I was more interested in what he had to say about the books themselves rather than his guesses about what Rowling was thinking.
I'm not likely to get around to The Secret History of Star Wars, but if there's a short answer, what happened to Lucas between the end of the first trilogy and the beginning of the second? He seemed to have forgotten most of what he knew about telling stories.
"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" is brilliant. Starting a movie with a scrolling description of the tax(?) situation isn't.
if there's a short answer, what happened to Lucas between the end of the first trilogy and the beginning of the second?
The short answer is that A New Hope had nothing whatsoever to do with any grand story about Darth Vader, who was merely a mid-level flunky of the Empire. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi frantically retcon this, but Lucas simply didn't have a decent backstory centered around Darth Vader and couldn't come up with one.
The longer answer goes into the above, and also points out that Lucas's support network (of beta readers, if you...
Update: Please post new comments in the latest HPMOR discussion thread, now in the discussion section, since this thread and its first few successors have grown unwieldy (direct links: two, three, four, five, six, seven).
As many of you already know, Eliezer Yudkowsky is writing a Harry Potter fanfic, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, starring a rationalist Harry Potter with ambitions to transform the world by bringing the rationalist/scientific method to magic. But of course a more powerful Potter requires a more challenging wizarding world, and ... well, you can see for yourself how that plays out.
This thread is for discussion of anything related to the story, including insights, confusions, questions, speculation, jokes, discussion of rationality issues raised in the story, attempts at fanfic spinoffs, comments about related fanfictions, and meta-discussion about the fact that Eliezer Yudkowsky is writing Harry Potter fan-fiction (presumably as a means of raising the sanity waterline).
I'm making this a top-level post to create a centralized location for that discussion, since I'm guessing people have things to say (I know I do) and there isn't a great place to put them. fanfiction.net has a different set of users (plus no threading or karma), the main discussion here has been in an old open thread which has petered out and is already near the unwieldy size that would call for a top-level post, and we've had discussions come up in a few other places. So let's have that discussion here.
Comments here will obviously be full of spoilers, and I don't think it makes sense to rot13 the whole thread, so consider this a spoiler warning: this thread contains unrot13'd spoilers for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up to the current chapter and for the original Harry Potter series. Please continue to use rot13 for spoilers to other works of fiction, or if you have insider knowledge of future chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
A suggestion: mention at the top of your comment which chapter you're commenting on, or what chapter you're up to, so that people can understand the context of your comment even after more chapters have been posted. This can also help people avoid reading spoilers for a new chapter before they realize that there is a new chapter.