Back in the days when movies were "held over" in big cities and those of us who lived in small towns had to wait seemingly forever to see them, I would routinely buy the paperback novelizations, but hold off on reading the final chapter(s). That was the case with Star Wars. I got my copy through the Scholastic Book Club, and its cover proudly proclaimed "From The Adventures of Luke Skywalker." This is right around the time I was discovering such science-fiction series as Dune and Foundation (both trillogies at that time), and for all I knew there was an Adventures of Luke Skywalker series. (In any case, I had no reason to believe there wasn't.) I went to the public library but the librarian had no idea what I was talking about. (For that matter, she had never heard of "Star Wars" either).
Eventually I saw the movie. In the end [SPOILER], the rebels destroy the Death Star and Darth Vader was sent spinning into space [END SPOILER]. I had no reason to expect a sequel, but I was still interested in those other "Adventures of Luke Skywalker." Shortly thereafter, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was released, which was pretty much all I had hoped it would be. The next one I saw after that was Han Solo at Star's End and the next one after that Han Solo's Revenge. I wasn't particularly interested in Han Solo, but I felt I was getting in on the beginning of the next "Big Thing" so I bought and read them, too. Then, one day, I remember standing in the bookstore and my vision focus in on another original "Star Wars" book on the rack. Then my field of vision pulled back and I noticed another... then another, then another. I soon realized that the entire rack was filled with "Star Wars" books! It was at that point I gave up. It would be many years before I bought another original "Star Wars" book.
Then The Empire Strikes Back came to theaters. Three years had passed since Star Wars, both between films as well as IRL. I remember being a bit disappointed that the sequel didn't take place immediately after Star Wars; I was still craving those "Adventures of Luke Skywalker." I was never a big fan of Star Wars comic books (or of any comics based on movies). Marvel's Star Wars was very much along the lines of what I wanted, but I turned my nose up at them because they weren't "official" (i.e., canon). Several years ago I had the opportunity to buy seven tpbs collecting the entire Marvel series on clearance. I read through their adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, then my interest turned elsewhere. They were about what I expected.
Last week I came a cross a bookstore in Colorado that had six copies of IDW's Star Wars Artifact Edition on sale for $26 apiece. It must have been a case of "supply and demand," because these volumes generally go for $100 or more. I couldn't pass it up. The difference between an "Artist's Edition" and an "Artifact Edition" is that the former offer complete stories (scanned at full size from original art) and the latter do not. Although I didn't care too much for them the first time through, I'm currently in the process of re-evaluating them and compiling my own version of "The Adventures of Luke Skywalker."
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And "Exhibit C"...
In the scene during which Luke is about to tell Leia that she is his sister, he asks her about her real mother: "Flashes from her infancy assaulted her--distorted visions of running... a beautiful woman... hiding in a truck. The fragments suddenly threatened to flood her with emotion... 'She died when I was very young... she was very beautiful,' Leia remembered aloud. 'Gentle and kind--but sad.'"
Either Leia's mother survived childbirth, or she si remembering someone else (or George Lucas is making this up as he goes along).
Over in the "What Are You Reading These Days?" thread I recently posted the following:
SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE: This is my third time through "Splinter." It was the first Star Wars spin-off novel. It was written by Alan Dean Foster, whose name I was already familiar with in 1978 from the Star Trek Log series. He had adapted the screenplay of Star Wars into a paperback, and would soon go on to do the same for Alien. He wasn't allowed to oput his name on the adaptation, but part of the deal was that he would write the first paperback. Star Wars hit me at just about the right time (I was 13 when it came out), and I initially planned to buy all of the paperbacks. The second was Han Solo at Star's end (a prequel to the movie), but I was less interested in "The Adventures of Han Solo" than I was "The Adventures of Luke Skywalker." The next one also featured Han Solo as well, and I just couldn't get into it. At that point I dropped my plans to read all the paperbacks, concentrating on just the movie adaptations.
