Chapter 3

THE NEW MUSKETEERS

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally, they became heroes."¹

- Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan

SEE THREEPIO (C3-PO) - Human cyborg public relations robot, specialist in Galactic custom, language and protocol. Gold-plated, humanoid, slim and slightly ungainly See Threeplo is the companion of
R2-D2.

ARTOO DEETOO (R2-D2) - A meter high information retrieval and repair robot, tripodal, a thermocapsulary dehousing assister. Intrepid, stubbornly courageous and devoted to fulfilling Princess Leia's wishes.

CHEWBACCA (He doesn't) - Golden-haired gorilla-form Wookie, variously described as having eyes that are (a) blue² (b) yellow³ (c) soft and (d) scary depending on what you read, when you read it, or when you met him under what circumstances. Co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon with Han Solo, and rumored to be over 100 years old with a voice that sounds like a "cross between a hoarse lion's roar and the bray of an outraged donkey."⁴ Part bully, part coward, but very lovably scary nevertheless.

SPOCK - Vulcan Science Officer and second-in-command of the U.S. S. Enterprise. Spock's Vulcan Father, Sorek, and Earth mother, Amanda, give him a background that makes identification with either race difficult, and some situations nearly impossible.⁵ An extremely logical being, with interesting ears and a cuproglobin hue to his skin.⁶
See Threepio.
Spock.
Chewie.
Artoo.


Strange names.
Strange heroes.
Strangely endearing.

So -What does
a walking carpet
a metal Stan Laurel
a pointy-eared Vulcan
and a sawn-off bleeping salt-shaker have in
common, anyhow?

Alienation.


They are all aliens.
Maybe that's why we love them.
They're all strangers in a strange land.

After all, there's an awful lot of people who feel the same way. (With apologies, of course, to Mr. Spock, who of course is known not to feel much of anything.)
Do you remember?

That first day of grade school. Your mother dressed you up outlandishly.
You were deposited at the gate, wearing your best fixed smile to hide the stark terror in your heart. You gripped your new lunch-box tightly, and gingerly ventured into the vast and terrifying world that lay before you.

Remember?


Junior High.
Senior High.
Junior College.
College.
Graduate school.
New job.
New office.
New neighborhood.

It didn't end. It still hasn't ended.

Alienation.


Mr. Spock, we love you.

We know why Bones gets exasperated with you, but we don't care. He doesn't understand you but we do. You're different, that's all, in a way that no one can change, and you will never quite fit in the easy and comfortable mold others would like you to manage.

See Threepio, it's alright to get apoplectic. Sometimes we aren't sure if we'll make it either.

As for your alternate howls of bravado and cowardice, Chewie, we understand.

You have become the New Musketeers, sci-fi swashbucklers on ships driven by light across a sea of stars, human enough to be different, alien enough to be like us.

You have come at a time when we needed you.
The Great God Humanism mated with Mother
Technology and their child was our age.
We were born in cynicism
Raised in neo-Darwinism
Baptized in pessimism
And we have mourned because we have no
one to look up to that understands.

If Time and Chance and blind, undirected Matter has birthed Man -
If we have tried the gods of East and West and found them too silly or too small -
If there really is no Heaven or Hell or unending eternal future -
Then give us back our sense of wonder
Restore to us the joy of our salvation
Bring peace to our over-sedated minds with the only thing left -

2001 Space Odyssey
The Chariots of the Gods
Stranger in a Strange Land
and make us more like Muad'dib in Dune,

in the Name of Rationalism, Humanism and Technocracy

Amen.

If "Technology is modern man's Holy Spirit"7
Then science fiction is modern man's prophecy -
It is the last area left of hope and awe and adventure.
Dorothy Sayers points out in her own penetrating and perceptive way -
"The years between the wars saw the most ruthless campaign of debunking ever undertaken by nominally civilized nations. Great artists were debunked by disclosures of their private weaknesses; great statesmen, by attributing to them mercenary and petty motives, or by alleging that all their work was meaningless or done for them by other people. Religion was debunked and shown to be a mixture of craven superstition and greed. Courage was debunked, patriotism was debunked, learning and art were debunked, love was debunked and with it family affection and the virtues of obedience, veneration and solidarity. Age was debunked by youth and youth by age. Psychologists stripped bare the pretensions of reason and conscience and self-control, saying these were only the respectable disguises of unmentionable unconscious impulses. Honour was debunked with peculiar virulence, and good faith, and unselfishness. Everything that could possibly be held to constitute an essential superiority had the garments of honour torn from its back and was cast out into the darkness of derision. Civilization was finally debunked till it had not a rag left to cover its nakedness."⁸

Enter the New Musketeers.

Two thousand years ago, a Man walked this
Earth who was utterly different from any
other who had ever been born on this planet.
He was born uniquely⁹
Lived incredibly¹⁰
Died terribly¹¹

But then, astonishingly, He came back.¹²

No one in all time was more at home on Earth than Him.
But no one in all history was treated more like an alien.
Perhaps the saddest verse in all of literature is this

"He was in the world, and though the world was made by him, the world did not recognize him -
He came to that which was his own
But his own did not receive him."¹³

There is no loneliness on earth like that loneliness.

High in the wasted hills of Gadara lived an alienated man.
He lived in caves and empty tombs, naked and insane.
He roamed the plains and barren slopes at night, hissing to himself.

Nobody ever came near
Nobody even thought about it
Nobody dared walk anywhere around there -
They had all heard the rumors!

People had tried - once.
Someone had tried to manacle him.
Whatever was driving him was far more than
human.
He broke the chains -
Just broke them, iron chains -
And smashed off the manacles on the rocks.

And if you ever sailed past those hills some
still and chilly evening
You could hear him high in the hills
Crying and cutting himself with stones.¹⁴
His name was Legion.
He was as alien as you can get.
If ever a man didn't belong in this world, he didn't.
But Legion met another Man,
Another who didn't fit in for absolutely opposite reasons,
Two alienated men, meeting in a terrifying confrontation of power -

Two absolutely opposed worlds
Meeting where the sea touched the land
Neither world representing Earth alone.

An other-world madness
Met Ultimate sanity
Love flowed out to fear.
A herd of animals stampeded into the sea
And when the locals crept in closer, trembling to see
They found him - he who was called Legion
Sitting, clothed and in his right mind
And they were afraid. 15

The world has always been afraid
Of people in their right minds.
We don't like extremes
We don't like people that are different
We prefer the safe, sane and comfortable center.¹⁶

And we habitually exclude, exile or execute anyone who disturbs our natural, abnormal world.

If it can't be explained
Kill it with words, sneers, or indifference -
And if that doesn't work, kill the living
demonstration!

But three cheers for the New Musketeers!
We can believe in them, because they really are not there at all
Except afternoons and evenings or at $3.50 a ticket.¹⁷

We can live out our worship and dreams in celluloid, ESTAR and videotape.

Yet, my friend -
Have you ever felt it?
That strange, inner longing?
That inner, piercing pang of sweet sadness and a longing so deep and painfully beautifully that we almost never mention it to anyone And if we ever do, baptize it with awkward, embarrassed names like

Nostalgia
Wistful dreams
Romanticism?¹⁸

How about this name?

Homesickness.

Chapter Four - Sir Luke We Need You Now