Jeffrey Brown’s Star Wars & Star Wars Publishing

A couple of days back I grabbed Jeffrey Brown’s trio of Star Wars books for a bargain price and, after getting them delivered, went through them pretty quick. His latest is Jedi Academy, but it’s the preceding books, Darth Vader and Son and Vader’s Little Princess that really got him attention and deservedly so.

For me, it was the Jedi Academy book that showed the limits of Brown’s skills – namely, he’s great at observational cartoons that capture a single moment but this book doesn’t really work in that way, instead telling the story of a new student at the Jedi Academy, which from what I can tell, pretty much mostly resembles a US school in its structure and social interactions. This is unfortunate as it immediately limits the story in a parochial way and greatly reduces my interest in one swift stroke. Nor do I ever end up caring about the character I’m supposed to.

In contrast the Darth Vader and Son and Vader’s Little Princess books are far superior showcases for his skills. They mix observations about parenting and children with comedy riffs on all those famous one-liners from the films that we all know so well. It’s a very clever and inspired combination that’s nowhere near as easy as it looks to come up with. A lot of the best ideas are very simple but only once someone else has come up with them! All of these pieces are, on their own, excellent but it’s the overall sense of enthusiastic affection that runs through the books that raise them to another level of brilliance.
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The Troublesome Notion of Fan Consensus

The other day, I saw a very simple message on Twitter –

Megan @blogfullofwords
Involving the Yuuzhan Vong more in the EU could reinforce Star Wars’ lessons about redemption: http://bit.ly/HtsSMe

My immediate reaction was an emphatic nod of agreement. I like the Yuuzhan Vong, the villains of the sprawling New Jedi Order storyline from 1999-2003, and I’ve been disappointed by their general absence in the more recent Star Wars storylines.

Then I went and read the full article, and I found myself nodding in agreement some more.

I don’t think I’ve read anything by Megan before, but I suspect I’ll pay closer attention in future. Star Wars fan culture is a big space, and it’s always nice to find an interesting new vista within it.

But as soon as I stopped reading, questions started to crowd together in my head. I wrote the first draft of this article immediately afterwards, as a way to get my thoughts straight on the topic.

Then Mike had a gap in his schedule of material for this blog, and, well, here we are.

The thing that struck me was this –

0. Are we sure this is the good idea we think it is?
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A New Writer for Episode VII: Disappointment or Continued Optimism?

For anyone that read my article The Future of the Female Star Wars Fan knows that I was pretty excited about Michael Arndt’s involvement in the script of Episode VII. Ever since watching Padmé’s character destruction in the Prequel Trilogy I have been pining for a redo of female character roles in Star Wars. As the writer for The Hunger Games’ Catching Fire, Arndt made me more than a little excited about he upcoming Star Wars movie. He had the perfect experience of working closely with a strong female character as the main character of a movie.

Now with the knowledge that Arndt’s been replaced I am a little apprehensive about the movie. I have heard various reports on how they are proceeding. Some are saying that the new author is writing a completely new script and scrapping everything Arndt worked on. Other sources are saying that they are going to build upon the foundation of the story that Arndt created. I’m going to remain optimistic that they are going to build upon his story and hope he has laid the foundation for a female character centric story. Now I’ve mentioned before that J.J. Abrams also has experience writing strong female characters and he is still going to be involved in the script so there is still hope for a non-male centric story. It was interesting to see the reactions of people across the internet over the news that Lawrence Kasdan was taking over responsibilities as writer for Episode VII. This is the same man that brought us Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Let’s look closer at those movies, specifically from the female character perspective.

