Any TrekLit authors who would write for StarWarsLit?

[Steve Roby]

Anderson's X-Files novel Ruins was (imho, of course) one of the worst tie-in novels I've ever read. It's been a few years, but as I recall, I didn't get the sense that he had any grasp of the show or its characters, his prose was a chore to get through, and his original characters would have had to pool their personalities to generate a single dimension for a cheap pulp fiction character.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Actually I was thinking the other day about Kevin Anderson and the possibility that he might some day write a Trek novel.

Pass.

I paid $1.99 for Anderson's The Martian War. That was two dollars too much.

 

[Jbarney]

Actually I was thinking the other day about Kevin Anderson and the possibility that he might some day write a Trek novel.

Pass.

I paid $1.99 for Anderson's The Martian War. That was two dollars too much.

I didn't mind his Star Wars stuff although I think the emphasis was a bit towards the younger kids. Some people had a huge problem with this. I remember my best friend in college, who was a huge Star Wars fan, thought Kevin Anderson's stuff was awful.

I'm not surprised there seems to be a collective groan at the thought of him doing a Trek novel.

 

[Defcon]

Another name I was going to throw out there was Steven Barnes, but he did the novelization to 'Far Beyond the Stars'....

And a story in The Lives of Dax.

 

[Nerdius Maximus]

^Maybe the books are avoiding the inter-trilogy era because the upcoming live-action TV series is going to deal with it.

I dunno, they've said repeatedly that the show would deal almost exclusively with minor characters, which sounds interesting, but there's so much untapped potential with the major characters that they're not exploiting.

That might actually get me to read them again. I got so disillusioned with the books right after the New Jedi Order that I haven't picked up a single one since. The whole of the Star Wars universe seems to be locked into a repetitive cycle, and I'm tired of the same story.

I'd pick up more books taking place prior to the NJO in a heartbeat, though.

I've been severely disappointed by the lack of Vader-themed books. After ROTS was released, and the whole story was out there, I thought we'd be seeing an explosion of new between-trilogy books. Instead we get more shit about Young Anakin and the Clone Wars. I want Vader, the early days of the Rebel Alliance, Princess Leia, Grand Moff Tarkin, etc etc etc.

We did get the Force Unleashed, which shows alot of that stuff.

Yeah, there is that, but it (understandably)reads like a video game. Starkiller fights through one set of enemies until he gets to a boss, defeats him, moves on to another mission. I'm glad I read the book, because without it I wouldn't have been able to understand what the hell was going on when I played through the game on the Wii, but it's clearly just a tie-in, nothing really compelling about the story itself as a stand-alone novel.
Shadows of the Empire was awesome, so obviously it's possible to come up with a great novel based on a video game. It's a great read with or without the game.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

Generally speaking? Sure. I think it'd be fun. It would depend on the story and the "era" within the SW timeline, though. I'm not all that enamored with much of the way-post-original trilogy period. Maybe something a bit more straightforward, like a Han Solo/Chewbacca "Before they met Luke Skywalker" sort of thing. Just a man and his Wookie, hot-roddin' through the galaxy, usin' words like "parsec" in all the wrong ways.....

God love ya.

Me too.

 

[Darth Duck]

Kevin J. Anderson and his wife wrote one of the DS9 Jake and Nog kiddie books, Highest Score, I think.

 

[elaithin]

Kevin J. Anderson makes me twitch. There's few writers I honestly hate, but he's one. He's exactly what I'm talking about when I mention SW's cycle of repetitive storytelling. I much preferred Michael Stackpole's version of the 'Jedi Academy Trilogy' that was covered (and rationalized) in I, Jedi.

Dark Nest - yeah, that was the books that finally turned me off of them. And then I heard about certain events in the Legacy of the Force series.. well, I have no intention of ever reading those. (To clarify - it's not because of deaths. I thought Chewie's death in Vector Prime was very well done. It's the too-often-used repetion of the fall/restablishment of a galactic governments, good-guy-goes-bad-to-be-good, ad nauseum. )

 

[Corran Horn]

Maybe it's just my imagination, but most of the Star Wars books these days seem to be from the same group of authors. Also I think they only do about 6-8 books a year, and they have these long series, so I don't know how much they actually look for new material. I use to read alot of Star Wars, but since the NJO, I just have not been into that much.

There have been a few drop-in titles outside the 'main storyline', though.

 

[Trek Survivor]

Maybe it's just my imagination, but most of the Star Wars books these days seem to be from the same group of authors.

So just like Star Trek books these days then!!

 

[James Swallow]

I was just wondering if any of the Trek literature authors on here would, if given the opportunity, want to write a novel or two over in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
I'm a huge fan of SW EU, and would love to see a Star Wars novel written by some of the Trek authors.

Oh yeah. Star Wars was a big part of my personal sci-fi landscape, and I'd love to write fiction in the GFFA. I've written a lot of Star Wars 'non fiction' for publications like Star Wars Magazine, The Star Wars Fact Files, Star Wars Insider and Star Wars Gamer, so I reckon I have form. I miss the X-Wing books - it would be cool to write something like that.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

Kevin J. Anderson makes me twitch. There's few writers I honestly hate, but he's one. He's exactly what I'm talking about when I mention SW's cycle of repetitive storytelling. I much preferred Michael Stackpole's version of the 'Jedi Academy Trilogy' that was covered (and rationalized) in I, Jedi.

