Star Wars Books Thread

[WebLurker]

Anybody read the other William Shakespeare's Star Wars books? They seem like a potentially fun idea, but I haven't really heard much about them.

So far, the series covers all the Saga movies made to date. I'm trying to collect the whole set (I've read the three for the original trilogy, plus Phantom Menace). I'm not a Shakespeare fan, but I do find them fun reads. A lot of in-jokes for both Shakespeare and Star Wars alike. Personally, I think that, so far, the ANH one reads the best. The others, while fun, get a little too heavy-handed with the Shakespeare stuff, IMHO. I guess, at the end of the day, it's not essential, but it's fun for what it is.

(FIY, if you hate Jar Jar Binks, you might like the reimagining of him in the TMP book.)

 

[fireproof78]

So far, the series covers all the Saga movies made to date. I'm trying to collect the whole set (I've read the three for the original trilogy, plus Phantom Menace). I'm not a Shakespeare fan, but I do find them fun reads. A lot of in-jokes for both Shakespeare and Star Wars alike. Personally, I think that, so far, the ANH one reads the best. The others, while fun, get a little too heavy-handed with the Shakespeare stuff, IMHO. I guess, at the end of the day, it's not essential, but it's fun for what it is.

(FIY, if you hate Jar Jar Binks, you might like the reimagining of him in the TMP book.)

I really want to block it out for a stage play production.

 

[WebLurker]

I really want to block it out for a stage play production.

You'd have to make your own notes on this (the book is just the lines, and enter/exit stuff), but you could do that. It would make for some great fan films.

 

[JD]

I decided since some of the money was going to a charity to go ahead and support what they were doing and got From a Different Point of View.

 

[fireproof78]

You'd have to make your own notes on this (the book is just the lines, and enter/exit stuff), but you could do that. It would make for some great fan films.

That's what I intend to do when I have my copies.

 

[WebLurker]

That's what I intend to do when I have my copies.

So, what would the final project be? A stage play? A fan film? Something else?

 

[fireproof78]

So, what would the final project be? A stage play? A fan film? Something else?

I would definitely set it up as a stage play, and block it out as such. Probably film it, but as a play.

 

[JD]

So has anyone else gotten A Certain Point of View yet?

 

[Tuskin38]

Next Thrawn Book due next summer

https://twitter.com/DelReyStarWars/status/916405920556560389

 

[JD]

Another one? I wonder where this one will be set in relation to Rebels. Is there a gap between the end of the first one and his first appearance in Rebels?

 

[Tuskin38]

Another one? I wonder where this one will be set in relation to Rebels. Is there a gap between the end of the first one and his first appearance in Rebels?

Or it means he doesn't die in Rebels.

 

[The Wormhole]

Next Thrawn Book due next summer

https://twitter.com/DelReyStarWars/status/916405920556560389

Interesting that he's teaming up with Vader in this one. Given the first novel indicated Thrawn had some sort of adventure with Anakin during the Clone Wars I would imagine that it should only take five minutes of interacting with Vader before Thrawn figures out he's Anakin.

 

[WebLurker]

So has anyone else gotten A Certain Point of View yet?

I've got it, but I need to read it.

 

[Reverend]

I'm about three stories in. They're *very* short but so far it's been entertaining.

This is enormously nitpicky but I couldn't help finding it bothersome that the first makes mention of it taking 8 mins to travel 0.25 parsecs at sublight (a parsec is about 3.26 light years.) Yes, yes I know. Space fantasy, not sci-fi, but still if you're going to use real units of measurement then best at least look up what they mean, otherwise it's better to be non-specific. Indeed, Star Wars usually is for this very reason.
I suppose it could be an intentional troll because of the Kessel Run thing, but they should know by now most wiki editors have no sense of humour.

 

[David cgc]

This is enormously nitpicky but I couldn't help finding it bothersome that the first makes mention of it taking 8 mins to travel 0.25 parsecs at sublight (a parsec is about 3.26 light years.) Yes, yes I know. Space fantasy, not sci-fi, but still if you're going to use real units of measurement then best at least look up what they mean, otherwise it's better to be non-specific. Indeed, Star Wars usually is for this very reason.
I suppose it could be an intentional troll because of the Kessel Run thing, but they should know by now most wiki editors have no sense of humour.

After giving it some thought, I had a suspicion that that might've originally been an AU, but it didn't seem Star-Warsy enough to an editor. The math seems to check out, assuming Star Wars sublight is comparable to Star Trek's, where full impulse is somewhere around .25 to .5 c. Still, they could've just cribbed from BSG and called their AUs "SU."