Empire Strikes Back

AlderLeia-ESB

Leia’s characterization on Hoth is one of the best strong female roles I’ve seen in a Star Wars movie and the fantasy genre. She is shown as being a strong leader and concerned for her people. She throws Han’s assumptions back in his face and says the classic line of “I’d rather kiss a Wookiee.” She is also one of the last to leave as the Rebels evacuate Hoth making sure everyone else has the best chance to escape before barely escaping herself. The romance on the Falcon as they make repairs is cute and not cheesy. Leia still manages to remain independent despite Han’s best scoundrel efforts and stealing kisses. Then on Cloud City we see Leia standing up to Lando and having to be held back as she watches Han become encased in carbonite. She takes charge of their rescue as soon as Lando breaks her free and directs the Falcon back to find Luke. Again, I can’t say enough about how much I adore how Leia is written in ESB.

Return of the Jedi

In ROTJ Leia knowingly walks into Jabba’s palace undercover in the hopes of being able to rescue Han. She knows she has a slim chance of making it out without being caught (thus the backup plan of Luke coming in) and she goes anyways. Leia, who is one of the main leaders of the Rebellion, puts her own life on the line to save the one she loves. Then we get Leia wearing a slave costume…that’s all I’ll say about that. She does kill Jabba the Hutt, but ultimately is still rescued by Luke and Lando. Again Leia asks to go on the mission to Endor risking her life in order to help their cause. She takes off after Luke on a speeder bike through the forest and forms an alliance with the ewoks. She helps to save Han, Luke, and Chewie from being roasted at the paws of the ewoks and enlists their help in the battle for the shield generator. Leia takes a shot and still manages to shoot the stormtrooper and save them. She is consistently written as a strong female up to the end of the trilogy, something we didn’t get with Padmé in the PT.

Raiders of the Lost Ark – analysis provided by Jay Shah

Indiana-Jones-and-Marion-Ravenwood-indy-and-marion-3014709-360-285Marion Ravenwood was an entirely unexpected sort of character for the adventure genre. Though Indiana Jones was conceived by George Lucas to be a cross between adventure serials and the James Bond movies, Marion emerged to be more than just Indy’s girl — she was her own character. Indeed, Marion put it best herself: “I’m your god-damned partner!” From the very first time the audience sees her, Marion was written as a woman of action. She quite famously drinks a man under the table in her opening sequence. Before agreeing to help Indiana Jones on his quest, she gives him a verbal lashing for the cruel way he treated her when she was a young girl in love with him. She handles herself well in the fight to come, and though she eventually has to be rescued by Indy at the end of the film, she shows that she is clever and resourceful when required to fend for herself. Though Indy’s rival Belloq sees her as a prize to be won, she proves herself to be a full-fledged action counterpart to Indy. She wasn’t just a tough-girl stereotype either though, as the audience sees her wrestling with personal issues with Indy through the course of the movie. Through well-written dialogue and action sequences, Marion Ravenwood shows herself to be a character of courage, resourcefulness, and will who is nobody’s lesser. It’s something the writers of the second Indiana Jones film should have kept in mind.

Thanks Jay! I know, I know, I should be more familiar with the Indiana Jones movies but unfortunately I am not.

Kasdan also hasn’t had anything of significance in 20 years. 20 years. Think about that for a minute. How much has changed in the movie industry in 20 years? How much has changed in the sci fi/fantasy world in 20 years? The answer to those questions is enough to make me concerned for Episode VII’s fate. Kasdan’s last movie writer credit is about a woman who loves her dog more than her husband and then the guy loses the dog and she forces her family to stay and try to find the dog. I am a little apprehensive about his involvement because he hasn’t been consistently writing movies in the genre when geek movies are ‘in’. One would think he would’ve been a catch for one of these companies to pick up, so why not him?

I like how he has used female characters in the past. He gave us a strong heroine in Leia many years ago before it was ok to have girls really be a focal point and a hero on the big screen. We know he knows how to make a movie feel Star Warsy since he pretty much invented the feeling in ESB which is often touted as the best Star Wars movie. It is my hope that the team of Abrams and Kasdan will give us a what we’ve been asking for. The talent is there, the experience is there and hopefully the foundation is there.

