IN: Count Dooku of Serenno, from the House of Dooku is a fictional character from the Star Wars franchise, appearing in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, as a primary antagonist. He was portrayed by Christopher Lee and voiced by Corey Burton in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Clone Wars.

Introduced in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku appears as the leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, a federation of planetary systems rebelling against the Galactic Republic. He says that the Republic is corrupt, and that its politicians are more interested in maintaining the bureaucracy and enriching themselves than in helping poor, oppressed systems.  Dooku recruits bounty hunter Jango Fett to assassinate Padme Amidala on Coruscant; the attempt on her life fails, however. When a fight with Obi-Wan Kenobi forces Fett to flee from Kamino to Geonosis, the bounty hunter rendezvous with his benefactor. After capturing Obi-Wan on Geonosis, Dooku tells him that he's attempting to save the Republic, explaining that thousands of senators are under the influence of a Sith Lord named Darth Sidious. When Obi-Wan refuses to join him, Dooku promptly sentences him to death.  After an army of Jedi and clone troopers rescue Obi-Wan, Anakin Skywalker and Padme, a battle breaks out between the Republic forces and Dooku's army. Dooku tries to flee, but Anakin and Obi-Wan engage him in a lightsaber duel. Dooku subdues Anakin with a blast of Force lightning, and wounds Obi-Wan with his lightsaber. When Anakin comes to Obi-Wan's defense, Dooku cuts off the young Padawan's arm. Just as Dooku is about to escape, Yoda confronts him and engages him in a lightsaber duel. Unable to match Yoda's speed and agility, Dooku distracts his former master by using the Force to dislodge a large pillar and send it hurtling toward Anakin and Obi-Wan. While Yoda is busy saving them, Dooku escapes.  After he arrives on Coruscant, Dooku shows the Geonosian designs of the Death Star to Darth Sidious and informs his master that their plan is working: "The war has begun."

What other missions does Dooku take part in?

OUT: After an army of Jedi and clone troopers rescue Obi-Wan, Anakin Skywalker and Padme, a battle breaks out between the Republic forces and Dooku's army.


IN: Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California, the only child of Octavia Margaret Guy, a housemaid, and Laurice James Butler, a shoeshine man. Butler's father died when she was seven, so Octavia was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in what she would later recall as a strict Baptist environment. Growing up in the racially integrated community of Pasadena allowed Butler to experience cultural and ethnic diversity in the midst of racial segregation. She accompanied her mother to her cleaning work, where the two entered white people's houses through back doors, as workers.

In the mid-1990s, Butler published two novels later designated as the Parable (or Earthseed) series. The books depict the struggle of the Earthseed community to survive the socioeconomic and political collapse of twenty-first century America due to poor environmental stewardship, corporate greed, and the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. The books propose alternate philosophical views and religious interventions as solutions to such dilemmas.  The first book in the series, Parable of the Sower (1993), features a fifteen-year-old protagonist named Lauren Oya Olamina, and is set in a dystopian California in the 2020s. Lauren, who suffers from a syndrome causing her to literally feel any physical pain she witnesses, decides to escape the corruption and corporatization of her community of Robledo. She forms a new belief system, Earthseed, in order to prepare for the future of the human race on another planet. Recruiting members of varying social backgrounds, Lauren relocates her new group to Northern California, naming her new community "Earthseed".  Her 1998 follow-up novel, Parable of the Talents, is set sometime after Lauren's death and is told through the excerpts of Lauren's journals as framed by the commentary of her estranged daughter, Larkin. It details the takeover of Earthseed by right-wing fundamentalist Christians, Lauren's attempts to survive their religious "re-education", and the final triumph of Earthseed as a community and a doctrine.  In between her Earthseed novels, Butler published the collection Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995), which includes the short stories "Bloodchild", "The Evening and the Morning and the Night", "Near of Kin", "Speech Sounds", and "Crossover", as well as the non-fiction pieces "Positive Obsession" and "Furor Scribendi".

Was the book successful?

OUT: