Bob Brown is Back

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2046
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Bob Brown is Back

Post by 2046 » Tue Apr 22, 2014 12:55 am

http://www.synicon.info/SW/#

In the late 90's there was some great pure research being done on Star Wars without the competitiveness and bias toward wankery among some of the SW technical types.

There was, so far as I know, little in the way of power figures or anything of the sort, but when it came to pure scaling and of course the legendary deck plans, there was no better source than Bob Brown.

(As an aside, he and his martial arts troupe even appeared in AotC as Jedi at Geonosis, IIRC.)

He eventually came under attack from Wongites . . . I'm a little vague on the history, but suffice it to say that he found the ICS sort of wankery annoying and the vitriolic Star Wars inflationists infuriating, and eventually decided to quit the 'business' altogether right around the same time I really got cranking.

As such I missed the party, but from what I saw in the aftermath he seemed to me to be more of the pure 1970s-early-1980s era science fiction mindset, a sort of evolution of 60's futurism but where things had purpose and were lived in and were 'real', as opposed to technobabblators and handwavium and quasi-magical technology claimed to be just off-screen . . . in short, he seemed a "face value" kinda guy, rather than an inflationist.

I can't express how glad I am to see him back in the game.

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Re: Bob Brown is Back

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:15 am

2046 wrote:http://www.synicon.info/SW/#

In the late 90's there was some great pure research being done on Star Wars without the competitiveness and bias toward wankery among some of the SW technical types.

There was, so far as I know, little in the way of power figures or anything of the sort, but when it came to pure scaling and of course the legendary deck plans, there was no better source than Bob Brown.

(As an aside, he and his martial arts troupe even appeared in AotC as Jedi at Geonosis, IIRC.)

He eventually came under attack from Wongites . . . I'm a little vague on the history, but suffice it to say that he found the ICS sort of wankery annoying and the vitriolic Star Wars inflationists infuriating, and eventually decided to quit the 'business' altogether right around the same time I really got cranking.

As such I missed the party, but from what I saw in the aftermath he seemed to me to be more of the pure 1970s-early-1980s era science fiction mindset, a sort of evolution of 60's futurism but where things had purpose and were lived in and were 'real', as opposed to technobabblators and handwavium and quasi-magical technology claimed to be just off-screen . . . in short, he seemed a "face value" kinda guy, rather than an inflationist.

I can't express how glad I am to see him back in the game.
I'm equally pleased about such news!

It is very hard to find someone who disliked his website. The guy, perhaps, but his words were stellar. As for his boards, those were agreable times for me as well (although short, and Brown had many gripes with some of its members which is also why he was totally fed up and closed them iirc). It's always been unnerving how all its members more or less parted ways after it blew. It doesn't mean we all agreed, but I'd be hard pressed to remember any feeling of being exposed to neither Saxtonian nor Wongian doctrines.

I don't remember much about him being under fire from Wongies though.

As for the reasons why he walked off the entire hobby's front scene, from memory, I think the main ones were his legal issues with Lucas' firm over fair use of material and above all Lucas' vision. He also hated the flashy silly choregraphies in the prequels (his kendo hours explain this, and it must have been a true pain for him to watch AOTC and ROTS then), nor did Lucas' latest workds stick particularly well with him.
If I remember correctly, he wasn't very fond of the Emperor being turned into some super duper dark magos instead of just a very clever normal-bloke politician, but that never hampered him from appreciating the OT.

Somehow, now that Lucas is more or less out of the picture (figure it out, his current distant back seat position will have him have even less influence on Star Wars now than he ever had on TESB, which is much promising imho), it sort of makes sense to see him come back only now.

All in all, I'd say that if he opens a forum, you may think twice about going there, because guy has little patience for that kind of stuff. Which meant it's probably better for him to let other people deal with it so perhaps we could send him some greetings and he might pay us a visit?

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Re: Bob Brown is Back

Post by 2046 » Tue Apr 22, 2014 1:00 pm

I get the sense he was a bit of a hothead, yes, and the dislike of the prequel version of things did factor in (and seemingly in association with the ICS dislike).

He sort of reminds me of a TrekBBS poster whose name escapes me but who was similarly an old 70's sci-fi guy who utterly rejected TNG because it stepped on his imagined ideas of the way things in Trek should've been, and would get very cranky about it and be a schmuck to anyone who didn't view his vision as superior. His vision of Star Trek had very little to do with actual Star Trek . . . basically he trapped himself in TMP and mixed in some ruminations from the "Best of Trek" books and other 70's era sci-fi imaginings and, having trapped himself there, refused to come out. He would even claim that Roddenberry had started doing drugs and all sorts of other stuff, as if to try to explain away his previous TOS-Roddenberry-worship compared to his TNG-Roddenberry-loathing.

