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krpalmerIn dwelling on a disconnection that may only be increasing between me and this new corporate era of Star Wars product, I have thought a bit about at least some of the other opinions I've picked up on even at the possible risk of being pushed in unapproving directions. There are those who insist the sure antidote for current ill feelings is to turn back to the spinoff novels and comics sold up until a little while after the sale, works ultimately encompassed under the name "the Expanded Universe" but shockingly "decanonized" near the beginning of the new era. To focus on something you're positive towards does seem commendable, but I have to admit quite a few things built up over a fair while to detach me from those spinoffs.
My family managed to record all three of the Star Wars movies off TV in the second half of the 1980s might have counteracted in some slight way the toy line and original Marvel comics going away, although certainly I was finding other things to be interested in too. I do know I noticed some of the first role-playing game books, but at the time those sorts of books generally seemed too expensive for me to buy. Around the start of the decade that followed, though, when I noticed the novel "Heir to the Empire" that also caught my attention. I did wait for the paperback to read it, and afterwards if I couldn't resort to the local library I'd keep waiting for the paperbacks, but I'd have to say the first, seemingly nameless trilogy of new Star Wars novels did interest me. I went so far as to write a book report about "Heir to the Empire" midway through high school. While I had to catch up to the "Dark Empire" comics through reprint magazines, and I do have the recollection their "Luke Skywalker turns to the Dark Side!" storyline wasn't quite what I'd imagined after first hearing about it, they also got my attention.
As the first three novels were followed by new series of books, though, I did start wondering if we were getting "too many of them," and if they would start to feel as dismissible as I kept hearing genuine connoisseurs of written science fiction were supposed to treat "media tie-ins." It was around then that I was first able to follow Usenet discussions, and there I smacked into the constantly expressed opinion that Timothy Zahn's first three novels were the gold standard and nothing else that followed could live up to them, in large part because they weren't following their lead. The apotheosis of this seemed the fanfiction; I remember one somewhat late piece amid the general glee that Zahn would be writing more Star Wars novels intended to be the second chapter of his new book (the first would of course be set on a Star Destroyer) where Luke of course woke up next to Mara Jade and started telling her about the bizarre dream he'd had where everything was quite a ways off and the two of them weren't together...
This, though, might have been where a peculiar difficulty of mine to latch on to the implied pairings of fictional characters others make such a big deal of had kicked in. Earlier, there had seemed a lot of things off about a novel called "Children of the Jedi," and yet the clearly established pairing of its new character with Luke had got me sort of gooey and sentimental, the seemingly just as peculiar general flip side of the coin for me. Too, in seeing Zahn's work held up so far I'd started to wonder if it was really that amazing; as much as I'd thought Grand Admiral Thrawn very clever to start with, I might have wound up interpreting the novels as somehow limiting all other Star Wars aliens in the way he seemed able to look at what never seemed more than a few pieces of art and come up with sure-fire psychological buttons to freeze up every member of a particular species.
It was right about then that, trying to preserve a shockingly positive initial reaction to The Phantom Menace, I drew back from Star Wars as a whole. I couldn't quite escape hearing everything, though, and all of a sudden "the Expanded Universe" seemed a solid block in the opinions of others, and one held up over mere movies. That did not encourage me to start reading them again when I was lucky enough to fall in with a small band of fans expressing positivity towards the five and then six Star Wars movies; that some of them didn't seem quite impressed with the lack of resolution to the post-movie novels by that point didn't help either.
This disconnection from everything but the films did make it just a little dodgy about starting to watch the Clone Wars computer-animated series, but overhearing complaints it played fast and loose with the novels and comics set around the time of the new movies didn't shake me in the slightest. I do have to admit I shrugged off the announcement the post-sale movies would no longer consider themselves bound by what had happened in the novels, although I did wonder at first if those new productions could have gone so far as to imply Zahn's first three novels had still happened without having to cast a middle-aged Mara Jade. In the end, though, "obviously it would be impossible to explain everything that had happened in the novels to an audience that might not have read all of them" seemed to turn into "these new novels will fill in all the gaps, eventually." Not having read the novels for years does seem to have left me reluctant to read about a setup to a situation that didn't feel invigorating to me in the first place.
