This week saw the release of my latest book, Star Wars: The Essential Reader’s Companion from Del Rey Books, a hefty guide to Star Wars prose fiction – all the novels, young reader novels and short stories that have come out in the over-35 years since the very first Star Wars novelization appeared in bookstores in late 1976 (yes, months before the movie came out). To do something like that requires a lot of pages, and a lot of words. The final book is 486-pages long, and covers over 145 full-length novels, over 100 juvenile novels, and over 170 short stories.
But, of course, it doesn’t cover everything. Some things didn’t make the cut – and some made it very, very close.
Why isn’t everything in there? Because that would have taken a book much, much bigger in size. To include comic books, roleplaying game sidebars, children’s books, choose-your-own-adventures and everything else that didn’t quite make the cut, would have taken a book at least three times the size, I’m guessing. Something about the size of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, an 11-pound behemoth that ended up being a three-volume titan with a listed retail price of $125. Given that we wanted The Essential Reader’s Companion to appeal to newcomers as well as experts, that’s a scary proposition for a novice reader who so far has been scared by the enormity of the Expanded Universe. Keeping it under $30 was important. Size, in this case, definitely mattered.
So, why not have comics? Comics represented the single biggest piece that we could cut. When I first started writing the Companion, I started – naturally – with Chapter One. Because the book follows the fictional chronology (as opposed to publishing history), this chapter was all about the Old Republic era. As I was getting a feel for writing this book, I did include comics – titles like Knights of the Old Republic, The Old Republic: The Threat of Peace and Jedi vs. Sith. When I finished writing that chapter, it ended up being nearly half the allocated word count of the entire book… and I still had seven more chapters to go! Clearly, comics weren’t going to be included. At least, not as full-fledged entries – we did include select comics series as sidebars when they pertained to novel storylines.
So what went next? The children’s storybooks published by Random House, Penguin, DK and others weren’t going to make the cut, as much as I would have loved to include Fuzzy as an Ewok, or Watch Out, Jar Jar! That said, I knew the Jedi Prince series from the early 1990s had such a cult following that we decided to include a sidebar on it.
Stories with variable outcomes – “choose your own adventure,” “solitaire adventures” and “decide your destiny” books – didn’t make the cut because of their very malleable stories and the questions they raise as to what the true “canon” version of events are.
Fictional narratives that wound their way through gaming guides and sourcebooks were also left out. We focused on discrete stories. Though, that said, things like The Farlander Papers, The Stele Chronicles and Pax Empirica – The Wookiee Annihilation each got dedicated sidebars. Ah, the sidebar. Such a handy tool to say, “Oh, this doesn’t actually fit into the format of the book, but it’s important to bring up anyway.”
Any Borderline Cases? Yes. Two. And I agonized over them and cut them for the needs of space and on the grounds of definition. The Secret Journal of Doctor Demagol was a tough case. Written by John Jackson Miller, it was published on StarWars.com Hyperspace back in April 2010. What made it difficult to categorize was the way it was inventoried on StarWars.com – the website tagged it as “source material.” And, after reading it, it did come off more as source material rather than a traditional short story. So, it didn’t make the cut – though, since we know there are many Knights of the Old Republic fans out there, Del Rey nonetheless posted it online as part of their Star Wars shorts collection launched in conjunction with the Essential Reader.
The other one that I lost sleep over was Lumrunners. Published in the Star Wars Adventure Journal issue #9 (February 1996), it was written by John Beyer and Wayne Humfleet. It definitely reads more like a short story – but it too is a source article. It has the fictional narrative broken by source material time and again to explain what lum-running is, and how to use it in your roleplaying game. As such, it didn’t fit the admittedly hazy definition of short stories. Why this one bugged me more than anything is that I’m Facebook friends with Wayne Humfleet, and I couldn’t bring myself to break the news to him. So I guess this blog post is the coward’s way out.
Uh, sorry Wayne.
Anyway, there’s some insight into The Essential Reader’s Companion. I hope you like it! If you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be participating in Star Wars Reads Day alongside Haden Blackman at the Barnes and Noble in Corte Madera from 1 to 3pm this Saturday. Then on Sunday, I’ll be doing a reading in San Francisco as part of LitQuake, at 2 pm at the Variety Preview Room. Hope to see you there!