Needless to say, that guy and I sparred a bit . . . he'd jump in when I was taking the canon as a whole and spew his weirdness. And, while I don't worship Hollywood people period, I saw no need to smear a dead man.

Suffice it to say that contrary to your last paragraph, I have no thoughts that Bob Brown and I are natural allies or whatever it is you were thinking. I simply like his work and, while I do think we have areas of agreement, we would, I think, have big areas of disagreement, too. He obviously used the EU though he had a reputation of disliking it, so he might enjoy CanonWars.com . . . or he might not. Makes no difference to me.

I do remember Brown referring to the opening of Wong's board as a very negative thing, as if his enemies had a home, and talking negatively about Saxtonites that would hound him . . . and some of the SDN folks took at least partial credit/gloat regarding his departure.

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Re: Bob Brown is Back

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Apr 22, 2014 2:33 pm

2046 wrote:Suffice it to say that contrary to your last paragraph, I have no thoughts that Bob Brown and I are natural allies or whatever it is you were thinking. I simply like his work and, while I do think we have areas of agreement, we would, I think, have big areas of disagreement, too. He obviously used the EU though he had a reputation of disliking it, so he might enjoy CanonWars.com . . . or he might not. Makes no difference to me.
Oh, the virtues of context. Yes, yes, I quoted you. I see.
OK. It was meant as a general notice to anyone thinking about going to a forum administrated by BB. :)

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Re: Bob Brown is Back

Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Apr 22, 2014 8:29 pm

Good to hear that Rob is back. Hopefully this is a jump start of good honest research.
2046 wrote:He sort of reminds me of a TrekBBS poster whose name escapes me but who was similarly an old 70's sci-fi guy who utterly rejected TNG because it stepped on his imagined ideas of the way things in Trek should've been, and would get very cranky about it and be a schmuck to anyone who didn't view his vision as superior. His vision of Star Trek had very little to do with actual Star Trek . . . basically he trapped himself in TMP and mixed in some ruminations from the "Best of Trek" books and other 70's era sci-fi imaginings and, having trapped himself there, refused to come out. He would even claim that Roddenberry had started doing drugs and all sorts of other stuff, as if to try to explain away his previous TOS-Roddenberry-worship compared to his TNG-Roddenberry-loathing.
Sound a lot like James Dixon, only even more extreme.
-Mike

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Re: Bob Brown is Back

Post by 2046 » Wed Apr 23, 2014 3:12 am

I had to look him up. Interesting . . . so Dixon is like some sort of evil version of Nathan Butler of Star Wars Timeline Gold fame?

Dixon and my guy sound like they're cut from the same cloth inasmuch as being unwilling to accept that there was new canon from 1987 onward and that it wasn't ever gonna fit with their version.

I have the sense that Bob Brown may've had a similar affliction. But, in reading up on him, some say he hated the EU and others say the reverse, and of course he ditched Star Wars in part because of the prequels trampling on his vision of SW, a vision in which the EU seemed to be used, so I really don't know what to think.

But, if the SDN gang disliked him back in the day, that lays decent odds he was actually good.

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Re: Bob Brown is Back

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:30 pm

2046 wrote:I had to look him up. Interesting . . . so Dixon is like some sort of evil version of Nathan Butler of Star Wars Timeline Gold fame?

Dixon and my guy sound like they're cut from the same cloth inasmuch as being unwilling to accept that there was new canon from 1987 onward and that it wasn't ever gonna fit with their version.

I have the sense that Bob Brown may've had a similar affliction. But, in reading up on him, some say he hated the EU and others say the reverse, and of course he ditched Star Wars in part because of the prequels trampling on his vision of SW, a vision in which the EU seemed to be used, so I really don't know what to think.

But, if the SDN gang disliked him back in the day, that lays decent odds he was actually good.
I'd say he really was a purist. His forum had a section that put the EU in its own subforum and he didn't bother much with that one.
I can't recall much EU-friendly material on his website at all. Exceptions were few and far between, the biggest most certainly being, as far as I can recall, the entire page dedicated to the Outrider and her deckplans, and for some reason I always thought he agreed to that simply because of the quick and dirty addition of that ship in the background of ANH's Special Edition in '97.

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