A Little Knowledge Can Be A Dangerous Thing

It was my older brother who first pointed out to me that in space, no one can hear you scream. Or belch. Or even ask why it is that in space no one can hear you scream. Sound doesn't exist in a vacuum. At the time he told me this, I was pleased and happy to take this realization around to all my friends who were initially confused by this bit of physics in, then quietly impressed by my knowledge of the universe. My older brother is also the first person to wonder out loud in my presence why we would assume that all beings from other planets or galaxies would be carbon-based life forms. I never worried much about the source of all this new learning. It could have come from research, or all that higher education, or comic books. It didn't matter. It informed my vision of my galaxy, specifically those elements I watched on movie screens.
There was, in my neighborhood, a lot of fuss made about "fakey." For instance, most of us were happy to go along with the world run by super-intelligent apes for the first movie or two, but by the time they got to the fourth, where budgets had dropped along with expectations, the chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas were not made up with the care that they had been at the beginning of the series. They looked fakey. It was also thanks to my older brother that I learned the limitations of green screen and rear projection. Those dark lines around Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? Fakey.
Then, around 1977, all that doubt was replaced with awe. I didn't worry that all those characters in a galaxy far, far away just happened to speak English. And I sure didn't fuss about  the sound an exploding Death Star made. Not at first, anyway. I satisfied myself with the burgeoning distinction between science fiction and science fantasy. Why wouldn't the laws for physics be different in a galaxy far, far away? I used this defense when explaining away my new favorite movie to all those friends I had once tried to convince of a universe ruled by Isaac Newton. Looking for the strings on the X-Wing fighters was not something I was willing to do. I was able to point out to my older brother that the orcs and dragons in Middle Earth were just as big a stretch, unless you were willing to suspend your disbelief. His love of the Tolkien saga earned me that extra bit of room to escape into space opera.
Which is why I flinched so hard when celebrity astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson started tweeting about all that fakey stuff in "The Force Awakens." He wants us all to know that BB-8 would have skidded uncontrollably on the sand of that distant planet. He even pointed out that TIE fighters wouldn't make that cool screeching sound in the vacuum of space. In a world full of seven foot tall collies with crossbow blasters, he wants to pick nits about how these computer generated ships couldn't really fly around at the speed of light. I appreciate and respect the science that comes so effortlessly to Neil. I do wonder how he got along with his big brother.