It was a line my brother had said to me in 1977, and I heard myself say it to Jyn Erso. Star Wars has amazing special effects and it’s easy to get enraptured in the idea that our future will be a painless one of hyperdrives and antiseptic planets. Yet my brother had been right. At the penultimate moment in A New Hope, Luke Skywalker refuses the computerized aid of his starfighter. After two hours of whiz-bang gadgetry, in the end he had to trust the Force.

Technology will not save us. I realized that what may have seemed like a honey trap, or a weirdo fan, or even some naughty phone sex, had become something else: the archetype of the ally. I had an ally.