Get ‘Em While They’re Canon—Why It’s Time For More Anthologies

TFTMEC_CoverThe year was 1995.

Bantam had been publishing licensed Star Wars novels for four years, and West End Games was still hard at work expanding the Star Wars universe for its roleplaying game–including the premiere of the Star Wars Adventure Journal a year before. While WEG had done a pretty good job sketching out the in-universe context of the Original Trilogy, and Bantam was beginning to get the hang of the post-OT period, no one had really dug deep into the four years between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi in prose form—even Shadows of the Empire was still about nine months off. So when Bantam finally decided to offer the Expanded Universe’s definitive, well, expansion, of the OT, they did so in a surprising form—short stories.

In what was probably one of the boldest and most interesting decisions in what’s generally regarded as a bland, safe period of SW storytelling, Bantam assembled a roster of authors from its existing SW stable and elsewhere, then picked a defining scene from each of the three films and set the authors to the task of telling the stories of the characters that populated the background—and in so doing, added an unheard-of level of depth to the onscreen story. From A New Hope they chose not the Rebel base, or the Death Star conference room, but the Mos Eisley cantina; from The Empire Strikes Back they chose the bounty hunters, and from Jedi, Jabba’s Palace. While the Adventure Journal had been doing lower-profile, more disparate short stories for a little while already, these three books were the first true short-fiction anthologies set in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. And not for nothing, but the decision to feature kooky-looking peripheral characters like Dice Ibegon and Ree-Yees at the expense of the Rebellion and the Empire meant that they were also likely the most diverse books ever released—even to this day.

Once the third book, Tales of the Bounty Hunters, came out at the end of 1996 (why the Empire-related book came out after the Jedi one I couldn’t say for sure, but I might speculate that even back then they knew characters like Bossk and IG-88 were going to be bigger draws than, say, the Max Rebo Band), the series continued with two somewhat different anthologies from somewhat different editors: Tales from the Empire in ’97 and Tales from the New Republic in ’99.

Rather than commission entirely new content around another predetermined theme, Tales from the Empire was a collection of miscellaneous stories previously published in the aforementioned Adventure Journal, WEG’s periodical RPG supplement. While they were indeed far more focused on the Galactic Civil War than the previous three anthologies had been, they weren’t really more Imperial-focused than usual—and the same went for Tales From the New Republic, which had the distinction of including Interlude at Darkknell, a four-part novella by Michael Stackpole and Timothy Zahn that was totally new material. By this time, the Adventure Journal had ceased publication and a few of the stories had been originally scheduled for issues that were never to be;Tftnr thus, New Republic ended up being their first and only printing after all. Darkknell, of course, was a follow-up to Stackpole and Zahn’s Side Trip, which was published in both the Adventure Journal and Tales from the Empire, so it remains possible that it too was simply a leftover rather than a piece specifically meant for the collection; again, I couldn’t say.

In any event, Tales from the New Republic was the end of Star Wars’ relationship with short story anthologies for over a decade. One of the questions most frequently asked of publishing VIPs in the 21st century has been why no more have come out; in truth, there are probably a few answers.

The driving reason, though, was that the novel license moved from Bantam to Del Rey shortly after New Republic (the RPG license likewise moved to Wizards of the Coast, but semi-regular short stories kept coming, now often prequel-related, in the magazines Gamer and Insider). When asked, Del Rey would always explain that the economics didn’t work—even with already-written material, there wasn’t enough of a market for short stories, in their judgment, to justify the publishing costs. Whether this reflected higher publishing costs for Del Rey compared to Bantam or just higher sales expectations was never made clear. Truthfully, Del Rey did have a lot on their plate in those days, between the ongoing Prequel Trilogy and their four-year, nineteen-book New Jedi Order series.

