One of the products that was released after Star Wars was the portfolio of original concept drawings by Ralph McQuarrie. (They're pictured here, on the Star Wars wiki) If Star Wars set my imagination on fire, those drawings were like jet fuel. Star Wars was awesome, but the vision of it in McQuarrie's head was something else, something that to this day has defined "sense of wonder" for me.
Some of my favorites: the Massassi Temple, Mos Eisley, Grand Audience Chamber I pinned them up all over my walls and poured over the descriptions in the portfolio. They gave fascinating glimpses of some the previous versions of the story and the world; for example, there's one where Luke is a girl.
There's no telling how many creative imaginations that Ralph McQuarrie's drawings sparked. J.R.R. Tolkien has a quote about fantasy as escapism, to the effect that if we value freedom of the mind and soul, we have a duty to escape and to take as many people with us as we can; if that's true, Ralph McQuarrie was sure as hell one of the people digging the tunnel under the barbed wire.
ETA: (more images from The Art of Ralph McQuarrie)
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I found out about a couple of neat reviews late last week:
Diary of a Text Addict: The Cloud Roads So, remember the “sense of wonder” that science fiction is supposed to have? This has got that. Plus a sympathetic protagonist, various interesting other characters, some hard-won battles, creepy evil folks, and lots of neat stuff to explore.
Publishers Weekly: The Serpent Sea Wells makes it work, powering through on sheer creativity and characterization. Using its alien protagonist to explore the politics of gender and belonging, this is a fascinating read for SF readers looking for something out of the ordinary.
This one was a huge relief to see, since hopefully now more libraries will know the book is out and order it. When PW didn't review it in January when it came out, I was afraid they weren't going to review it at all.
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Comments
This. I've been thinking a lot about those days lately; I actually *had* fannish interactions back then -- through the mail. Snail mail was the original LJ, man, and we passed our thoughts and interests around to each other in little handmade booklets that we wrote in and passed around in our letters.
I still have a little stack of those booklets. Page after page of 70s-era teenaged fangirls declaring their fannish loves and allegiances. One of these days when I have some spare time (ahahahaha!!!) I want to scan them and write up a little bit for them for posterity. ♥
When the Star Wars, Special Addition hit theaters in 1997, I was ten years old, and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I'd just tore through all the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew/Boxcar Children books, and the Star Wars movies/ books were just what I needed to push me over the edge into complete and utter sf/f obsession. It was a good thing I had it, too, because I was home schooled in a rural area growing up. Escaping into other worlds of the kind Ralph McQuarrie envisioned was the only thing that kept my old soul from slipping into premature dementia.
RIP Mr. McQuarrie. And for the record, I'm so glad Luke is the one who made it into Star Wars. Some of those other concept characters would have probably wiped out the Empire in two movies instead of three.
I work at a library. I'd noticed before that although we have a copy of The Cloud Roads, I hadn't seen The Serpent Sea on the shelf yet. Today, I looked it up to see if it was on-order or being processed, and found out that there wasn't a copy in entire Southern Adirondack/Mohawk Valley system. So, yeah, I hope the PW review draws some attention to the book. We have one on order as of today.