Star Wars Books Thread

[The Wormhole]

Which is why I'm always surprised when a novel hits first.

Hell, that used to be the norm! I remember the TNG movies all had their novelizations out a few weeks prior to their theatrical release. I was about half way through the First Contact novelization when I saw the movie, but thanks to the photo insert in the middle, I knew roughly how the movie would end. I think the reasoning back then was that having the novelization out prior to a movie's release would give a slight boost in sales among those too impatient to wait, although it should also be noted that regulating the release of books has only been a somewhat recent development as often times whenever the book arrived in a store it went straight to the shelf regardless if they were in prior to the official release date or not. It's still like that for the most part, outside of major releases.

In the past decade or so an effort has been made to withhold the release of novelizations until the day of a movie's theatrical release or the day after. IMO, this sort of thing, combined with the fact that a lot of studios are actually forbidding novelization authors from embellishing on details not provided in the script* have contributed to the fact that novelizations just aren't great sellers anymore.

*Obviously not a restriction placed on Star Wars novelizations, if the Rogue One novelization is anything to go by.

 

[JD]

I can't remember what movie it was, but somebody on here said a while back that there was a novelization that came out before the movie, but held back the last few chapters until after the movie had come out, when they then posted them on a website to either read and/or download.

I was just looking through the preview for the Leia issue of the Star Wars Adventures: Forces of Destiny comic, and it appears to have Hera on Hoth with Han and Leia.

 

[Prax]

I read TFA prior to seeing the movie. March is soooooo far away!

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I can't remember what movie it was, but somebody on here said a while back that there was a novelization that came out before the movie, but held back the last few chapters until after the movie had come out, when they then posted them on a website to either read and/or download.

Max Allan Collins' novelization for Dick Tracy, when first published, didn't reveal that Madonna's character was The Blank to not spoil the plot twist. In a later printing (the sixth or seventh), the final chapters were replaced with new material that had the film's ending.

 

[JD]

I haven't heard about that one before. So did it have an alternate ending, or did it just end before the reveal?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

IIRC, because I haven't read it since 1990, the Dick Tracy novelization had the finale of the film, but there was no identity reveal and there was some dialogue about how Tracy would never know who the Blank was. I've never seen the version of the novelization with the reveal intact; supposedly it's very rare.

 

[The Wormhole]

I can't remember what movie it was, but somebody on here said a while back that there was a novelization that came out before the movie, but held back the last few chapters until after the movie had come out, when they then posted them on a website to either read and/or download.

I know it was a common thing to leave twist endings of movies out of the novelization. For example, the novelization to the 2001 Planet of the Apes left out the ending with Mark Wahlberg landing in a modern-day Washington DC populated by apes with a General Thade statue replacing the Lincoln Memorial. The novelization just ends with Wahlberg getting into his space pod and taking off.

 

[Tuskin38]

the Star Wars movie adaptations are really only canon when they line up with what was shown in the movie.

So even if a novel has a deleted scene, it doesn't make it canon.

 

[JD]

Where did that come from? I was under the impression that everything in the novelizations, at least the post Legends ones, was canon.

 

[The Wormhole]

Where did that come from? I was under the impression that everything in the novelizations, at least the post Legends ones, was canon.

I know Pablo said that in the event that a novelization and the movie have a different account of something, canon sides with the movie, but yeah, otherwise everything else in the novelization should be canon.

Not unless there's backpedalling going on because TLJ ignored the TFA novelization?

 

[Prax]

Where did that come from? I was under the impression that everything in the novelizations, at least the post Legends ones, was canon.

They said that about the pre2014 novelizations, like the Prequel novelizations, which got a legends stamp slapped on them.

The TFA novelization is not legends, and they've said all material is equal with the films now.

 

[Reverend]

Where did that come from? I was under the impression that everything in the novelizations, at least the post Legends ones, was canon.

In theory.

In reality, it's all just tie-in media. They've done a pretty good job so far keeping most everything in line, continuity wise, but it's inevitable that the realities of production can cause slight inconsistencies. I find it's best not to be too dogmatic about such things; it's all just fiction anyway.

 

[Tuskin38]

Not unless there's backpedalling going on because TLJ ignored the TFA novelization?

It was in the novel because it was in the movie when the novel was written but then removed.

