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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 4867975" data-attributes="member: 14159">I won't begrudge Star Wars for the idea that in thousands of years there has been very little technological progress.  Vast, galaxy-scale starfaring civilizations with millennia of history and very slow technological progress once they get that "galactic civilization" level is pretty common in Sci-Fi.  Dune comes right to mind, so does the Foundation.  Think of the level of progress they reached before technology slowed down.  They have FTL drives that can put a starship that is a mile long and holds tens of thousands of people across the galaxy in days or hours, and FTL communications providing real-time communications galaxywide.  They have artificial gravity, force fields, and weapons that could easily maul planets into unrecognizable slag.  They can clone people so well that the clones don't necessarily know they are clones (Sate Pestage, Ysanne Isard and Bevel Lemelisk were in this situation).  They have free-floating holograms.  They have reliable and simple antigravity that can make entire cities float permanently.  They have medical technology that can cure almost any disease or malady, and prosthetic limbs, internal and sensory organs that are just as good (if not better) than their organic counterparts.  They have intelligent (and possibly fully sentient) robots that can fill virtually all servant roles and many technical and highly skilled positions.  They also have an order of what are essentially psychic monks that can literally see the future and fight with the power of twenty men, and are devoted to preserving peace and justice.  I wouldn't call the wedding of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade jumping the shark either, as they had spent years building to that point.  Mara Jade was driven to kill Luke when they first met, but that compulsion was eliminated by the end of the novels she appeared in.  They spent more than a decade within the setting, and about 5 years or so in the real world.If I had to focus one one specific point, it would probably be either:1. Vector Prime.  The novel (from 1999) that starts the New Jedi Order series and Yuzzhan Vong War story.  Killing Chewbacca off casually, introducing the Vong and making them out to be so much more dangerous and unstoppable than even the Galactic Empire at it's peak, and giving them biotechnology that easily beats out starships developed over thousands of years in a stand-up fight.  2. Outcast.  The novel (from 2009) that starts the Fate of the Jedi series.  Daala is now the leader of the Galactic Alliance (despite being the most incompetent major Imperial leader), and the galaxy is on the edge of starting yet another Jedi Purge.  Apparently no lessons from the Jedi Purges of the Empire, or the anti-Jedi violence of the Yuzzhan Vong War were learned at all.  Despite saving the galaxy, usually singlehandedly, a dozen times or more Luke Skywalker is put on trial as a war criminal because his nephew became a Sith Lord and they are holding him, and through him all Jedi, responsible for Jacen Solo's reign of terror.  So, the Empire will never really die (no matter how ineptly it is lead) and Jedi will always be persecuted no matter how valiant and selfless of heroes they are because it only takes one in the whole galaxy to fall and suddenly everyone is acting like every Jedi is secretly a Sith, and Luke Skywalker will always save the Galaxy to go right back to having to prove himself and save it all over again next year.As a runner up:Star By Star (from 2001).  The New Jedi Order novel that has the Vong take Coruscant and forever alter the centerpiece world of the Galaxy, the New Republic government completely collapse (after being portrayed as incompetent boobs so muddled in bureaucracy they demand that the General coordinating the defenses of Coruscant while it is under siege do so right before the Galactic Senate so they can advise and debate on his orders in real time).  If you thought there would be no "reset button" after Vector Prime and Chewbacca's Death, this made it much worse and made it more than one major character being killed, the entire Star Wars setting is forever altered here.  Since the beginning of Star Wars, it was about restoring the lost glory of the Republic, and this is the novel that throws the Republic right out the window.</blockquote>

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