#StarWars Identities Exhibition London: Episode Two #scifi

After focusing on the characters and costumes for last week's Star Wars Identities Exhibition, I thought I'd move onto another big favourite of mine - spaceships!

The exhibition featured a case several foot long with one of each of the main spacecraft from the films, with light rods along the length of it that would change from light blue to red. Viewed face on, it almost looks like the ships are jumping to hyperspace...

I had trouble identifying the lead ship - a Mon Calamari Cruiser?

To give you a rough idea of scale, the B-wing featured on the right hand side is about the same size as my original Kenner toy version.

Rear end of an Imperial Star Destroyer

This was the one point of the exhibition where my 12yo impatiently demanded 'are you going to take pictures of every single ship in there?' to which I replied 'Yes. Yes I am.' :P

Side view Imperial Star Destroyer, plus Imperial Shuttle and
TIE fighter

Close up on the TIE

TIE Interceptor, my favourite of that specification

AT-AT

B-wing

A-wing

Imperial Shuttle

Imperial ships

SLAVE 1

Not sure about that one...

My old favourite, the X-wing, with a Snowspeeder below

Relative speed/manoeuvrability chart

 But one particular ship got a bit more wall and cabinet space than the others...

Falcon gun seat design

Falcon cockpit sketch

Possibly the most iconic of the Star Wars ships - the Millenium Falcon

In case you can't read it - essentially the original model
of the Falcon was too big for the manoeuvres required
in Empire so they had to build a second half the
size (about the size of the original Kenner toy version)

More of the costume photos will go up at my Tumblr blog for the cosplay fans (probably over the summer) but that concludes my photos from the exhibition. Hope you enjoyed them!

Status Update
At the recent parent-teacher meetings for 12yo, one subject that came up was his non-doing of the 'voluntary' tasks that have replaced homework (the only school in the UK to abolish compulsory homework). Figures. But it turns out that a task for one subject is making a mask, so this weekend I recruited him into making the Witch-king mask for his cosplay, thereby easing my workload and satisfying at least one of his teachers. The whingeing levels were unreal (mums of teens will probably sympathize) but progress was made. Hubs also helped me cut out the 50+ card segments for the gauntlets, and I cut out the pattern and leather for the sword belt while watching Return of the King for some visual references. The Witch-king cosplay is truly underway! Below you can see the 50+ pieces laid out in full and the cardboard base for the flail (because Blogger won't let me caption them without moving the images out of place. Grr).

I've fallen behind with the remaining edits and the deadline is looming. So it may be that only Reunion goes to my editor in June, and hopefully Unexpected, while Revived lags behind. Keir's Shadow is still undergoing revision, but as I just keep on adding to it I still haven't moved past 32%. Sigh.
This weekend we paid a visit to one of our local beaches as the sun was out. After several years of searching, we'd found a grand total of three fossilized sharks teeth at Walton, a place famous for such finds.

The longest is just 3cms in total length

But as we sat to eat our sandwiches on the sea wall, hubs found this one just lying on the surface.

4.5 cms

Some light digging went on to reveal a total of 30 prehistoric sharks teeth, making our former efforts look completely pathetic! We also found a piece of rock that's suspiciously scaly-looking. It might just be an odd rock formation, but it could be turtle fossil...

90 minutes digging and we have these!

Fossil or just funny looking rock?

Further research suggests the teeth without that kind of knobbly bit on the bottom might actually be prehistoric crocodile teeth rather than shark, but either way we're quite pleased with our drastically expanded collection. And it was a nice day too.

View from the cliff top

Happenings
There's lots going on!

While one SFR event ends (though you can still get Quickshot via Instafreebie HERE, you might have to double check links for the other books featured HERE to see if they're still available), another is due to start on the 18th.

Another Instafreebie SFR special: 26 titles of Alien Romance and Adventure! Find your next sexy SciFi hero HERE.

Plus, don't forget my special giveaway for a pair of custom-made crocheted dragonscale gloves in Keir blue, created by Hoot and Luna. This is open internationally but PLEASE BE AWARE - any import/shipping taxes will be the responsibility of the recipient as these cannot be paid in advance by the sender.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And finally, if you still have some space left, you can still top up your ereader with sizzling summer reads at the new romance eBook store Inside Romance with a 20% discount site-wide for the whole of May. Click the banner to visit. Enjoy!

Chook Update 
And lastly, the thing I know you've all really been waiting for - chook pics! Have a great week.

Left to right: Effie, Fizzgig, and the now misnamed Pitch

The gang's all here! Left to right: Kyru, Scoop, Pitch, Fizzgig & Effie

Fizzgig

Effie

It's all made-up tech (although some is more convincing than others)

© Can Stock Photo Inc. / TsuneoMP

Science fiction, as we've discussed many times, is fiction based on science. We often argue on where to draw the line. One example that springs instantly to mind is faster than light travel (FTL). It's a mainstay of space opera, allowing writers to whip you away from your lounge room and onto one exotic planet, or space station, or space ship, after another. The means of transport may well vary, though, ranging from a portal, where you step through from one world to another, warp drives (like Star Trek), hyperdrives (Star Wars), quantum drives and a variety of other made up hardware. The essence of it is that readers will accept the premise if it suits the story.

Then there's gravity. It's a known fact that the human body doesn't take kindly to long periods of low gravity, so most space operas contend with that in a number of ways. The use of centrifugal force to simulate gravity is canon – apart from anything else, it's true. So the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey is good science. So is the cabin steward, who walks carefully along the aisle of the shuttle in velcro-clad shoes, with her hair tucked away in the weightless conditions. But most of us emulate the movie makers who don't want to deal with weightlessness in their spaceship corridors and use artificial gravity in our spaceships. The purists might not like it, but those of us who grew up on Asimov and Star Wars are fine with that.

Sometimes, though, there's a tendency for readers of science fiction to accept a particular author's version of technology and question another author's interpretation. Take matter transfer, as used in Star Trek (as in 'Beam me up, Scotty'). I, for one, wasn't too impressed with that as something real when I saw it on TV all those years ago. But I've now had to accept it's possible. The same with cloaking devices. We're on the brink of having technology which can hide an object from radar emissions.

Which leads me to spaceship 'shields'. It's generally understood that exposure to cosmic radiation would quickly kill a human. Our atmosphere protects us from harm on the planet's surface, but what we would use for spaceships is unclear. But let's say we have such a shield. The canon is that the shield protects a ship from bombardment, as well as cosmic rays. Can one fire through the shield? Some authors say yes, others say no, and yet others avoid the issue. If the answer is no, then the shields must be dropped to fire at the enemy. Or maybe only a certain amount of the shield needs to be dropped. Jack McDevitt uses that weakness in his book A Talent for War. McDevitt also speculates that the oft-mentioned scanner which can see through a hull and establish who/what is in a ship isn't as simple as other authors suggest. Makes sense to me. If you have to shield your ship from cosmic rays, would that not also shield the ship from external scanning? Linnea Sinclair in Hope's Folly suggests such scanning is possible. Jack McDevitt in Slow Lightning says it's not. Most especially if the ship is alien.

I don't know the answers. Nobody does. All I'm really saying is that in any science fiction story the tech has only to be true to itself in its own universe. If the reader doesn't believe the technology, isn't convinced by the author's argument, then so be it. But that doesn't make the technology wrong, and comparing it to another writer's universe simply shows the reader's own bias.

What do you think? Is there any 'technology' that you simply will not accept in a novel?