You both did a lot more thinking about this subject than my little article probably deserved, so I thank you deeply for your contributions. And I agree that arrogance can definitely cause a militarily more advanced power to lose to a militarily less-advanced one.

What things probably come down to here is a whole host of suspension of disbelief issues that people will probably either take as a group or reject as a group. I know that for friends of mine, the Ewok battle was the last straw, the final of a host of issues that make it impossible for them to continue to suspend disbelief. It didn’t break mine enough to make me reject the story, but that was partly to do with my age at the time.

One of the most important of those issues is: could a spacefaring collection of cultures develop into a political entity that so closely resembles a kind of colonialist fascist power? In other words, could societies so clearly more advanced than us technologically have a type of government that is so clearly a throwback. It’s an assumption for a lot of sci-fi, but something that Star Wars world always took to an extreme. (An elite class of knights, space battles that resemble sea battles–even including sound effects–and a military coup in a parliament that looks rather like Ancient Rome to me).

OK, so we accept that. But then, if you do accept that the Empire is analogous to empires from our history, there aren’t a lot of examples of technologically backwards opponents winning at the heart of enemy power in that history. At the fringes, yes, but at the heart, rarely. Do you know of good examples?

So, getting back to the article, what I was mostly advocating for was writers consciously considering the technological gulf they are trying to bridge with pluck and then considering if they could fill in/narrow that gulf a little more to achieve more believable stories.

So I guess the Empire doesn’t have competent designers AND is too arrogant for its own good.

Return again to the Ewoks. In the Star Wars Universe nearly all weapons are energy based, imparting EM energy rather than kinetic energy (save for particle beam weapons, which are nearly impossible to resist). This means that armor should focus on heat hardening, rather than structural strength. And since the momentum of EM weapons is trivial, walkers and similar unstable vehicle shapes are practical, while the high accuracy and velocity make small size and maneuverability of little use for avoiding fire from anything large enough to have a proper targeting system. Hence the AT-ST: the perfect weapon for attacking modern forces armed with energy weapons, with a vulnerability to swinging logs and tripwires.

Of course, this leaves two questions: why did the Empire not prepare for Endor, and why did others not turn to kinetic weapons? For the first, arrogance is a clear explanation: since the Empire was so superior, an attack would be unthinkable, and of course it would be easily suppressed (reasoning that has gotten many imperialists swarmed). For the second, creative blindness. Rarely will people return to a failed option, even if conditions have so changed that it has become viable again.

That being so, I’m fine with “ances” so long as discrete plural things are intended and there is sufficient precedence. So “resonances” meaning discrete, measured instances of resonance works for me, but I’d be leery of using “insurances” for insurance policies. Two Reliances would be fine, if you were referring to something like Reliance buses, but I would avoid using two “reliances” for my reliance on two different people.

Ultimately, it comes down to what usage you feel comfortable with (or you think you can get away with) because enough people have used it before you.

And now I’ve made myself slightly crazy and spent a lot of time I REALLY needed to spend on work looking for a perfect short story to suggest to you. And I can’t find it! Argh. My book collection is a bit scattered at present, but if I hunt down that story again, I’ll mention it here. I believe I saw it in a collection. It is about a single guy traveling with a hive alien (and ambassador, I think) in an old world. A lot of it is about the guy trying to puzzle out this extreme racial guilt felt by his hive alien companion. One of the tricks of the story, the most obvious one, is that when the alien’s speech is represented directly, it consists of a vertical set of words and symbols, which looks more like a mathematical equation or computer code than speech.

Ah well. Back to work for me. Thanks again for the suggestion!

In Footfall an advanced species of herd animals is defeated by humans due to they’re inability to understand the concepts of “ruse/stealth/ruthlesness” in war. Very relevant to your article and a great read.

cao