Star Wars II: Return of the Name

Mutant was among the onslaught of readers who submitted that the final name has been chosen for Star Wars Episode II. It is... Attack of the Clones. Let the sarcasm commence. I'll pass judgement after I see it.

Comments

Clone wars - read Frank Herbert

[legLess]

This issue will cause a war at some point in the future, I bet. For the old science fiction fans amongst us, check out Frank Herbert's Destination Void. Guaranteed to hurt your brain. Here's a very simple summary that doesn't give away much:

X years in the future, human cloning is commonplace. Perhaps inevitably, clones are treated as far less than human, simply disposable lumps of flesh. A "Void Ship" (thus the name) is shot out into interstellar space with a crew of clones, and their task is to create artificial life (not intelligence - life), using the ship itself as the raw material. They use clones because the people on moon base are very afraid of creating life they can't control - they want the data, but not the actuality. With a crew of clones, they can blow up the ship before any artificial life is realized, but hopefully after they have a little more data. And it doesn't matter, because the crew are only clones. There are many layers of irony, and tragedy, here.

If you read much Herbert, you may see the very beginnings of the "Butlerian Jihad" in this story. Remember all the "Mentats" in the Dune books? Human computers? They existed because of the one prohibition that came out of the Butlerian Jihad: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the image of a man's mind." They discovered, almost too late, that relying on machines to do your work turns you into a slave.

Read more Herbert - he was one of the most important minds in fiction all last century.

Parenthetically, Herbert followed this 20 years later with a trilogy: The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor. It's really some of his best work, aside from the Dune books. Sadly, he died before he finished the last one, and his co-author for the series (Bill Ransom) finished it. Bill Ransom's a decent poet, but a lousy novelist, and The Ascension Factor was pretty weak. The first two are great though, and spend more time with the clone issue.

Why wasn't this posted earlier?

[Julius X]

This may seem like a flame--and it probably is, but why the reluctance to post this news bit?

"was among the onslaught of readers who submitted"

I know I submitted it nine hours ago, and it was almost immediately rejected. I figured someone else had already submitted it and that it would be up on the Frontpage almost immediately. Yet, hours go by, and still no news.

If anything would qualify as "news for nerds"--I figure this would. Why the delay?