Dark Nest - yeah, that was the books that finally turned me off of them. And then I heard about certain events in the Legacy of the Force series.. well, I have no intention of ever reading those. (To clarify - it's not because of deaths. I thought Chewie's death in Vector Prime was very well done. It's the too-often-used repetion of the fall/restablishment of a galactic governments, good-guy-goes-bad-to-be-good, ad nauseum. )

Michael Stackpole seems to be the go-to-guy for Star Wars books.

As I mentioned in another thread, I've heard good things about I, Jedi....

I want to read Vector Prime just to see how Chewie's death is handled...

 

[captcalhoun]

mebbe you could try pitching an ARC-170 series or V-Wing series set in the clone wars?!

 

[Dayton Ward]

I wonder who will do any future Imperial Commando books, now that Karen Traviss has sworn off of them.

 

[stonester1]

Personally, I like some of Kevin J. Anderson's stuff, especially his Jedi Academy trilogy. GREAT stuff. Return to Yavin 4, Kessel, and the Lovecraftian horror what lurketh in the deep mines...

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I don't think Star Wars is my cup of tea. One, it's about war, and I don't do war stories. Two, it's basically sword-and-sorcery fantasy transposed into space, and I'm a hard-SF guy. Three, it's all so solidly mapped out, this whole Expanded Universe where every writer has to honor every bit of continuity ever established in every book and comic and video game and trading card and action figure and bedsheet and PEZ dispenser ever made, so it doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of room for bringing my own creativity to the table. Maybe if I could take the approach of the old Marvel comics, say, tell a sidebar story that wasn't connected to all the war stuff and took place in some part of the galaxy that little has been established about so that I could do my own thing, I could do that, but I'm not sure the fanbase would be very interested in something like that.

Actually, Christopher, the fanbase would be very interested in stuff like that. We thrive on smaller, character type stories, and love them just as much, if not more then the bigger 9-book series type stuff.

That's exactly the sort of stuff I keep trying to find SW books of. I don't want a huge epic series about another ultimate threat. I hate NJO. IF anyone has any suggestions for "smaller, character based stories" I would welcome them.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I was just wondering if any of the Trek literature authors on here would, if given the opportunity, want to write a novel or two over in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
I'm a huge fan of SW EU, and would love to see a Star Wars novel written by some of the Trek authors.

Oh yeah. Star Wars was a big part of my personal sci-fi landscape, and I'd love to write fiction in the GFFA. I've written a lot of Star Wars 'non fiction' for publications like Star Wars Magazine, The Star Wars Fact Files, Star Wars Insider and Star Wars Gamer, so I reckon I have form. I miss the X-Wing books - it would be cool to write something like that.

I would LOVE it if you wrote an SW book.

 

[Braxton]

Maybe it's just my imagination, but most of the Star Wars books these days seem to be from the same group of authors.

So just like Star Trek books these days then!!

But Star Trek books have been better than Star Wars books lately. Since NJO Star Wars books seem to have gone downhill in terms of quality and enjoyment of reading. Everything in Star Wars has become galaxy wide and must be in long running series of books. The latest of which is only in hardcover. Also some of the things they put in are hard to believe (like some force powers) or feel forced and political opinion by authors has seeped in (especially in LOTF). Trek has always had political elements in it and is part of what makes some of the stories great. I do enjoy how Star Trek books have been written and hope it continues.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I think Star Wars' problem is that they're always trying to up the ante. Every story has to be some galaxy-spanning disaster. I know it's called Star Wars, but they need to scale things down and make the threats a little more localized. And it might help them to do more... not necessarily standalone tales, but less of these big, galaxy-shaking series. NJO, for example, was a series with the galaxy-shaking, but it was also long enough to give the authors some more room to breathe and try something different. Twenty books by eleven authors, as opposed to nine books by three, like they're doing now.

Also, they could stand to open it up a little - ninety percent of the books focus on the Skywalker/Solo family. I know that was the focus of the movies, but there are other characters who deserve time in the spotlight too. I love the X-Wing series, and the main characters of the movies have at best supporting roles.

Basically, I'm thinking Star Wars literature needs something like the live-action show to be able to branch out - sort of like what DS9 did for Star Trek, allowing there to be a focus on things beyond just the adventures of the USS Enterprise of whichever time period the show's taking place in. Star Wars hasn't really had that yet, since Luke and Anakin are the main characters of the movies. With the TV show, where Vader is the enemy and Luke is pre-verbal, it's going to have to show and develop new parts of the Star Wars universe that haven't been showcased that heavily before.

 

[JD]

Maybe it's just my imagination, but most of the Star Wars books these days seem to be from the same group of authors.

So just like Star Trek books these days then!!

But Star Trek books have been better than Star Wars books lately. Since NJO Star Wars books seem to have gone downhill in terms of quality and enjoyment of reading. Everything in Star Wars has become galaxy wide and must be in long running series of books. The latest of which is only in hardcover. Also some of the things they put in are hard to believe (like some force powers) or feel forced and political opinion by authors has seeped in (especially in LOTF). Trek has always had political elements in it and is part of what makes some of the stories great. I do enjoy how Star Trek books have been written and hope it continues.

They have also been adding alot more new authors over the past couple years than Star Wars has. Sure there are the regulars, but there have been a few new people popping up here and there. Unlike SW which in the last couple years has only added Christie Golden.