A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…or more accurately, France, the forces of good and evil do battle once more.

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy…

No, it’s not the seventh instalment, by George Lucas, of the Star Wars series, it’s a collection of striking images, created by Cédric Delsaux, involving characters from the franchise in bleak surroundings.

They include robots C-3PO and R2-D2 checking out a smashed up Citroen, overweight crimelord Jabba the Hutt in a derelict room and bounty hunter Jango Fett holding up a car.

(click on the images for more detail)

Darth Vader is also pictured swinging his red lightsaber against a sinister-looking building while Stormtrooper snipers prowl on the roof.

And fans of X-wing fighters and Imperial Walkers have also been catered for in the stunning images.

The Force was clearly strong with French photographer Cédric Delsaux. He also managed to give his photographs a crisp science fiction feel despite the stark urban backdrops in them.

Firstly, Delsaux captured bleak landscapes in Paris and Lille, and then photographed the models, which were between 20cm and 40cm tall. He then merged the two using a computer.

I decided to mix together the common suburbs and some fantastic characters, which I think has created something poetic.

Adam Lamping, of fans’ website jedinews.co.uk, said: “It’s such an unusual thing to see Star Wars characters from this galaxy far, far away juxtaposed with everyday suburban scenes. The pictures of the Emperor’s Royal Guard are particularly impressive with the red against the dark grey skies. It’s been captured perfectly.”

You can see the entire set on Cédric Delsaux’s website.

In a clear attempt to play devils-advocate, “Facebook is designed to suck up all your free time so that you become a slave to ‘the network’”. What we have yet to see is Facebook drip-feeding that free time back to you at a premium; it will happen!

Now, that’s fantastic if you don’t actually ever want to meet or verbalise with your so-called-friends ever again! But what if you do? You’re trapped in the spiral of needing to update your profile, poke someone, tag a picture and all the other things you can do on the site.

Ironically I have a Facebook profile, but on the premise that I wanted to check out the cool functionality (afterall I am a web developer by trade; honestly that is the reason). I am vehemently resisting its lure, but the black-hole is a powerful thing, especially if you use it for networking.

One commentator said that for LinkedIn to survive it needs to be more like Facebook; No! For LinkedIn to survive it needs to differentiate itself from Facebook and stay in the professional arena. I don’t want my not-so-many chums on Facebook to see my fellow geeks on LinkedIn, for me they are two entirely different groups.