Ken MacLeod Quotes

The 'Star Wars' films are known for their exotic aliens, sophisticated robots, sleek technology, and planet-sized battle stations.

Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.

I liked 'Star Wars' as a kid. I liked science fiction.

All of the other books in the series... none of them are particularly like 'Ender's Game.'

I got into the genesis of Star Wars, and the tale seemed to me endlessly fascinating.

I was more of a Star Wars kid, actually. I always thought Star Trek was a lot of talk, and it felt a little self-important. It was hard for me to get into it.

The 'Star Wars' movie is coming out. Disney has kept the details of the movie under wraps because they're not Sony.

It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person.

The movies like "Star Wars," for example or "Lord Of The Rings," they work because it's a a mix of everything.

The greatest experience I've ever had in a movie theater was watching "Star Wars." It shaped how I look at the world. My imagination was so small before I went in that theater and there was an explosion in my head. I just couldn't figure out how someone came up with it.

It wasn't the intention to do something important, or to even relate about social issues. The ground is so fertile in the justice world, dealing with the death penalty and the Innocence Project, for characters that have a moral ambiguity, which we were both attracted to. It's the idea that everybody has their reasons. Whatever their actions are, whether you agree with them or not, you can understand why they're feeling that way, in terms of racism or even the death penalty.

I was one of the few people who thought Star Wars was going to work, and I hadn't even seen any special effects.

If Star Wars had failed, you wouldn't have 90 percent of what's out there today.

Well, I've liked Star Wars since the late '70s. I liked it a lot.

Good people can do terrible things, and that's what life is all about, the complexities and grey areas. And often characters aren't written that way in movies, especially characters for women. So you end up being either one thing or the other.

Star Wars is not entertainment. Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot.

Marvel movies, are seeming slightly less exciting now that Star Wars has appeared and everything.

'Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope' (1977) is probably the most influential film of my generation. That work was the personification of good and evil and the way it opened up the world to space adventure, the way westerns had to our parents' generations, it left an indelible imprint. So, in a way, everything that any of us does is somehow directly or indirectly affected by the experience of seeing those first three films.

It's very common to say that Star Wars in the late '70s, that was kind of perfect for Cold War culture and the aftermath of Vietnam in the '60s to have an upbeat, hopeful, cartoonish tale of a hero's journey. I think those explanations are easy to offer and almost always wrong.

We live in a much more complicated time than when Superman was created 75 years ago. Or even when Superman The Movie was created in the 70s. There are great advances but with those come a great many complications.We felt that the character needed to grow up in that kind of environment and had to face those kinds of colossal choices that were not going to be easy. It's difficult to figure out the right path. And even if you do good there are causalities to your choices. We thought it would be compelling.

Macon: “It’s true. And if that doesn’t work, use the Jedi Mind Trick. But only if you really have to.” Halley: “The what?” Macon: “The Jedi Mind Trick.” He looked at me. “Didn’t you ever see Star Wars?

I had just gotten Heroes, and I had just found out that I was going to be doing [Star] Trek, and I thought it was probably a good idea for me to create an infrastructure that would allow me to do my own work and put my stuff into the world.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.

I don't know that I ever did see Star Wars as any different. I was certainly proud that I did it.