Author: Rocky Blonshine

One of the defining things about old Star Wars content is the sheer number of places we go, the environments, the unique planets. The Legends-verse gives us a variety of excellent inspirations for Episode VII-and-beyond settings, and we’ve seen a possibly familiar place already in the teaser. The story of Star Wars might be set in space, but it very much has more elements of fantasy and space-opera rather than a straight science fiction tale. Abandoned temples, jungles, deserts, crime lords’ palaces, and bustling cities all bring life to an expansive universe, making it feel lived-in. A space-based world that keeps in mind the places that aren’t space makes the story come more to life. These settings are just as important as the characters and plot, and we can’t really imagine the world of Star Wars without the settings around us.

The galaxy is a huge place. We don’t know what the map of the galaxy looks like any longer, but when we did, it always had new corners to explore. Even heavily-populated areas like the Deep Core still held secrets, and an entire region called the “Unknown Regions” speaks volumes about just how little we know about the galaxy. The Republic, and then the Empire, and then the New Republic and its various successors, may have controlled much of the galaxy, but remembering how extensive the galaxy is reinforces just how much control they don’t have. Yes, it’s odd that the Empire keeps finding new places to hide in throughout the galaxy; yes, it’s strange that Sith temples and lost Jedi and new alien species turn up. But it works. In a setting as large as a galaxy, the infinite possibilities are what keep it moving.

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“Star Wars is for kids.” How many times have we heard that? How many times have people stereotyped Star Wars fans either as children or as adults who didn’t quite grow out of it? Why are all the cool Halloween costumes for kids, and why do we so often find the local library’s Star Wars selections in the children’s area? In such an expansive universe, why should we so limit it to children? Many of us discovered Star Wars as children and have followed the universe into adulthood, and only now realize that there is something in Star Wars for all ages. It’s a universal story, one that we can all connect to.

When I first started seeking out Star Wars books seriously, I was 12 or so. Just too old to really hang around in the children’s area of the library or bookstore, just too young to really be in the adult area. And so often, I’d have to traverse an entire library to find what I was looking for. Hunting down each book of the Bantam-era EU took me across most of southeastern Connecticut, and every new library I went to had a different place for the books. Piecing together the timeline through children’s, young adult, and adult novels proved a challenge, and the variety of stories made me wonder. Why did Star Wars have to be perceived as a story for children? The fans I was meeting, both in person and online, were of all ages. There were books catering to all age groups, there were always new people discovering Star Wars, and the overall market didn’t seem skewed towards children. And yet there was still a lot of public opinion that Star Wars was a kids’ story. Read More

The Star Wars universe really is full of plot holes big enough to drive a Star Destroyer through. Lots of authors, tangled chronology, and large areas of the timeline off-limits make some of the earlier books confusing. Now that we have a complete Legends timeline, and the Story Group is working hard to maintain continuity in newly published material, we probably don’t have to worry about large plot holes any longer. However, sometimes it isn’t bad if things don’t quite line up.

There is actually good in-universe reason for some of these plot holes. When we re-read the Thrawn trilogy now, we know the actual timeline of the Clone Wars and the real ways to refer to Jedi who left the Order and the exact events that led to the rise of the Empire. However, at the time of the Thrawn trilogy’s publication, we had almost nothing. For all we knew, the Clone Wars could have happened fifty years ago rather than twenty-five, and everything we heard was indeed true. Perhaps the older members of both the Empire and the New Republic aren’t correcting the chronology because they know that the younger ones have heard several jumbled versions of the timeline, and don’t generally trust anyone’s accounts of history. The Empire has fundamentally altered the galaxy, and the New Republic’s challenges include learning to tell history the way it really happened. Read More