Jason Fry in Three Dimensions, Part Two

Posted on May 4, 2015by Interviews

sote-ritrContinued from Part One, where we discussed the Rebels timeline and Zare Leonis’s speculated connections to The Force Awakens.

Speaking of The Force Awakens again, I was just at the panel for that yesterday morning, and Kathleen Kennedy made a comment about how the new Star Wars is gonna be more inclusive for the fandom…have more recognition for female fans, starting with the films. What do you think the chances of that being reflected in the new novels are? We have characters like Merei of course, and we have Sabine and Hera from Rebels. Is there gonna be time to have—and Merei had a joint point-of-view with Zare in your second novel—is there gonna be a chance to have a female-led Star Wars young adult novel, or adult novel in the future?

Um…there’s nothing in my work that addresses that, that I have in the works, but yeah. I think that’s definitely happening, and I think it’s gonna be wonderful when it happens, and I bet it would happen very soon. I don’t know any secrets, but like you, I can see that yes, as Kennedy said, Star Wars has made, I think, a huge jump in that realm. And it’s great, because one thing you see at a convention like this, you see talking to fans, is that Star Wars really does lead the way people think about things, and that’s wonderful. Read More

Jason Fry in Three Dimensions, Part One

Posted on May 1, 2015by Interviews

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While the profilic author-of-all-trades (wait, does that make sense?) Jason Fry has been kind enough to grant Eleven-ThirtyEight extended interviews twice a year since the inception of the site, this, our fourth go-round with Fry, has the fun distinction of being our first in-person interview. And by “our”, I mean the perpetually-pluralized Jay Shah’s, who was able to grab some time with Fry at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim a couple weeks ago.

This is also the first time I’ve had to transcribe audio for something like this, which was an interesting new experience for me: trying to remain true to the essence of a statement without including all the “ums” and “y’knows” was a fun challenge, and hopefully I’ve managed to represent both parties well without putting words in their mouths. So with that (and a reminder that this is only part one—much more will be coming on Monday), I’ll turn it over to Jay. – Mike Read More

Paging the Next Generation

Posted on April 29, 2015by The Holocron

JediAcademyOne of the great problems of the old Expanded Universe is just how much it fails the next generation. For a galaxy-spanning tale of war and intrigue that ropes in thousands of years of characters, there can often be a striking lack of young characters, those ready to take the reigns as their elders die or retire. During a time of transition, of changing the guard so to speak, we must establish who is taking over. The prequels and many of the Old Republic-era novels are good at setting up new characters and allowing for the young to continue their forefathers’ legacy, but by the time of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, much of this has broken down. The next generation has been lost and forgotten. Why? What really is its purpose, other than for plot? It’s time to accept that we need new main characters, something The Force Awakens appears ready to do.

Right now I’m in the middle of a Legacy of the Force re-read, and it strikes me as odd just how many we lose. Between the New Jedi Order and Legacy of the Force, so many of the next generation of Jedi (and their friends) die. Many of them are the ones we expect to take on their parents’ jobs in the future, and when we lose them and the old guard maintain their positions, suddenly it seems like the universe isn’t moving on as fast. We’re at the end of Fate of the Jedi, and only just now are the younger ones starting to inherit the galaxy from their parents. Note that these younger ones are well into their thirties by now, and many of the main characters are in their seventies. There’s a visible amount of characters we have lost, due to war and plot devices. Somewhere, the future of the story has to be established.

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Lords of the Sith: False Advertising at its Best

Posted on April 27, 2015by Pen and Paper

El-Emperador-Palpatine-y-Darth-Vader

—–WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD–—

Of all the novels that have been announced since the rebooting of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Lords of the Sith seemed to me to be the most interesting. True, there was Tarkin, but this was ostensibly a Darth Vader/Emperor Palpatine buddy cop novel: what more could any loyal Imperial ask for? Furthermore, it was set to blaze several notable new trails. It was Paul S. Kemp’s first foray into the Galactic Civil War (he was previously best known for The Old Republic tie-in Deceived and the Jaden Korr Crosscurrent/Riptide duology), and his first time handling any of the major characters from the saga. New blood is always a welcome sight.

Chronologically, it was also one of the earliest entries in the new timeline thus far, being set a few years after James Luceno’s biography of the titular Grand Moff, Tarkin. While it wasn’t the first villain-centric novel to be announced, it was to be the first featuring Darth Vader as a primary character. More significantly than any of these other things, however, it was announced that it would introduce readers to the Star Wars universe’s first LGBTQ character in the form of Moff Mors, advertised as “an incredibly capable leader” who “also happens to be a lesbian.” All things considered, Lords of the Sith was, at the very least, set to be an interesting read.

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Yankee Canon Swap: Reboot, Year One

Posted on April 24, 2015by , , , and Not A Committee

sw2chaykinWe knew early on that a group piece would be in the cards to celebrate this, the one-year anniversary of the Legends announcement. But without really planning it, it just sort of worked out that several of us had their own larger commentaries to offer on the reboot, modern fandom, and the current state of continuity—such that by the time we got around to today’s piece, I thought something more distinct was warranted.

With that, allow me to present Yankee Canon Swap! Which is an odd title that basically means I told the gang to pick a canon story to replace with a Legends one they preferred. But! That would be too easy, and really, borderline whiny. The thing is, there are very few canon stories to choose from at this point, and (though opinions vary) there isn’t really one universally agreed-upon stinker in the bunch that would make for an easy answer—so what I wanted was to get us thinking about Bigger Things than just which stories we liked and which we didn’t; I wanted to talk about priorities, by potentially forcing ourselves to reject a good canon story because what it represented wasn’t important enough to us as what some other story represented. Read More