Pyramid Pick
The Science of Star Wars
Published by St. Martin's Press
Written by Jeanne Cavelos
$22.95
With the recent release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, it's no surprise that a shipload of books about that movie has hit the bookstores. Unfortunately, due to the troubles of West End Games, no roleplaying material based on the new movie seems to be anywhere in sight. So is the Star Wars gamer out of luck? Well, not completely.The Science of Star Wars is an unauthorized look at the Star Wars universe from the eyes of a NASA-trained astrophysicist and mathematician cum science-fiction writer, Jeanne Cavelos. It's not a roleplaying book per se, but it contains gobs of useful information that should satisfy fans of every genre from space opera to hard SF.
The first chapter tackles planets. Cavelos considers the viability of the worlds seen in the Star Wars films such as the desert planet Tatooine and the ice-covered Hoth. Could a planet have two suns and still support life? Why does Hoth have so much meteor activity? In addition, she considers the possibilities of life-bearing planets in our own neighborhood. How common can we expect life to be? What events must transpire to allow life to form? The science fiction GMs should take note the next time they send the PCs on their next smuggling run.
The next chapter deals with the aliens of creatures of the Star Wars films and ponders what alien life will probably be like if we ever find it ourselves. How viable . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 18, 1999
Copyright © 1999 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.