History

Can you help identify these pioneers? At first we were amazed at the number of girls there but then remembered it was the 70s and everyone has long hair. Also, maybe it's just those 70s fashions, but nerds of the 70s would totally be Williamsburg hotties today. Finally, notice how slim they are, in a world where high fructose corn syrup didn't exist.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the release of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, probably the single greatest event in the history of nerddom. STAR WARS might have been new and cool and funny and fresh, but EMPIRE was all that AND sad and tragic and shocking and filled with the kind of terror and awe that the greatest storytelling inspires. From the frozen beauty of an icy horizon studded with AT-ATs, to the steaming green swamp where Luke Skywalker begins his archetypal but unique hero's journey, to the crimson horror of the carbon freezing chamber, to the primal red and blue of the final battle between Luke and Vader, no SF blockbuster has ever captured the imagination so cleanly and completely. It was grown up in an unself-conscious way that nothing to do with Star Wars would ever be again. (Almost certainly because it was the last one that producer Gary Kurtz would in involved with; after EMPIRE it was George Lucas all the way.)