By Alyssa Rosenberg I've been following Ta-Nehisi Coates' plan to get his kid playing Dungeons & Dragons, and I'll admit his efforts were in the back of my mind when my 11-year-old brother and I meandered up to the TV room in our attic on Friday afternoon so I could show him his first Star Wars movie (A New Hope, of course, and the pre-edited version on VHS with the Lucas interviews before the feature. Like Ross Douthat, the prequels are persona non grata in my family's VCR.) I was about his age when I first watched Episodes IV, V, and VI, and they touched off an incredibly intense passion. I was already a science fiction fan (spent a lot of time in my local library reading the Foundation books on the floor between the shelves), but I just got obsessed. I read a ton of very bad Star Wars novels (we're talking Splinter of the Mind's Eye bad), and some pretty okay ones (Michael Stackpole's X-Wing books rock!), cemented my first good friendship at summer camp over Star Wars fan fiction, and still keep the Star Wars Encyclopedia in my apartment.
