Luke Skywalker Can't Read

by Ryan Britt

  To Wesley Allsbrook for the wonderful illustrations and limitless talent.

  Thanks to Mike Lopercio, Jane M. Trayer, and the extended Trayer/Lopercio vortex, a constellation of family members who have supported me infinitely. And an extra thanks to George Lopercio for being the best and worst best friend I could ever hope for.

  To my family: Mom and Kellie. You’re all I’ve got and I don’t say that enough. Of course, to the ghost of my dad, Terry Britt, who I’m sure is reading this somewhere.

  And to Jillian Sanders—who thought the role of Luke Skywalker was played by Harrison Ford—this wouldn’t be possible without you.

  A TOTALLY INCOMPLETE GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  J. J. Abrams

  A cool guy whom everyone pretends they know personally, but whom nobody really knows. The new Jay Gatsby of pop-geekdom.

  Isaac Asimov

  A living robot who was smarter than most humans. Former president of the Humanist Society.

  Back to the Future

  An amazing generator of fake nostalgia. Retroactively removing this film from history would cause a paradoxical cascade effect resulting in everyone simultaneously disappearing from any Polaroid pictures that they’re in. You’d still remain alive, but those old Polaroids would have weird empty spots.

  Barbarella

  A person who is so intentionally unrealistic that we can’t even bother getting mad about it. Notice that in the face of never-ending nostalgia no one has tried to remake the movie featuring this character. You can’t ruin something that already knows it’s ruining itself, so no one has even tried.

  Kim Catrall

  Famous for Sex and the City, but also played Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI. I waited on her once and told her I loved her in Star Trek. She was about as polite as you can imagine you might be if you received a compliment like that from someone who was pouring you a glass of wine.

  Dinosaurs

  A shorthand for anything that is permanently cool. Because we can’t go back in time and see dinosaurs for real, their inherent awesomeness can never be taken away from us. This is what it will be like to love the Beatles in the year 2070.

  Doctor Who

  A pleasurable experience that has to be meticulously explained first in order to be enjoyed. It’s worth it, in the end, all the explaining. But the process feels like taking inoculation vaccines before you go on vacation.

  Dracula

  A guy who says he’s one thing, but is really something else. See: “everyone.”

  Harlan Ellison

  Specific kind of superbeing sent down to Earth by a ruthless god, designed to test our resolve and poke fun at what we think is “creativity.”

  Fan Fiction

  Something critics point and laugh at all the time but secretly read.

  Ghostbusters

  A nearly perfect film that has two flaws: the fact that it’s a sausage fest and the existence of Ghostbusters II. That being said, if Ghostbusters II’s “World of the Psychic” were a real mainstream television program that Bill Murray really hosted, network television would be infinitely more watchable.

  Sherlock Holmes

  A proto-superhero whose superpowers were as follows: being really smart, pretending like he didn’t care about sex, and possessing the ability to have a drug problem that actually assisted him in doing his job. If Sherlock Holmes habitually drank Miller High Life instead of shooting cocaine through a needle, no one would believe he was a mad “genius.” They’d just think he was a drunk weirdo. The lesson? Choose to be addicted to interesting drugs.

  Captain James Tiberius Kirk

  A character who—just like James Bond—is only a sex symbol in the mind of the actor (Shatner) who originated the role. Until he was played by Chris Pine, and then he became a sex symbol to average people who go to movies and say things like “Did you see Chris Pine in Horrible Bosses 2?” Oddly, the answer to this question is always no. No one has seen that movie. Not even the people who made it.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  A being of pure energy cooler than most humans, living robots, and time-traveling ghosts. The science fiction version of a saint.

  George Lucas

  The inverse-deadbeat dad to millions of us. He gave us Star Wars and then left us—he left us! When he returned, we became demanding, ungrateful, and bitter children. Nothing he can ever do is going to be good enough. When he left us a second time in 2012 (by selling off Star Wars), we were the happiest we’ve been in years.

  Marvel

  The Nike of geek interests. We don’t know what part of our souls we’re losing by consuming their products and we don’t want to know.

  Narnia

  An overcrowded, deranged alternate world of magic that was accidentally discovered by Lev Grossman in real life. His autobiographical work, The Magicians, vaguely describes how awful Narnia actually was. Biggest letdown of all: Aslan was not really a lion.

  Christopher Nolan

  Someone who is exactly like the Batman of his films: he is a hero, but we can’t wait to turn on him.

  RoboCop

  A guy whom I didn’t really talk about in this book. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I love him. Oh God, please, don’t get me started. It was a long time ago and I miss him terribly. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of what might have been. Please. Let me be. Don’t mention his name. I’ll weep.

  Robot

  Pronounced “row-baught” if you’re the vast majority of the world’s population, but strangely pronounced with a frog-like “row-butt,” if you’re a parent or Isaac Asimov.