Which brings us to today—ten years out from the end of the NJO, two years prior to the release of Episode VII, and currently…two books on the horizon. While it’s understood that there’s much more in development that hasn’t been made public yet, if you’re only going by what is public, all we’ve got to look forward to are Darth Maul: Lockdown in January and Empire and Rebellion: Honor Among Thieves (the Han Solo-centric novel with the spectacular abbreviation SWEARHAT) in March.

Recently, of course, they did break their anthology rule with Lost Tribe of the Sith, a series of short stories (culminating in a 100-plus-word novella) written entirely by John Jackson Miller telling the backstory of the antagonists of Del Rey’s serious-business Fate of the Jedi series. The first eight stories were released online for free over three years, before being collected in “trade paperback” format, which is larger than mass-market paperback yet somehow apparently cheaper. It was an experiment on their part, to be sure, and if the fan response (and/or Amazon reviews) were any indication, it was a successful one. Meanwhile, if there was one question I heard people ask Del Rey in those early days more often than “when are you doing more anthologies?”, it was “when are you doing more X-Wing books?” And sure enough, last year we got Aaron Allston’s Mercy Kill.

This era of Star Wars publishing from Del Rey has been all over the place, to be sure, but part of that quality is due to an admirable willingness to experiment. And at the same time that they’ve become more and more willing to tap unknown vectors for potential profit, we’ve quietly entered the dawn of the eBook era; a time when publishing costs are quite literally immaterial, and where you can buy the entire classic X-Wing series in one fell swoop if you’ve got fifty bucks lying around. Even Bantam’s anthologies can now be purchased digitally, in wanton disregard of god-knows-how-many hard copies still floating around out there. So with thirty-seven “new” short stories already extant from old issues of Insider, thirteen from Gamer, several from Starwars.com’s old Hyperspace feature, and even a few lingering gems from the Adventure Journal—I’m looking at you, Mist Encounter—what on Earth is stopping them from at least trying some new eBook anthologies? Do three or four different batches, and if one seems especially popular, maybe a trade paperback printing a la Lost Tribe? And if that sells well, maybe even go crazy and milk some new material out of Del Rey’s own favorite eras, before the sequels render them irrelevant, if not utterly apocryphal? Surely someone out there would want Tales from the New Jedi Order, or Tales from the Old Republic? I may not be a publishing expert, but I can’t begin to imagine how something like Lost Tribe could’ve been more cost-effective than those would be.

For a dog’s age, those two fan questions—short stories and X-Wing books—were like holy grails for EU fans—always hoped for; always expected, even, in spite of all the common wisdom, but never guaranteed. Not unlike the Sequel Trilogy, actually. Two out of three ain’t bad, but why stop there?

Star Wars and Genre: The Sports Story

Now this is podracing!

Most of the genres I’ve examined so far have been ones that the Star Wars universe can adapt and has adapted wholesale, in addition to pulling in elements of the genres for its own use. Not every genre out there, however, drops easily into the Star Wars universe. That doesn’t mean that those genres don’t still have relevance, however. The sports genre is one of them.

Sports stories are a familiar brand of fiction. The most recognizable is the uplifting sports movie, one or two of which seem to come out each year. In that formulation, the narrative follows an athlete, coach, or team through adversity on and off the field, ending with a significant victory. The action of sports livens up the personal drama of the subject, almost always an inspiring underdog. It seems almost comically formulaic, but it has worked time and time again. Rocky, MoneyballRemember the Titans, Warrior, Seabiscuit, Hoosiers, 42 . . . the examples go on and on, covering all kinds of sports. There are other ways of making sports fiction, however. Field of Dreams examined the way baseball binds generations together, how people find meaning in the sport, and its rich emotional resonance. Films like The Hustler and Raging Bull used sports as a backdrop for examining larger issues of character and personality, and Raging Bull is additionally a good example of a sports biopic that is interested not in inspiration, but in the flaws and rise-andfall narrative of its central figure.

