Yet Borges’ labyrinths now exist in the hands of men like Leland Chee, the chief continuity officer at Lucasfilm. His job is to keep a giant database of everything which has ever happened in the Star Wars universe and make sure none of its books, comics, videogames or sexually suggestive lollipops contradict each other. When contradictions do arise, nerds use the notion of 'canon' to distinguish events which ‘really happened’ from ones which are merely apocryphal. The term was first used in the 1930s by fans and scholars of Sherlock Holmes, who, in their quest to put his adventures in chronological order, had to rule out those of unclear relation or dubious authorship.The full absurdity of canon was laid bare this year by Lucasfilm’s announcement that the voluminous Star Wars ‘expanded universe’ – that is, the novels and comics which kept money rolling in between the last of the original films in 1983 and the series’ return in 1999 – would be excised from the canon to make room for a forthcoming film. These works will now be marketed as “Legends”: that is to say, they are only stories, as opposed to all those other stories about furry bounty hunters and magic space ninjas which really did happened.