  Steven Spielberg

  Our dad’s (George Lucas) cooler brother who got us high that one time on that camping trip when we were fourteen. We never talk to our cool uncle now, but we always speak in reverent tones about how awesome he was on that one camping trip.

  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

  An old relationship we’ll never get over. It was perfect and we compare all of our lovers (Star Trek movies) to this person. There’s good reason for this, but we should really try to move on.

  Star Wars

  A crafty media hoax (created by our dad) that has convinced a lot of people that the Force, the Skywalker family, and a certain galaxy far, far away are all “fiction.”

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  A literary hoax designed by C. S. Lewis to take the heat off of the fact that so many people were looking for the real entry points into Narnia.

  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  A time-traveling ghost of Mark Twain who has turned out to be a slightly better writer while inhabiting his “new body.” Smoked cigarettes as opposed to cigars to confuse people as to his true identity.

  Sigourney Weaver

  One of the best actors of all time who was in two of the best science fiction movies ever made: Ghostbusters and Alien. She was also in Avatar.

  Joss Whedon

  A man famous for creating exactly two types of characters without writing any dialogue whatsoever: “The Buffy” and “The Willow.” These archetypes will live on for centuries under various guises like “Tony Stark” and “Bruce Banner.”

  John Williams

  A scientific curiosity. Apparently, there’s one of these inside everyone’s brain and when certain events—personal achievement, personal loss, a car chase—occur in your life (or if you witness these things in films) you’ll hear theme-appropriate “music” generated magically by this phenomenon.

  A NOTE ON THE ESSAYS

  All essays are unique to this book, except those noted below:

  Some elements of “Luke Skywalker Can’t Read” previously appeared in a different form as “Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy Are Probably Totally Illiterate,” published by Tor .com in 2012.

  An earlier version of “Wearing Dracula’s Pants” was originally published in Story in 2015. Some elements of both versions derived from
“Let the Snazzy One In,” published by Tor .com in 2011.

  Elements of “Baker Streets on Infinite Earths: Sherlock Holmes as the Eternal Sci-Fi Superhero” appeared in a different form and with different material as “Sherlock Holmes and the Science Fiction of Deduction,” published by Clarkesworld in 2010.

  Some elements of “No, Luke, Captain Kirk Is Your Father” appeared in “Our Dysfunctional Relationship with The Wrath of Khan,” “How to Root for Captain Kirk,” and “Star Trek into Darkness Forgot to Be Literary,” all published by Tor.com in 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively. Other elements appeared originally in “Literary Star Trek Mash-Ups,” published by The Mindhut in 2014.

  Some elements of “Hipster Robots Will Save Us All” previously appeared in a different form as “Trying on the Retro Flesh,” published by OMNI Reboot in 2013.

  Elements of “Nobody Gets Mad About Hamlet Remakes: Rise of the Relevant Superheroes” appeared with the same title but in a completely different form on Tor.com in 2012. Other elements were incorporated from “Comic Book Movies and the Forgotten Art of the Ending,” published by The Awl in 2014.

  * “Trekker” is even worse.

  * And it will become even more unclear in the essay “Imagine There’s No Frodo.”

  * Seriously, pre–Phantom Menace hype leaned heavily on this “character,” a guy who is really only in the movie for like three seconds where he just says, “There’s the blockade!” He was played by an actor named Ralph Brown who has actually had a respectable career since, including guest spots on Elementary and Life on Mars. He was also in Alien 3. Go figure.

  * From The Jewel-Hinged Jaw.

  * In “A Fictional Architecture” (also from The Jewel-Hinged Jaw), Delany insinuates this statement is code-speak for people who don’t know any better. I’d like to think this book you’re holding is for those people, too.

  * Technically, the name of the character in the film is “Dr. Durand Durand,” played by Milo O’Shea. The band ditched the final d’s.

  * I don’t subscribe to the “popular” Internet theory that Boba Fett killed Luke’s aunt and uncle. And for all the reading-into I do in this book, I think in this case, the simplest explanation is the correct one. Obi-Wan says, “Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise.” That’s it for me. I also dislike the Boba Fett theory because it doesn’t say anything else about Star Wars or our culture or the impact of anything on anything. It’s just bizarre faux-continuity porn. Which I’m usually all for. Just not with Boba Fett.

  * I mean, I’d love to read a science fiction story from a science fiction author who lives inside of Star Trek. Who wouldn’t? It’s too bad H. G. Wells never wrote a science fiction story about a science fiction author living in the twenty-first century.

  * In Revenge of the Sith, we find out these kinds of “security” recordings are mostly just of unspeakable acts of horror, which Ewan McGregor watches after the fact. Who would presumably be watching security feeds at the Galactic Senate or the Jedi Temple anyway? Rent-a-cops with low-yield lightsabers? What’s the Star Wars version of a Taser?

  * You might ask: how could someone be “indirectly intentional”? George Lucas once wore a shirt to the set of Indiana Jones IV that said “Han Shot First.” George Lucas is the person who changed it so Han didn’t shoot first. He’s like this all the time; does something that doesn’t make sense and then retroactively makes “sense” of it.

  * Who is probably a hipster, too.

  * John Landis has directed a lot of great horror flicks, but people like me really only know him as the guy who directed Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” The chances of you being a person like me on this particular thing are probably higher than with anything else I’ll claim in my whole life.

  * There’s some debate on this qualifying as the first printed “vampire invitation,” but because “Carmilla” directly influenced Stoker’s Dracula, I say it counts.

  * This character has been played by a lot of actors over the years, including Laurence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, and Peter Fonda. Peter Cushing, who is probably most famous for being Darth Vader’s friend—Grand Moff Tarkin—in the original Star Wars, practically made his whole career with this role, starring opposite Christopher Lee’s Dracula. Christopher Plummer and David Warner have also played Van Helsing and both of those dudes were Klingons in the same Star Trek movie, 1991’s The Undiscovered Country. In the 1931 Dracula, Van Helsing was played by a guy named Edward Van Sloan, who was also in 1931’s Frankenstein and 1932’s The Mummy, where he basically played the exact same character: older concerned man with all the answers. But really, truly, never forget Van Helsing was played by HUGH JACKMAN in the 2004 crapfest movie Van Helsing. Still, even with all these famous people having played Van Helsing, I just can’t picture any actor saying, “Wow, what a great character.”

  * The 2014 movie Dracula Untold tried to take the Vlad angle more seriously. It wasn’t awful.

  * In Ghostbusters II, the main antagonist is the spirit of a fifteenth-century sorcerer named Vigo the Carpathian. He’s given a lot of names, including Vigo the Unholy and Vigo the Despised. Bill Murray adds “Vigo the Butch.” Vigo’s backstory is totally a Dracula homage.

  * Dark Shadows, created by Dan Curtis, ran from 1966 to 1971 on ABC. It aired five nights a week. Its cult following is the definition of “cult following.”

  * Joe Caldwell is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Because of the way the Dark Shadows writers’ room worked, Caldwell doesn’t have a lot of official credit for the writing of some of the Barnabas story lines. But he also won the Rome Prize for literature, so I really doubt he’s lying about the Dark Shadows stuff.

  * Most people assume Dark Shadows was always about the vampire Barnabas. But it’s not true. He wasn’t introduced until Episode 211, when Dan Curtis asked Caldwell and others to cook up the vampire story. The character was supposed to be part of a temporary story arc. If you want, you can call this the “Urkel effect,” since ’90s sitcom Family Matters has a similar issue; supposedly, reoccurring uber-nerd Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) was so popular snapping his suspenders that he was made a regular.

  * Roughly translates from Italian as “wishing you all the beautiful things.”

  * See more in “Baker Streets on Infinite Earths.”

  * I’ve never seen this movie, but I guess Willy gets de-rescued somewhere in between Free Willy 1 and 2. I also love the fact that a guy who did the music for a great Star Trek film later had to work with preexisting music composed by Michael Jackson.

  * Jerry Goldsmith also wrote the theme song for the fourth Star Trek TV show, Star Trek: Voyager, and it’s my secret favorite Star Trek song.

  * There’s also a chance it’s like five million other girls and guys who live in Brooklyn (or Portland) and who own that same hoodie for the exact same reason.

  * There’s also something about “Anakin’s Theme,” from the Star Wars prequels, that reminds me of Elliott, too, but maybe that’s just because the E.T. aliens are randomly in that big Senate scene in The Phantom Menace, which technically makes E.T. and Star Wars exist in the same fictional universe. I know people have complained about this before, but what the fuck, everybody! If E.T. can live in Star Wars, then what’s to stop the reverse from happening: a Star Wars movie rolling up on contemporary Earth?

  * I did have to end up with two lines or so as Time Fucker’s boss, a character with an eyepatch named “Conrad,” whom I’m pretty sure I lifted directly from the old Birdman cartoons.

  * Supergirl, as opposed to Barbarella, is a movie that people think sucks, and they’re totally right.

  * This is exactly like learning about the Beatles by listening to Oasis.

  * The cartoon The Real Ghostbusters, which aired between 1986 and 1991, has its bizarre “real” prefix title for two reasons. First, there was a totally unrel
ated Filmation cartoon called The Ghost Busters (airing in various forms in 1975 and 1986) that needed to be retroactively made “fake” by asserting the one spun off from the film to be the real thing. More bizarrely, though, The Real Ghostbusters cartoon actually constructs a metafictional reality around the 1984 Ghostbusters film with the episode “Take Two,” where it’s revealed that the movie starring Bill Murray and company is actually just a film “based” on these “real” Ghostbusters in the cartoon. Coincidentally or not, this “reality gap” between two kinds of fiction is very similar to the fact that Watson publishes stories about Sherlock Holmes in the “reality” of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Now that I think about all of this, every single Sherlock Holmes pastiche can now be called “The Real Sherlock Holmes.”