We've done our best to avoid Star Wars mania here on the Seattle Review of Books, but even we can't ignore this J.G. Ballard review of the original movie from 1977. He calls the film "totally unoriginal, feebly plotted, instantly forgettable, and an acoustic nightmare." At least one of those descriptions has been proven wrong by the march of time. But the rest of Ballard's argument, that science fiction is a serious literary trend and that Star Wars is not a fair representation of good science fiction, is an interesting one. Even if you don't agree with his thesis, you'll want to read this piece. Is Ballard fake-geek-girling Star Wars? Is he right? The happy answer is he's right, and he's wrong, and you're right, and you're wrong. It's possible for a universe to contain as many different opinions as there are people who have opinions. Sometimes it's interesting to read a contrarian take just to gather a new opinion about a time-honored piece of art.

(Via Aaron Stewart-Ahn on Twitter.)