Missed it by that much! Heh — no, I agree that the “Secret Journal” is much more supplemental rather than a free-standing story. It is, in a sense, a different track of dialogue for the comics series!
Me too John, me too.
Lumrunners was a source article in the end, at least we’ll always have Shockboxing. 
Thanks Pablo for breaking the news gently. 
Thanks for shockboxing, Wayne.
Any particular reason why the Marvel UK Ewoks short stories, “The Lost City of Tatooine,” or the short stories on the Galaxies website didn’t make the cut, whereas such a trivial children’s short story like “Out Foxed” did?
Thanks for the question. The Marvel UK Ewoks story, as part of the Ewoks brand, skewed younger than the ages 12+ bar for juvenile fiction that the book had. I couldn’t track down any reliable documentation defining the imprimatur of the Lost City of Tatooine story – did it come out of the publishing program, and under whose editorial watch? Or is it more like those gaming magazine articles of the late 90s that bore the Lucasfilm (c) and TM but never went through the publishing channels of approvals and documentation? Out Foxed was easier to define, as it developed was part of the Clone Wars juvenile publishing program, and went through that development and approval process that created the works spotlighted on page 92.
Wow, thanks for the reply! I have two follow up questions:
1) If the Ewoks short stories were targeted at too young an audience to include in the ERC, doesn’t that also apply to “Out Foxed”? It seems inconsistent to include one but not the other, since they’re both aimed at young kids.
2) In your reply, you didn’t mention your reasons for not including any of the short stories that were one the Galaxies website. What were they?
Please don’t take these as criticisms, as I think the ERC is excellent! I was just wondering about the reasoning behind these omissions.
I love the Guide, well done! But it has some flaws I noticed sadly.
in the comments to Courtship of Princess Leia it sates that the Sith Witch design of TPM concept art was first atributed to Nightsisters of Dathomir in 2008 CLone Wars Jedi Alliance game. This is not true! There was a certain Quinlan Vos Comic on Dathomir where that design was first used for the Nightwitches years before that game.
A shame that a TCW product thus stole this comics fame.
more comments to follow as I delve deeper into this truly essential guide!
The book is finally on its way so hopefully I’ll get it on Monday.
As per the book:
“Dathomir and its magical inhabitants would influence George Lucas directly in his creation of his canonical Star Wars universe. In 2008, the videogame Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance used abandoned Episode I concept art in its striking creation of animated Nightsisters, which caught Lucas’s attention.”
At no point there does it say “first attributed.” The subject line about the paragraph specifically lays out that it’s going to be about the witches entered into cinematic canon. And that was through the concept art team’s heavy use of Episode I concept art — one specific piece in particular; the comic did indeed use the same inspiration, but that is not what influenced their inclusion into the show.
Oh, I’m not about to suggest the book is without flaws, It’s a book produced by a very flawed person. But hopefully that clarifies what the thinking was there.
I think making a book like this you’re going to run into issues where things contradict other things. It’s the nature of the EU, and GL picks and chooses what he considers cool to add to the official G Level Canon.
Well why then did on Celebration they (George/Filoni) say that the Comic is responsible for TCW noticing and using it? They clearly contradict themselves with this statement in the Companion then. Because the Comic was what influenced them according to their own words, with the Clone Wars game following that lead of the comic then. I do not know if the game did this because the team guessed TCW use of the design or because of liking the comic using that design, but on Celebration it was made clear that the comic was the original inspiration, not the game. That might have been a contributor too, but not the prime one then.
PS: You arn’t flawed and I love your work. Don’t get me wrong there
Superb book worth to buy for all fans. But Witches and Dathomir are one of my most loved EU pieces, so may have sounded worse than I intended to be.
Sorry for the break in communication there — busy weekend in San Francisco! Ceiran, looking back at notes regarding Jedi Alliance, compiled at the creation of the game, my sources do attribute the Nightsister’s move to the screen to said game, and not the comic — at least when it comes to George Lucas making that call. However, I wasn’t privy to what was said at that particular Celebration V panel. We recorded them, so I will try to track down what was said and by whom. If there is a contradiction (and it sounds like there is) I’d like to set the record straight. And if it turns out I made an error — even if only an error of omission — I’d definitely want to straighten it out.
Hi i loved the book. Cannot put it down.
