perfidy

Scalzi's AMC column talks about coolest rides in sf moviedom.  He opines that the speeder bike from Return of the Jedi is the sweetest ride evah.  I have to agree.  When I was eight, the landspeeder was the coolest, but that was only because I hadn't seen the speeder bike.

Despite the many flaws of episodes 1 , 2, 3, and 6, the series as a whole has some of the sickest gear in sf, movies or books.  My morning commute into our nation's capitol would be significantly more tolerable if I could motor down the HOV lanes in a speeder bike.  So, unlike a lot of sf gear, there's actually a use case for the speeder bike despite it's lack of seat belts.

Any spaceship would of course be cool.  Assuming you could keep it away from the government.  A blaster would be about as useful as the guns I already have, but probably not a lot more so.  An artificial intelligence, secreted away in a small jewel box?  That could be handy, provided it was friendly.  Make a run at the stock market.  Set myself as up as a new delphic oracle or something.  R2D2 could mix drinks and vacuum the house.  But without the larger world that gives these gadgets context, a lot of them aren't going to be much more than conversation starters.

The single coolest, though - perched in solitary magnificent coolness atop a mountain of cool, looking down at lesser things huddled in the steaming jungles below - is the light saber.  Despite its manifest awesomeness, for our world, there's probably no more useless sf gadget.  I know, that even if a UFO landed and the little green man handed me one tomorrow, I'd have no earthly use for one.  I'm not a Jedi.  There aren't any Sith lords locally that I'm aware of.  I'd probably slice my own arm off.  It might make a decent flashlight.

But damn me if I wouldn't just sit on the couch, and turn it on and off.  Wave it around.  Listen to the hum.

Maybe I'd cut some firewood with it.