Author: Ben Crofts

Mike: Sometimes you can know something without really being conscious of it—and often you can be very much aware of something without fully grasping its implications. One such fact occurred to me recently: getting a new Star Wars film every year means that there is every reason to believe that we will also be getting one film novelization every year. In perpetuity.

Going off of Del Rey’s recent publishing schedule (though Disney-Lucasfilm Press adds an interesting new dimension to this), that amounts to roughly one in five “adult novels” from now on. When the prequels were coming out, there were around seven adult novels per year instead of five, and of course only one movie every three years—meaning roughly five percent of Del Rey’s output at the time was novelizations, versus twenty percent now. That’s a huge shift.

Now, I’m not here to say I want to return to seven original Star Wars novels every year. Even with the excitement of the new canon, what we’ve gotten over the last couple years has been more than enough new material to sustain my interest as a reader, while leaving enough energy for me to check off an old Legends book once in a while. My interest is strong, but my time and energy have waned as I’ve gotten older—so while I’m actually grateful that the publishing has slowed down a bit, I’m also more choosy about what I really do want to read.

And I don’t know that I want to read a new novelization every year. While most people will agree that at least one, Revenge of the Sith, was able to break out of the box of, let’s say unremarkableness, that firmly contains most novelizations, that’s only one out of seven—and The Force Awakens seemed to confirm that RotS was the exception to the rule rather than a new priority. I don’t think it was bad, it was just…unremarkable. The fact is, the basic mission statement of a novelization doesn’t demand a whole lot of an author, and plenty of good ones have failed to break out of that box, or even, seemingly, to try. I get why they exist, I don’t really expect Del Rey to stop doing them anytime soon, but—I’m seriously wondering if they’ll soon stop being worth my time. Read More

Map? What map? Why, the only map worth talking of. That of story possibilities within this new world of Star Wars, which has just entered its third year. Life Debt came along and kicked down several doors, blew up a few sealed passages and, by way of raising merry hell, re-drew the map. How has it done this? I got together with Nick Adams, occasional Eleven-ThirtyEight guest writer, long-time contributor to Jedi Council Literature and, for his sins, Moderator, who some will know to have been the trigger for the creation of Admiral Nict in Star Wars Legacy, to bat a few ideas back and forth. Here’s what we came up with.

There are some Life Debt spoilers in this article with regard to the post-Endor war with the Empire.

Ben: Nick, you correctly commented that in the space of a year the new continuity has racked up more destruction than Legends accrued over a decade! It also got me thinking as to what this could mean for new stories.

One thing that Legends suffered from was the perception of a hierarchy of material, that the films should always be deemed top dog and nothing should undermine that status in any way. I always found that to be at odds with the idea of Star Wars being a multi-media tale. At the same time, some of the Legends stories I enjoyed most were the madly ambitious – like Dark Empire. To others, that was the poster child for what they loathed – it brought back the Emperor, had an Imperial civil war and took Force powers way, way off the scale. Similarly the X-Wing stories Iron Fist and Solo Command stood out for being ambitious enough to do fleet engagements. Read More