930s by genre elite: the space opera.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
10. The literary lineage of Star Wars is in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series, in Planet Stories, in Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
11. Aside from Space Opera, Lucas clearly looked at a lot of comics: Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Lee/Kirby's 1960s cosmic epics.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
12. The Space Opera tradition Lucas was working in was generally disdained by elite SF writers going back to late 1930s.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
13. In doing Space Opera of real ambition, Lucas was picking on the marginal wing of a marginal genre.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
14. But in recuperating Space Opera, Lucas has one major and unexpected precursor: Samuel Delany.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
15. Delany's work of the late 1960s was pretty boldly Space Opera, with twist of being written in modernist-inflected prose.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
16. What made Space Opera attractive to Delany was its bold mixture of alien cultures, which evoked multiracial NYC of his youth.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
17. So Delany in 1977 was the perfect writer to review Star Wars. He had written Space Opera himself & very sensitive to race/gender.
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18. Which is a round-about way of returning to Delany's review, which gets to hear of many Star Wars issues: http://samueldelany.tumblr.com/post/82806452407/samuel-delany-reviews-the-first-star-wars-movie …
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Replying to @torontomush
@HeerJeet I vaguely recall one of his novels removed from the shelves of our high school library due to a student complaint.0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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