I'm a bit further in. It started to get a bit sloggy around the Cantina scene to me, since I was never that blown away by there just being a ton of aliens in one room (before my time), and seeing a half dozen or so vaguely contradictory PoVs of Greedo and Han's shootout (though, oddly, none seemed to mention Greedo actually getting a shot off) started to get old. I'm over the hump, though, and things seem to be picking up again.

 

[fireproof78]

I suppose it could be an intentional troll because of the Kessel Run thing, but they should know by now most wiki editors have no sense of humour.

Parsecs are just a poor translation from the Journal of Whills. Any wiki editor knows that

 

[WebLurker]

So has anyone else gotten A Certain Point of View yet?

Finally read it. Really liked it overall. A few stories went a little long and some repeated the same beats too many times. For example, there were too many about the final battle. However reading about dogfights does not really jazz me (look, I tried reading an X-Wing book and found it lame), so your mileage may vary on that point.

But overall, good. Only one story I really didn't like ("Of MSE-6 and Men"). Some of them did seem like they weren't needed, but when they're that good, who cares? Kinda sad to say that my personal favorite, "Trigger," was probably one of the most extraneous to the movie, but what can you do.

This is enormously nitpicky but I couldn't help finding it bothersome that the first makes mention of it taking 8 mins to travel 0.25 parsecs at sublight (a parsec is about 3.26 light years.) Yes, yes I know. Space fantasy, not sci-fi, but still if you're going to use real units of measurement then best at least look up what they mean, otherwise it's better to be non-specific. Indeed, Star Wars usually is for this very reason.
I suppose it could be an intentional troll because of the Kessel Run thing, but they should know by now most wiki editors have no sense of humour.

To be totally honest, I just gloss over exact measurement of sci-fi travel distance and just focus on the travel time. I think the former is basically technobabble to make it seem more realistic, while the latter is what's important.

 

[Reverend]

Still working my way through the book (don't want to burn through it all at once) and just finished the cantina band story. I liked the conflicting account of what Greedo was doing; it shows that characters are not necessarily reliable narrators and that (all together now!) it all depends greatly on their own point of view! Hell, the story (presented as an excerpt chapter from one band member's biography) even says the other band members all tell a different version of what happened.

The R5-D4 story was almost heartbreaking to begin with, but it ended well at least. In a fun twist it seems they fused together elements the two differing EU accounts (yes, including "Skippy the Jedi Droid") into one that's much better than either.

The Beru story was a nice touch, if a little odd considering it appeared to be told by her *after* she died. I presume we're not meant to read anything into that, but people will anyway. Like Queen Breha, she's easily one of the more neglected characters in the ancillary fiction so I'm glad she got a little bit of focus here.

The Qui-Gon story was fascinating as it's from Qui-Gon's point of view and sheds some new light on the nature of force ghosts. Like, they don't exist in that state all the time, it's a conscious effort to detach from the oneness of the cosmic force and it seems they're not just an image, but a physical (if tenuous and temporal) body -bones and all- that gets more "real" over time. That last part seems to jibe quite well with Kenobi's appearance in RotJ.

Oh and good news for anyone that liked the old 'Kenobi' novel: A'Yark is now canon and she's in at least two shots in the movie. There's also an allusion to the events of the novel, so I'd pencil that story (or a similar version of it) in as canon.

After giving it some thought, I had a suspicion that that might've originally been an AU, but it didn't seem Star-Warsy enough to an editor. The math seems to check out, assuming Star Wars sublight is comparable to Star Trek's, where full impulse is somewhere around .25 to .5 c. Still, they could've just cribbed from BSG and called their AUs "SU."

I thought something similar, but honestly the simpler solution would be to just drop the unit altogether and just keep the measurement. Example: "How close are we?" "About point-two-five out. We can be there in eight minutes."
Nice and ambiguous, no?

 

[JD]

As part of their Star Wars Reads month, StarWars.com has posted an interview with Micheal Siglain, the head of publishing for Lucasfilm. He's the guy in charge of all of the book, comics, and magazines.

 

[fireproof78]

The Qui-Gon story was fascinating as it's from Qui-Gon's point of view and sheds some new light on the nature of force ghosts. Like, they don't exist in that state all the time, it's a conscious effort to detach from the oneness of the cosmic force and it seems they're not just an image, but a physical (if tenuous and temporal) body -bones and all- that gets more "real" over time. That last part seems to jibe quite well with Kenobi's appearance in RotJ.

That sold me on it, if nothing else.