Frankly, having abandoned the Star Wars EU a few years back for basically the "sustained self-cannibalism" tendency you just mentioned, I'm kind of enjoying the enormous fanbase clusterfuck this is becoming / will become. Schadenfreude or whatever. I realize this probably makes me kind of a bad person.
If you're a bad person,
Thrawn, so am I. In fact, the not-inconsiderable part of me that enjoys having the anthills kicked over has sort of been anticipating the "decanonization" of the Star Wars EU with something approaching mild satisfaction for some time. It probably makes me sound
horrible, but having come up against the "I don't read Trek books because they're not canon so they mean nothing" attitude rather too often, I must admit there's something satisfying in watching that particular edifice crumble.
For what it's worth, as someone who prefers continuity, ongoing arcs and consistency in the novels (whatever universe we're discussing), I understand the disappointment in having the long-standing insistence that
Star Wars is one big continuity done away with. About a year and a half ago, I went on my first major Star Wars EU marathon - I read everything set chronologically from
The Truce at Bakura through to
The Unifying Force, because I'd been told that it makes a satisfying meta-story, and if I liked the modern Trek novels I'd like the approach of the Star Wars books.
I greatly enjoyed the SW marathon - it
was a satisfying story (with a great three-act structure, as it happens).
Look at it this way. I read a book of short stories once about the Bounty Hunters from
The Empire Strikes Back. I enjoyed the Bossk story, in which our lovable Trandoshan friend winds up in an Imperial prison, destined to be skinned so the local governor's wife can use his scales for a coat (it's a "poetic justice" kind of thing, given that Bossk was hunting Wookiees to use their pelts for the same purpose). The story ends with Bossk left there. Now, I was idly interested in what else had been revealed about the character, so I looked him up on the Star Wars wiki. And apparently there are other Bossk stories set after this one in which he's still flying around the galaxy in the ship that just got confiscated, scaly hide intact. These are all supposed to take place in the same continuity, so all the wiki could say was, essentially "er, but somehow he escaped, recaptured his ship, and carried on business as usual?"
So it was obvious to me then than the
Star Wars books weren't that different from the
Star Trek ones in their approach; they simply pretend (or many fans do) it all fits rather than using broad strokes, or wait for an official retcon. All fair enough - the Trek novels clear up little discreprancies and continuity issues all the time. But it was clear that the two franchises aren't really that different in reality, only in fans' perceptions and in what the creators say.
That
Star Wars marathon I mentioned - the continuity was tight, but there were little mistakes and contradictions and oddities in there, later publications changing things so that earlier works set chronologically later have some odd claims to make - in other words, just like the modern Trek novel 'verse, the only difference being the Trek books have no official policy toward shared continuity; it's just something that developed because, presumably, the authors enjoy or see the advantage of keeping consistency over most of the novels.
I understand why it's a blow, but I guess that as a fan of the Star Trek novel 'verse, I just can't personally see how the EU's "decanonization" ruins anything. That continuity is all still there, it's still as good. It's as official as you want it to be.
"Head Cannon", etc.
