Yep I read the Han Solo trilogy where this is detailed. He cut the corners tighter and made a shortcut or two through this mazey route.
It’s a great attempt at covering a mistake in the movie. They are clearly discussing the ship’s speed in that scene, not its durability:
“Fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon? It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I’ve outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers mind you, I’m talking about the big Corellian ships now. She’s fast enough for you old man.”
The line starts with “fast” and ends with “fast.” It’s about speed, which is distance over time. The smaller the numerator gets there, the lower the speed. And Han is clearly proud that it made the Kessel run in “less than” 12 parsecs. The only way this indicates speed is if parsec is the denominator, or unit of time.
It bugged me to see the author bending over backwards to come up with an explanation retroactively. In the same novels we also learn that the stripe down Han’s pants is not just a wardrobe flair but it has a meaning like a family tartan in Scotland (or some shit).
Reading these books helped me realize how 50% of the whole Star Wars franchise is books and comics milking the movies, inventing whole stories to account for some throwaway line of dialogue or some creature that was on the screen for two seconds. The Rise and Fall of Sy Snootles and the Spiders from Mars. Shit like that. Dumb.
George Lucas has talked about this specific line and measurement in interviews. The idea was that if you have a better nav computer you could get places faster by planting the shortest route. One way to think of it with the hyperspace is as if all ships are held at a more-or-less constant speed in hyperspace, and thus to get there faster than someone the only real was was to find a shorter route through hyperspace. Better nav computers and sensors could plot better courses through asteroid fields and closer to sun’s without having issues, whereas poorer computers would plot really safe routes that take longer.
I’d love to see a primary source on what he said. I’m sure if he said it after years of people lampooning the line, his take was probably defensive and revisionist.
Here are two quick clips. If you spend any time searching into this you will very quickly find lots more. The original comes from the making of documentary done in the 90’s
Eh, fair enough. It is retrospective so we’ll never know how much of that he was thinking about at the time. But he explains it convincingly enough. It’s still a mistake to have such a complicated notion of what goes into hyperspace travel and then not provide enough basis in that for the dialogue to make sense. That might be a worse error than just the simple mistake of using the wrong unit.
Yep I read the Han Solo trilogy where this is detailed. He cut the corners tighter and made a shortcut or two through this mazey route.
It’s a great attempt at covering a mistake in the movie. They are clearly discussing the ship’s speed in that scene, not its durability:
The line starts with “fast” and ends with “fast.” It’s about speed, which is distance over time. The smaller the numerator gets there, the lower the speed. And Han is clearly proud that it made the Kessel run in “less than” 12 parsecs. The only way this indicates speed is if parsec is the denominator, or unit of time.
It bugged me to see the author bending over backwards to come up with an explanation retroactively. In the same novels we also learn that the stripe down Han’s pants is not just a wardrobe flair but it has a meaning like a family tartan in Scotland (or some shit).
Reading these books helped me realize how 50% of the whole Star Wars franchise is books and comics milking the movies, inventing whole stories to account for some throwaway line of dialogue or some creature that was on the screen for two seconds. The Rise and Fall of Sy Snootles and the Spiders from Mars. Shit like that. Dumb.
George Lucas has talked about this specific line and measurement in interviews. The idea was that if you have a better nav computer you could get places faster by planting the shortest route. One way to think of it with the hyperspace is as if all ships are held at a more-or-less constant speed in hyperspace, and thus to get there faster than someone the only real was was to find a shorter route through hyperspace. Better nav computers and sensors could plot better courses through asteroid fields and closer to sun’s without having issues, whereas poorer computers would plot really safe routes that take longer.
I’d love to see a primary source on what he said. I’m sure if he said it after years of people lampooning the line, his take was probably defensive and revisionist.
https://youtube.com/shorts/VOys-f1HaIc
https://youtube.com/shorts/f5bftwl0h_I
Here are two quick clips. If you spend any time searching into this you will very quickly find lots more. The original comes from the making of documentary done in the 90’s
Eh, fair enough. It is retrospective so we’ll never know how much of that he was thinking about at the time. But he explains it convincingly enough. It’s still a mistake to have such a complicated notion of what goes into hyperspace travel and then not provide enough basis in that for the dialogue to make sense. That might be a worse error than just the simple mistake of using the wrong unit.