So the first time I read it was in 1978, and I really didn't care for it all that much (for stupid reasons we need not go into here). I didn't re-read it in the '90s when I re-read the adaptations, but I did re-read it in the early 2Ks.Each time I took somethning different away from it. This time, I was interested in the interaction between Luke and Dark Vader when they come face-to-face at the end. Vader says: "You know, Skywalker, I had a difficult time finding out it was you who shot up my TIE fighter above the Death Star station. Rebellion spies are hard and expensive to come by. I also found out it was you who released the torpedo that destroyed the station. You have a great deal to atone for to me. I've waited a long time." So, at this point, Datth Vader does know Luke's identity, and presumably that he is his son (although it's uncertain Alan Dean Foster, or even George Lucas, knew at the time).
From an online review:
"After writing the original novelization of Star Wars, author Alan Dean Foster was hired to write a sequel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye. George Lucas' plan was to have a second story ready in case Star Wars bombed at the box office. If Star Wars underperformed, its sets could be reused for a low-budget sequel featuring some of the principal cast members. After the film broke box office records, however, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was repurposed as the first spinoff novel.
"The book follows Luke, Leia, and the droids as they search the mining colony Mimban for a kyber crystal, which is referred to as a powerful Force artifact. The Expanded Universe would later establish that Kyber crystals are the energy source that powers lightsabers, an idea that has persevered into the Disney era.
"The story is bound by the constraints of a smaller film. The locations are mostly murky forests and sets that appeared in the first film, and only Luke and Leia are featured (a return appearance wasn't in Harrison Ford's original contract). Lucas had Foster cut out a space battle that would've been too expensive to film, but the book did feature the first lightsaber battle between Luke and Darth Vader a full two years before The Empire Strikes Back. There are also hints of a romance between Luke and Leia, as Foster was unaware that they were siblings."
I did not know that.
THE THRAWN TRILOGY:
This is what I've been workng toward. I bought these books in the early '90s with the intention of reading them "someday," but until now I never have. I've explored the gaps between movies enough; what I'm interesting in now is what happened after the original trilogy. Here is an online review...
Perhaps the most important "Star Wars" novel ever written, "Heir to the Empire" kicked off the Expanded Universe. While the post-"Return of the Jedi" era had briefly appeared in the original run of Marvel comics, the period was largely unexplored before Timothy Zahn's novel hit shelves in 1991. The book picks up five years after the destruction of the second Death Star. The New Republic has been established, but its expansion is hindered by the remaining Imperial forces.
Former Imperials unite under the command of Grand Admiral Thrawn, an alien strategist who discovers secrets buried in Emperor Palpatine's personal vaults. Amassing a fleet of ships and unleashing the threat of a crazed former Jedi, Thrawn sets his sights on retaking the former Imperial capital, Coruscant. Thrawn instantly became a fan-favorite character, and made his transition to the new "Star Wars" canon when he appeared in the animated series "Rebels," before becoming a key part of the "Ahsoka" TV series.
"Heir to the Empire" establishes that Han and Leia were married and expecting twin children, Jacen and Jaina, but that isn't the only romance. In "Heir to the Empire," Luke crosses paths with former dark side acolyte Mara Jade, and while the two are initially forced into a shaky alliance, they eventually develop feelings for each other. Mara Jade emerged as a hero in Zahn's sequels, "Dark Force Rising" and "The Last Command."
The Thrawn trilogy was not only the beginning of the Expanded Universe it was the best of the Expanded Universe. I read these when they were first published - a time when there was little to no Star Wars content out there (doesn't seem possible does it) and they were truly thrilling. Maybe I was starved for more Star Wars but I felt I was right back there in the galaxy far, far away.
Tracy's cousin is a HUGE Star Wars fan, perhaps the biggest I know. He has his own Stormtrooper armor and makes custom light sabres which he sells for around $300 apiece online. (I once asked him why he had Stormtrooper armor and not a Jedi Robe, but he has one of those, too.) He also has a nigh complete set of EU Star Wars books he has been following for years... decades. Then the final trilogy came out, he was extremely upset that the scrapped all of that continuity in favor of the "new" continuity. I told him to try reading comic books sometime.
SHIPPING THIS WEEK: THE ART OF STAR WARS - A NEW HOPE: THE MANGA v2:
STAR WARS 1.5 (or "4.5" if you prefer): I have read three different versions of what is supposed to have happened between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.
Because the storytelling in the 2015 series is so much more complex than the movies were at the time the stories were set, they're not really a good fit structurally. For that reason, of the three, my favorite (although not necessarily the best) of the three is the Goodwin/Williamson run of the newspaper comic strip.
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