Derbyshire plays with fire...

...by nit-picking Star Wars' classic opening. He's probably right, but it is scary. I mean he even knows that he's "Speaking Truth to Power" which is always tricky business...

Lucas lost me right away at the very, very beginning, with "...in a galaxy far away..." All galaxies are far away, exceedingly far away. The nearest proper one (unless you count vague scraps, dwarves, clouds, and clusters) is M31, and that's 17,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away. And with 100 billion or so stars to choose from in our own galaxy, there was no need to place the story in another galaxy anyway. The people who wrote this junk just didn't know the meaning of the word "galaxy."

I'll allow that Carrie Fisher was cute back in 1977. But then, so was I.