I do want to say that those who found enjoyment in the old Star Wars novels should be free to do so (and at least some of them don't seem to have made a general open distaste for most of the movies part of their expressed opinions, either). It might be, though, that I managed to go so far as to think things like "tie-ins aren't quite needed for cinematic works," "six movies can tell a story complete in themselves," and "I can use my own imagination to answer questions and suppose a simple happy ending." That might be both grandiose and self-centred, but even so that might even be an "if it works" situation a bit different from the one once alluded to in the movies themselves.
My family managed to record all three of the Star Wars movies off TV in the second half of the 1980s might have counteracted in some slight way the toy line and original Marvel comics going away, although certainly I was finding other things to be interested in too. I do know I noticed some of the first role-playing game books, but at the time those sorts of books generally seemed too expensive for me to buy. Around the start of the decade that followed, though, when I noticed the novel "Heir to the Empire" that also caught my attention. I did wait for the paperback to read it, and afterwards if I couldn't resort to the local library I'd keep waiting for the paperbacks, but I'd have to say the first, seemingly nameless trilogy of new Star Wars novels did interest me. I went so far as to write a book report about "Heir to the Empire" midway through high school. While I had to catch up to the "Dark Empire" comics through reprint magazines, and I do have the recollection their "Luke Skywalker turns to the Dark Side!" storyline wasn't quite what I'd imagined after first hearing about it, they also got my attention.
As the first three novels were followed by new series of books, though, I did start wondering if we were getting "too many of them," and if they would start to feel as dismissible as I kept hearing genuine connoisseurs of written science fiction were supposed to treat "media tie-ins." It was around then that I was first able to follow Usenet discussions, and there I smacked into the constantly expressed opinion that Timothy Zahn's first three novels were the gold standard and nothing else that followed could live up to them, in large part because they weren't following their lead. The apotheosis of this seemed the fanfiction; I remember one somewhat late piece amid the general glee that Zahn would be writing more Star Wars novels intended to be the second chapter of his new book (the first would of course be set on a Star Destroyer) where Luke of course woke up next to Mara Jade and started telling her about the bizarre dream he'd had where everything was quite a ways off and the two of them weren't together...
This, though, might have been where a peculiar difficulty of mine to latch on to the implied pairings of fictional characters others make such a big deal of had kicked in. Earlier, there had seemed a lot of things off about a novel called "Children of the Jedi," and yet the clearly established pairing of its new character with Luke had got me sort of gooey and sentimental, the seemingly just as peculiar general flip side of the coin for me. Too, in seeing Zahn's work held up so far I'd started to wonder if it was really that amazing; as much as I'd thought Grand Admiral Thrawn very clever to start with, I might have wound up interpreting the novels as somehow limiting all other Star Wars aliens in the way he seemed able to look at what never seemed more than a few pieces of art and come up with sure-fire psychological buttons to freeze up every member of a particular species.
It was right about then that, trying to preserve a shockingly positive initial reaction to The Phantom Menace, I drew back from Star Wars as a whole. I couldn't quite escape hearing everything, though, and all of a sudden "the Expanded Universe" seemed a solid block in the opinions of others, and one held up over mere movies. That did not encourage me to start reading them again when I was lucky enough to fall in with a small band of fans expressing positivity towards the five and then six Star Wars movies; that some of them didn't seem quite impressed with the lack of resolution to the post-movie novels by that point didn't help either.
This disconnection from everything but the films did make it just a little dodgy about starting to watch the Clone Wars computer-animated series, but overhearing complaints it played fast and loose with the novels and comics set around the time of the new movies didn't shake me in the slightest. I do have to admit I shrugged off the announcement the post-sale movies would no longer consider themselves bound by what had happened in the novels, although I did wonder at first if those new productions could have gone so far as to imply Zahn's first three novels had still happened without having to cast a middle-aged Mara Jade. In the end, though, "obviously it would be impossible to explain everything that had happened in the novels to an audience that might not have read all of them" seemed to turn into "these new novels will fill in all the gaps, eventually." Not having read the novels for years does seem to have left me reluctant to read about a setup to a situation that didn't feel invigorating to me in the first place.
I do want to say that those who found enjoyment in the old Star Wars novels should be free to do so (and at least some of them don't seem to have made a general open distaste for most of the movies part of their expressed opinions, either). It might be, though, that I managed to go so far as to think things like "tie-ins aren't quite needed for cinematic works," "six movies can tell a story complete in themselves," and "I can use my own imagination to answer questions and suppose a simple happy ending." That might be both grandiose and self-centred, but even so that might even be an "if it works" situation a bit different from the one once alluded to in the movies themselves.