I was a little confused about the comic side bars on a couple of occasion. Did Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith and Tales of the Jedi: Fall of the Sith Empire come before or after lost Tribe of the Sith Collected Stories.
Last question was did the comic Knight Errant Aflame come before the novel Knight Errant? I know the other 2 comics came after the novel from your reading but was confused on the first
Lost Tribe, the collected stories spans a huge amount of time, but its first chapter — Precipice — occurs during Tales of the Jedi: Fall of the Sith Empire. So, I’d read that first — just to get the big story of the Sith invasion and its ultimate fate, and then moving on to Lost Tribe.
With Knight Errant, the first comics series (Aflame) comes first, then the novel, and then Deluge and the rest of the comics. Hope that helps!
Yes, that helps I just finished the book. My wife laughs and says she was divorced while i was reading it. As i was reading I came up with another question. Does the 3 invasion comics go after vector prime?
It took me a a while to fiqure out when you would spotlight a short story it would go right after whatever entry you just did. great book.
loving the book
Great job on the book Pablo. I hope to get a copy of the book next month. I call the book a introduction to the Star Wars EU for those who have not read’ed any of the novels or comics yet. I’m not a huge EU fan but some of the novels and comics are great. Keep up the great work Pablo.
Do you know what’s happening with this book in the UK? It was supposed to be released last week but Amazon appears to have removed it from their site now. Also, most sites are listing it as having only 384 pages as opposed to the 490 mentioned here.
Hi Mr Hidalgo – congrats on this book, I know people have been looking forward to it for a long time and it’s definitely been worth the wait!
I was just wondering if I could ask a question regarding it? In the section on canon and continuity, the book mentions that the movies and TV series are “the most definitive canon” and that the EU “exists parallel to the one [George Lucas] directly oversees”.
Was this intended to mean that the EU is a parallel universe to the “real” Star Wars universe (for example, in the same way that the Batman comics and the Batman films are similar but different universes to each other), or that the EU is part of the same universe as the films and TCW but is a lower level of canon (i.e. a less definitive canon) being made concurrently (i.e. in parallel)? Many thanks!
The Batman analogy isn’t the best, but I think “the parallel universe” description is probably closest. The Cinematic Universe is not beholden to anything that happens in the Expanded Universe — it’s not part of its history unless explicitly mentioned. But what makes it confusing is that the EU constantly retcons itself to match whatever path the CU is blazing. Then, if you look at it from the EU point of view, you could — with some validity — claim they were one and the same because you changed things to fit. But the fact that the changes were made at all speaks volumes.
Your parsecs may vary.
Many thanks for answering my question Mr Hidalgo!
I was wondering – with the above in mind, am I right in thinking your foreword about continuity ties in to what Leland Chee mentioned in his Facebook Q&A on 14th August, that although there wasn’t an “official” Lucasfilm policy on the whole dual universe thing, there was some internal discussion going on to come up with something? Is this the “official” Lucasfilm position on this now, as it were?
Again, many thanks!
Such an amazing publication.
I am currently raising funds for my own Star Wars inspired solo exhibition, SANDSTORM, to be shown in the summer of 2013 at the Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford, BC, Canada.
Please take a look here:
indiegogo.com/sandstorm
Thank you! And again, amazing book!
Best,
Chris
I just finished the books. Again great book. Thanks for taking the time to put the stories in order.
I hope this will be my last question. I was confused. Do the 10 X-wing Rogue Squadron comics go before the x-wing Rogue Squadron novels?
Yes, the Rogue Squadron comics take place before the novels.
I recently received the ERC as a birthday gift, and I gotta go out of my way to commend Mr. Hidalgo on a job well done and give him some kudos for his astonishing research. (That, and for helping me save a bundle on other SW books that I wanted to read but never got around to purchasing…)
Do you know where the other short stories are available that are mentioned in the ERC? They are not all on the suvudu.com site. Also, would it be possible to publish a timeline list of titles that incorporate both the comics and the books? (like they have in the backs of the books these days) I think it would be cool to have for those of us in the EU that read everything. Great job by the by on the ERC.
I bought the book a few days ago and I was wondering… Is Tahl black or white? xD In the book there two illustration of the character and in one of them she is black and in the other one white. ?_?
Would you recommend reading Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Force Storm as part of the companion?