I was reading The Salmon of Doubt when I came across a recommendation of this six page piece of writing:

http://hispanlit.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2011/06/Borges-Pierre-Menard.pdf

“He resolved to anticipate the vanity that awaits all the labors of mankind; he undertook a task of infinite complexity, a task futile from the outset. He dedicated his scruples and his nights ‘lit by midnight oil’ to repeating in a foreign tongue a book that already existed. His drafts were endless; he stubbornly corrected, and he ripped up thousands of handwritten pages.” (94-95)

I realized that this bears striking resemblance to the work of those of us in the fanedit and alternate prequels community. I for one have struggled to write an acceptable alternative to the prequels for years, and have come to realize that there are infinite good stories and infinite bad ones. The quest isn’t to merely write a good alternative to the prequels, at least for me. I feel the need to understand the world before Star Wars, to reconstruct a piece of history that never was, instead of writing a modern tale for an ancient time. New wine cannot be poured into old wine-skins, so the trick is to age the wine before committing it to the antique vessel. It is all trickery, but so is writing itself. The dream of creating a foundational story compared to which even the great Star Wars Trilogy appears to be but a footnote is my dream. Perhaps the worst kind of vanity abutted to the worst type of self aspersion, but one can dream, can’t they?