Lines of Flight, Lines of Force: Thomas Pynchon & Star Wars

This essay explores the curious and compelling links between Thomas Pynchon and Star Wars. It examines the direct allusions to George Lucas’s space fantasy in Vineland and Bleeding Edge while also navigating a much bigger galactic picture — the various ways in which Pynchon’s oeuvre and the Star Wars franchise can be understood as tied together by a surprisingly distinct set of shared or overlapping concerns. In addition, it demonstrates how the industrial development of Lucasfilm functions as an unexpected contextual complement to Pynchon’s career-long engagement with the interplay between “the miraculous” and “the machine,” between creative vision and “technopolitical order”.