Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
Here at Tosche Station, we love the song/video “Gangnam Style.” We also love the internet parodies that have popped up since the song went viral. One of my favorites is called PSYwalker, and it’s exactly what you’d expect.
The same YouTube user, Khalid Shahin, also has a funny version with Han and Lando.
Seen a funny “Gangnam Style” parody? Post ’em in the comments!
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There was a point in time where I played a lot of video games.
I mean, growing up in the Seattle area, you had one of two options after school. Deal with the relentless rain (and this was before Gore Tex was cheap) or find some sort of entertainment inside. I was lucky to have a pretty nice computer at home at the time*, so after finishing up homework I’d often sit down to play the old X-Wing combat flight simulator that Lucasarts released in the 90s.
*Kids, there was a time when having a computer at home was a rare thing. In a class of about 25 students, I was the only person who had a personal computer at home.
One of my lingering memories on one such rainy afternoon was playing through Tour 1, Mission 4. The dreaded Protect Medical Frigate mission. The goal was simple, protect the medical frigate Redemption as it took on wounded soldiers from multiple shuttles. The complication came when wave after wave after wave of TIE Bombers entered the picture, seemingly more than you and your wingmen could handle.
I spent three days working on beating this mission. Time after time I’d get overwhelmed trying to fend off the Bombers. They would always get torpedo volleys off before I could so much as spot them. It was, looking back at it, the first time I was well and truly frustrated with a video game.
I wasn’t the only one that struggled with this mission, though. From the Wook!
The Redemption was created for the 1993 LucasArts video game Star Wars: X-wing, as one of two Rebel medical frigates, along with the Salvation. In the game, the Redemption appears in the fourth mission of Tour of Duty 1, “Protect Medical Frigate.” The difficulty of eliminating waves of TIE bombers approaching the Redemption from opposite directions led to Michael A. Stackpole selecting it as a training scenario for Rogue Squadron in his 1996novel X-wing: Rogue Squadron.
As some of you may know, Shane (my other half and sometimes blogger for Tosche Station) has been working out in New Mexico for the last few months, and since fall break was this week, I traveled out to see him, and we took the opportunity to investigate some of the geeky offerings that New Mexico has to offer, and I have been dispatched to share them with you.
We stayed mostly in the Albuquerque area, but the first thing we did was visit the Very Large Array, the world’s largest radio telescope. 
It’s recently been upgraded into the Expanded Very Large Array (they’re really sticking with the imaginative names here), in order to revamp and bring the technology up to state of the art. Made up of 27 giant antennas that can be moved around three 21 mile long tracks, the VLA also serves as the control center and part of the Very Large Baseline Array, an array of telescopes that connects radio telescopes from Hawaii to the Caribbean to create one giant, continental radio telescope. You can tour the VLA most days if you’re in the area, but if you don’t find yourself in New Mexico, you can take a virtual tour via the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s website. If you do go in person, know that once you get outside of Socorro, you should go ahead and turn off your cell phone; you’ll drain your battery as it searches for a signal, and when you get to the VLA, you have to turn off your cell phone and any other devices that might transmit radio signals, as they can interfere with observations (though turning your cell phone to airplane mode will allow you to be able to take pictures at the site).
For more geeky adventures, click to the jump. Continue reading
Fans of Timothy Zahn’s Expanded Universe entries can check out his original works in ebook format thanks to Open Road Media.
Timothy Zahn is best known for reviving the Star Wars Expanded Universe with his bestselling Thrawn Trilogy novels. But Zahn is also the author of many original works, including the Blackcollar Series, Spinneret, and A Coming of Age, now available as ebooks.
To celebrate the release, we have created a mini-documentary on Timothy Zahn. You can find the video on YouTube here.
Additional novels include: Deadman Switch, The Backlash Mission, Triplet, and Warhorse. For more about these new releases and to see the brand new covers, visit his Author Page.
- The Blackcollar Series is a military science fiction series about a group of superhuman combatants.
- A Coming of Age is a thoughtful tribute to what it means to come of age, face your fears, and even save the world. Readers of Dune, A Wrinkle in Time, Ender’s Game, and The Chronicles of Narnia will be delighted to discover another tale that records the difficult yet crucial passage into adulthood.