Shockboxing in Fists of Ion

But in any form, it should be clear that this genre is a rather more awkward fit for Star Wars than most others. Star Wars doesn’t really have a ton of room for stories purely about space football. The only existing Star Wars works I can think of that are stories about sports are the shockboxing short story Fists of Ion and the racing video games Episode I Racer and its sequel, Racer Revenge. Both of the games are tie-ins to the most prominent sports sequence in Star Wars, the podrace from The Phantom Menace.

Say what you will about the cartoonish execution of the podrace, but the idea itself is solid. In an adventure series like Star Wars, integrating high-adrenaline sequences that happen to revolve around sporting events is a perfectly fitting diversification of the action. Whether it’s Anakin Skywalker entering illegal garbage pit races, Han Solo fighting in gladiatorial contests on Jubilar or the Wheel, Luke and Ben competing in the Dathomiri version of the Olympics, or the Solo kids racing starships at Ord Mantell or Dubrillion, sports sequences have been successfully integrated into Star Wars stories. They are an excellent way of providing fresh types of action. Sports can offer intense action and conflict in thrilling sequences without unnaturally high stakes — though as with the bets riding on Anakin’s podrace, they certainly don’t have to be low-stakes events.

So far, the Expanded Universe has generally focused on universal, easily translatable sports concepts like racing and gladiatorial combat. While Star Wars analogues to popular spectator sports along the lines of American football/rugby, basketball, golf, and soccer have been created, they tend to be used as background detail, not played out in the course of the narrative, due to the difficulty of fully selling a made-up space version of modern spectator sports with their fiendishly complex rules. This is not an insurmountable obstacle, however, and a great variety of sporting action is possible.

Swoop racing. Star Wars has a lot of different racing.

One can imagine many ways to integrate sporting events into tales. In Return to Ord Mantell and Vector Prime, sporting competitions were recreational diversions, undertaken as part of the setup for the story or killing a little time before the story kicked in for the competing characters. Like the technique of putting the characters at a sporting event as spectators and describing the action they witness, this is a way of building in sports that doesn’t rely on tying the event deeply into the plot, but it does depend on the characters being at leisure to use their recreational time in such a way. So while there could be a few stories with Chewbacca entering a wrestling match to make a little money while waiting for a smuggling job, X-wing pilots playing limmie in their downtime, or spies making a handoff at a smashball game, it isn’t a device that could be used too heavily.

More integrated to the story are scenarios in which the protagonists are forced to compete by the larger plot. A captured character might be entered against his will in gladiatorial games. Characters facing hostile aliens or attempting to enlist their aid might have to beat them at a rough-and-tumble local version of rugby where they may not know all the rules. An undercover Jedi Knight might enter an underground shockboxing tournament to get close to an assassin who competes in his spare time. Han Solo might compete in a swoop race to get the money to repair the Millennium Falcon while stranded in the middle of a smuggling operation. In a story set at the Jedi Praxeum or Imperial Academy, students may participate in extracurricular sports, in much the way Quidditch is integrated into the Harry Potter novels.

Soontir Fel, Carida Academy grav-ball star back in the day

Including scenes of sporting action, however, is not the only way to integrate elements of the sports genre into Star Wars. Giving characters backgrounds in sports, or even making them current athletes, can inform their characterization and bring in story elements from sports without requiring sporting events on the page. A military character might be defined by his past as a standout athlete at the academy, or by his continuing dominance in battalion grav-ball tournaments. A smuggler character could have a past as a down-and-out shockboxer, providing a possible entry point for former competitors, ex-promoters, and match-fixing mobsters to weave their way into a scoundrel’s story. An espionage story might feature a popular wegsphere player who is secretly a Rebel spy, able to travel from world to world to pass messages along. Perhaps a Jedi Knight is a great sports enthusiast, but his partner on a mission roots for the rival team.

There are lots of ways that sports — such a staple of modern life, and such a staple of storytelling — can be used to add color to the universe, even if the opportunities for straight sports tales are few.