Oh and I wouldn't get too excited about the "George Lucas controlled" part. He paid very little attention to it and for the most part let the Lucasfilm licencing group do whatever they wanted. It seems as though his only interest was in some of the artwork generated, mostly by the comics. That's why characters like Aalya Secura showed up in the movies, not because he read her comics and enjoyed the character, he just liked the design. I don't think he's ever read a single EU novel.
I strongly suspect he at least read a few of them. For example, there are some elements in
Rogue Planet and
Shatterpoint that seemed to end up in AOTC and ROTS respectively, and each of those books came out ( coincidentally? ) around the time he was writing the respective film.
He clearly wasn't involved in most EU stuff, but he did have a hand in certain projects, according to information that is ( or has been ) out there. He submitted notes as background info for some of the early
Tales of the Jedi comics; he wrote the introduction to
Shatterpoint; he edited the
Revenge of the Sith novelization; he was allegedly responsible for certain specific plot points in the
Darth Plagueis novel. And he was involved in story conferences for what became
Splinter of the Mind's Eye.
I read way back when that he read and approved *everything*, which turned out to be a steaming load, so I wouldn't even bet on him having read that.
Well, I've heard that he gave out the DE comic to employees as a Christmas stocking-stuffer type of deal, so I think that's what Mr Light is getting at. But of course that doesn't mean he actually read it.
On the other hand, I suspect he
did read WEG's tie-in DE Sourcebook, as that appears to be where he stole the "balance of the Force" idea from.
