It’s no secret that our friends over at the sci-fi blog io9.com dig Star Wars, but this is the first time one of them openly admitted to falling in love with clones — mainly from the books written by author Karen Traviss.

io9.com blogger Charlie Jane Anders writes:

I’ve watched a fair bit of the new Clone Wars TV show, but the world of the clones hasn’t ever felt as real to me as it has reading Traviss’ novels. In particular, her Republic Commando novels (which recently continued with Order 66) and her novelization of the Clone Wars movie are must-reads.

It’s her Republic Commando novels where Traviss really shines, showing clones having complex lives — complex in the sense of getting married, having kids, making plans, but also in the sense of having inner conflicts and problems. Based loosely on a first-person shooter game, Traviss’ novels build a set of characters that stay with you, including two lapsed (or lapsing) Jedi, who join up with a group of clone troopers that realizes the Republic and the Separatists are getting harder and harder to tell apart.

Read the full review here:
(Spoilery for those who want to read the books)
Why I Fell In Love With Karen Traviss’ Clones (io9.com)

(Illustration: Joe Corroney)

Ever wonder whose job it is at Lucasfilm to make sure Star Wars planets and characters’ names are spelled correctly on everything from video game menus to Happy Meal toys? Wired magazine’s Chris Baker ventured over to Lucasfilm to meet with continuity master Leland Chee also known as the Keeper of the Holocron — “a searchable repository of more than 30,000 entries covering almost every character, planet, and weapon mentioned, however fleetingly, in the vast array of Star Wars titles and products.”

Excerpt:

Chee spends three-quarters of his typical workday consulting or updating the Holocron. He also approves packaging designs, scans novels for errors, and creates Talmudic charts and documents addressing such issues as which Jedi were still alive during the Clone Wars and how long it takes a spaceship to get from Dagobah, where Yoda trained Luke Skywalker, to Luke’s homeworld of Tatooine. The Keeper of the Holocron takes this very seriously: “Someone has to be able to say, ‘Luke Skywalker would not have that color of lightsaber.’”

“The thing about Star Wars is that there’s one universe,” Chee says. “Everyone wants to know stuff, like, where did Mace Windu get that purple lightsaber? We want to establish that there’s one and only one answer.”

There have been some egregious missteps, like the Jar Jar lollipop. It looks like a plastic bust of the hated character, but push a button and it opens its mouth and sticks out a hideous candy tongue for children to suck on. “The tongue had bumps on it,” Chee says, wrinkling his nose.

Read the full article here:
Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop (Wired.com)

Be sure to read Leland Chee’s Blog here:
Keeper of the Holocron’s Blog (Blogs.starwars.com)

I’ve been a long time fan of Bookcrossing.com ever since it began. The concept is simple — leave a book you no longer want on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Anywhere it might find a new reader. Log on to the web site, and track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

So last week when a well-worn copy of The Empire Strikes Back novel was left at the Lucasfilm lobby, in our San Francisco Presidio campus, I couldn’t help but smile. There smack dab on the front cover was a Bookcrossing.com sticker. I’ll be leaving it in the lobby again today to see who picks it up next. You can track its journey here.

May the Force be with this beloved paperback, wherever it ends up.

As a follow-up to the original series of tutorial videos that found limited release on DVD in 2007, Lucasfilm Ltd. has authorized a new DVD from DK Publishing: You Can Draw: Star Wars - Vol. 2. Hosted by artist Matt Busch, the DVD will collect all 7 episodes from Season 2 released this year.

The first series chronicled the entire creation of a 30th Anniversary poster, whereas Season 2 includes the creation of the Revenge of the Sith Style D One Sheet, but also spreads focus to areas such as drawing on the road, storyboarding for film and animation, and comic books. Each chapter includes comical skits, including a few where Busch parodies Indiana Jones.

The tutorials began as a side promotion for the book of the same name from DK Publishing, written by Lucasfilm’s Bonnie Burton and to which Busch produced nearly 400 illustrations along with fellow artist Tom Hodges. Before released on DVD, all videos can first be seen on StarWars.com and KidDK.com.

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So, Frantic is on Universal HD right now. Great flick. You know, the one where Harrison Ford’s wife is in danger. No, the other one. No, the other other one.

Anyway, looking at the imdb entry for the film, I noticed the photography of Ford on the back of the DVD package, and noted a striking similarity to a recently profiled Japanese cover on starwars.com. Check it out, it’s Hero’s Trial, from Japan, with a rather frantic looking Han on it.

J.W. Rinzler, Executive Editor at Lucasfilm, blogs about the upcoming Indiana Jones books we should be keeping our eyes peeled for including DK’s Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide by Jim Luceno, Lost Journal of Indiana Jones, and The Complete Making of Indiana Jones!

Read his blog entry here:
Indy Books on the Way

Also be sure to check out the info about other Indy books for younger readers here:
Indiana Jones Junior Novelizations On the Way

A fan named Payton emailed us this weekend with a link to a blog entry he’d just made asking after the whereabouts of one Mr. Rusty Miller, the 12-year-old author of 1982’s Jedi Master’s Quizbook (making him about 37 years old this year).

Truth be told, we here at starwars.com have had an open MIA file on Mr. Miller for some time, hoping to track down the fan prodigy for a chance to catch up on his adult life, career, and whether or not Star Wars still fits into it.

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Reading New York magazine’s weekly Approval Matrix is like reading a Who’s Who List of what’s hot and what’s completely lame both for cultural elitists and pop culture junkies.

Lucky for us, even though the editors weren’t too keen on the punishment for the man who stole items from the Indiana Jones movie set (which made the Highbrow/Despicable side of the Matrix), we were thrilled to see our favorite book MAD About Star Wars in the Brilliant/Lowbrow end of the Approval Matrix.

Check it out here:
The Approval Matrix for Nov. 19, 2007 (New York magazine)

Be sure to read our interviews on Starwars.com with the folks that make MAD About Star Wars so… MAD!

• It’s a MAD MAD MAD MAD Galaxy! (interviews with artist Mort Drucker and writer Dick DeBartolo)
• The Usual Gang of Jediots: MAD About Star Wars (interviews with writer David Shayne and Senior Editor Jonathan Bresman)

When MAD magazine’s “Maddest Writer” Dick Debartolo gave Part 5 of his multi-part video tour of the MAD offices in New York, we could help but notice their vintage Star Wars pinball machine. Here’s what Dick had to say about the artifact in the MAD magazine conference room:

Another piece of very important office equipment is the pinball machine. We come in here and we do lunch. What we do is actually gamble to see who’s going to eat. Each day only one employee is allowed to leave the building for lunch. So you have to win that game in order to leave the building.

Watch the video here:
VIDEO: Mad Office Tour — Part 5
(Watch ALL the tour video clips here.)

Be sure to read our interviews with the MAD staffers responsible for the new MAD magazine tribute book to Star Wars –
The Usual Gang of Jediots: MAD About Star Wars

While watching our “Visits to Rancho Obi-Wan” video series you find yourself wishing you were best friends with Lucasfilm Director of Fan Relations Stephen Sansweet so you too could visit this Star Wars collectors mecca in person?

To celebrate the release of the upcoming book Star Wars Vault by Stephen Sansweet and Pete Vilmur, you can click here to go to HarperCollins.com and enter to win a trip for two to the one and only Rancho Obi-Wan, courtesy of Vault author Stephen Sansweet. Two runners-up will receive a copies of The Star Wars Vault.