- Spinneret poses a scientific puzzle whose answer could threaten humanity¹s salvation, or destruction.
Both Nanci and I have greatly enjoyed Zahn’s original works. In addition to these new Ebook releases, you may want to also check out The Icarus Hunt, which for my money is Zahn’s best work.
Season 5×03: Front Runners
Written by Chris Collins
Directed by Steward Lee
Fortune Cookie: “To seek something is to believe in its possibility.”
Another Tuesday, another plunge into TV Tropes. This week we’re looking at a trope that’s particularly relevent to the Expanded Universe: The Expansion Pack Past.
Sometimes, characters just have over-complicated origins. They may start off reasonable, but slowly and surely, different writers swoop in and reveal more and more of their past via Flash Back until it’s a confusing muddle of nonsense and clutter.
This tends to happen to characters with a Mysterious Past. The writers explain a bit, but not all of it, so they can milk the Mysterious Past some more. Unfortunately, they then repeat this trick so often that there’s practically no room left for even more mysterious-pastness. It’s unclear that the character ever had time to have a mysterious past with all the revelations we’ve already seen; and it’s ironic that, for all their supposed mystery, these characters tend to have more backstory than any of the other characters.
In extreme cases, when the bits of the backstory simply cannot be chained together, we get a Multiple-Choice Past.
To some degree, this is a risk of the Expanded Universe, particularly early on with some legacy characters. Take a look at Boba Fett and the Mandalorian culture in particular. At one point he was just a mysterious bounty hunter that (somehow) managed to get out of the belly of a gigantic wormy monster thing. The Mandalorians were just a race or group of proud warrior folks. Or maybe just mercenaries?
That was all well and good early on, but the trouble comes in when multiple creative entities start pulling out the expansion packs to give these characters and cultures backstories. You have some authors going in one direction and then you have show writers going in another direction. It’s not impossible to link these different expansions together, but it does create quite a bit of a continuity headache. Sometimes you wonder if things would have been better off if they had been left mysterious.
Of course, this is the franchise that gave backstory to this guy …
If you’re a fan of military science fiction, you’ll want to hop on over to Amazon or Barnes and Noble to buy yourself an e-copy of Five by Five, a collection of short stories featuring notable Expanded Universe authors Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Stackpole, and Aaron Allston.
Allston has a bit more about the book written on his blog as well as links to other sellers.
It’s Monday again and you know what that means: it’s time for Cosplay Monday! This week, we’re featuring the work of a costumer brought to my attention by Emily. Cadet, aka James, has a pretty impressive body of costuming work. His work with armor and props is enough to make almost anyone envious. Check out his totally awesome Boba Fett!
And his costuming talents aren’t just confined to armor or props! His Tenth Doctor looks fantastic and pretty spot on!
To see more of James’s work, including a great looking Clone Trooper and a Spartan Warrior, be sure to check out his site.
I have many guilty pleasures.
I’m not ashamed to admit it. I love horrible entertainment in general. Lately I’ve been binging on the show “Say Yes to the Dress” on Netflix. Yes, the show where brides pick out way-too-expensive wedding dresses over and over. I have no explanation other than I think wedding dresses are pretty, I like window shopping, and I like shows that don’t make me think too hard.
So it should come as no surprise that I have many guilty pleasures in my fandom of choice, Star Wars. After all, I’ve been reading the Expanded Universe for over 20 years now. I love Union, the comic in which Luke and Mara get married, because of its cheese factor. I don’t care what anyone says.
But that’s not even close to being the worst thing in Star Wars that I love.
The Expanded Universe books panel at New York Comic Con was held earlier today. Among the information dropped were tidbits about upcoming books as well as the reveal of two brand-new titles. Thanks to Aaron Goins for covering the event as well as the official Del Rey Star Wars crew for keeping those of us who couldn’t make it in the loop!
Del Rey editor Frank Parisi on @paulskemp duology “Can’t talk about it yet but it will f’ing blow your minds!” #NYCC#SWEU
— StarWarsBooks (@DelReyStarWars) October 12, 2012
We haven’t heard much about the Kemp duology other than the fact that it will eventually exist. Now apparently we also know it will cause your brain matter to splatter onto the surrounding walls.
More news and announcement below the jump!