 

[Prax]

How old is Kylo in TLJ flashbacks? In the books it all happened within 5 years of TFA, and he's 30 or 31 in TFA.

 

[JD]

In theory.

In reality, it's all just tie-in media. They've done a pretty good job so far keeping most everything in line, continuity wise, but it's inevitable that the realities of production can cause slight inconsistencies. I find it's best not to be too dogmatic about such things; it's all just fiction anyway.

Of course, as they say, shit happens. I guess I should have said that they are intended to be canon.
Haven't there already been at least a couple inconsistencies between the books and other stuff that have popped up?

 

[Reverend]

Of course, as they say, shit happens. I guess I should have said that they are intended to be canon.
Haven't there already been at least a couple inconsistencies between the books and other stuff that have popped up?

Probably. I haven't been that close attention to pick up on anything minor.
One thing they seem to have picked up on of late is the notion of the unreliable narrator as an easy get-out clause for most inconsistencies. Personally I approve as it give authors a little more freedom and gives the world a little more depth if not everyone is 100% accurate in their statements 100% of the time. Fans seem often too eager to take a character's words as gospel, but characters can have opinions, they can be misinformed, misinterpret or simply see things differently from their own point of view.

 

[The Wormhole]

Haven't there already been at least a couple inconsistencies between the books and other stuff that have popped up?

IIRC, the Before the Awakening novel for Finn had Phasma reprimanding him and even provided an internal monologue about her thinking he showed promise for a senior leadership position someday. Then in the movie, there was nothing special about him and he had a completely spotless record until breaking Poe out.

Personally I approve as it give authors a little more freedom and gives the world a little more depth if not everyone is 100% accurate in their statements 100% of the time. Fans seem often too eager to take a character's words as gospel, but characters can have opinions, they can be misinformed, misinterpret or simply see things differently from their own point of view.

That's actually a pretty cool idea.

 

[JD]

Probably. I haven't been that close attention to pick up on anything minor.
One thing they seem to have picked up on of late is the notion of the unreliable narrator as an easy get-out clause for most inconsistencies. Personally I approve as it give authors a little more freedom and gives the world a little more depth if not everyone is 100% accurate in their statements 100% of the time. Fans seem often too eager to take a character's words as gospel, but characters can have opinions, they can be misinformed, misinterpret or simply see things differently from their own point of view.

That seems like pretty good way to handle it to me.

IIRC, the Before the Awakening novel for Finn had Phasma reprimanding him and even provided an internal monologue about her thinking he showed promise for a senior leadership position someday. Then in the movie, there was nothing special about him and he had a completely spotless record until breaking Poe out.

That was the one I was thinking of. I know some people have a fit over stuff like that, but I'm happy to forgive a few little mistakes like that here and there.

 

[The Wormhole]

Indeed, especially given the TFA tie-in released just prior to the movie's release were a Herculean task just to get published on time, let alone consistent with each other and the movie.

 

[Reverend]

Pretty sure I've gone into this before, but personally, I'm a fan of the notion that a lot of the old EU material could potential exist in canon in some form or another; not necessarily as actual events but as stories, legends, tall tales and outright fabrications. So the "unreliable narrator" is a great vector for this.

Just taking the pre-PT EU material: how accurate would historical records be for the period prior to the Republic being (re)founded following the fall of the Old Republic and the oppression and chaos that doubtlessly came with the rule of the Sith Empires? Probably not very and a lot of it would be culled from multiple sources, some of it inconsistent and incomplete. Characters like Darth Revan and Nomi Sunrider could be semi-mythical or even semi-fictional by the time of the saga era, akin to the likes of Robin Hood or the Arthurian legends. Tython for example could hold a cultural/historical place akin to Atlantis, Asgard or Eden. There's all sorts of fun and interesting ways this old material could be mined and cherry picked.
A more recent example would be the surprisingly good Lego animated series 'The Freemaker Adventures' which featured concepts like the kyber saber and ancient Jedi force builders that I could see being actual myths in the Star Wars galaxy. Probably apocryphal, or at the very least wildly inaccurate, but with just enough truth for there to have been *some* basis for them.

I'd love to seem them do an anthology comic book series based exclusively around telling obscure tales and myths from all over the Star Wars timeline. The beauty of a series like that is that they could tell literally any kind of story they want without ever having to worry about continuity or canon.