THRAWN AND ON AND ON: A STAR WARS LITERARY PODCAST

With the release last year of the long-awaited Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a couple of my internet buddies and I naturally got to talking about the Star Wars Expanded Universe, no part of which is included in the film (that whole sort-of-canon has now been shunted off as Star Wars Legends, to much grumbling in some communities). As followers of this here blog know, though I've been a Star Wars fan since movie houses first went pew pew pew in 1977, to date I've only sort of explored said universe -- I've played a lot of KOTOR, read the Storybooks when I was a wee one, and I have read Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, and that's about it.

Well, that's about to change. We're going to swim in the bathwater that J.J. Abrams and Disney threw out.

Because those friends -- Shawn Duke, Rachel Acks and Sarah, the redoubtable tweeter we know as Bookworm Blues -- and I decided not only were we going to read, eventually, ALL THE STAR WARS together, but we'd podcast it, too.

And we just recorded our first episode, in which we talked about, yes, Heir to the Empire.

It's going to be lots of fun. We've got a diverse set of viewpoints on the EU -- Shaun and Rachel are both hardy long-time explorers of same, I've dipped my toe in some but am thoroughly steeped in the original trilogy and its game offshoots, and Sarah was a complete Star Wars innocent until The Force Awakens awakened her.

We're going to have guests, including author guests, and special features (including, yes, sonnetry from yours truly) and who knows what other craziness!

We'll be releasing it under the Skiffy and Fanty imprimatur, so we should be easy to find, but I'll also share a link as soon as the show goes live.

Oh yeah, and the name? Totally from an Abba song. Because we're not just dorks, we're shameless dorks. Represent.

Chuck Wendig's STAR WARS: AFTERMATH

However one may feel about the Disney purchase of the Star Wars franchise and the corporate decision to chuck out the hundreds of books and comics that make up the Star Wars Expanded Universe and start a brand new continuity, said new continuity is off to a remarkable start, and not just because The Force Awakens let us all breathe a sigh of relief that J.J. Abrams wasn't going to ruin everything.*

Star Wars: Aftermath, published to both acclaim and controversy (which controversy I'm not going to address here because I don't really understand it) a few months before The Movie was, is further proof that just because there has been some retcon doesn't mean there can't emerge some great stories from the new effort. The galaxy far, far away is pretty big, and there is room for a lot in it, and a lot of it is awesome.

That being said, I can see where some fans might have been a leetle disappointed to pick this book up, because it is mostly lacking in what people have been hankering for ever since the prequel movies stank up the theaters: Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie, Lando, Jedis and the Force... But by now we've all seen that the The Force Awakens took care of them just fine, so let's focus on what Aftermath does not lack, which is quality.

The title here is key. The events of Return of the Jedi are still very, very recent as this new story unfolds. The ewoks may well still be partying down on Endor's forest moon. Thank goodness we don't have to see that, but it might well be. But one victory, however spectacular, doth not a regime change make, and while the Empire was pretty well decapitated, that doesn't mean everything in the galaxy is immediately hunky dory. As we've seen in our lifetimes in the Middle East, taking out the evil dictator and his cronies causes as many problems as it solves: power vacuums, chaos, opportunism, economic collapse, weapons of mass destruction in unknown hands, troubled war veterans, disruptions in commerce and shipping... the list is long and grim.

And it's this stuff that Wendig has chosen to imagine, to tackle for this new trilogy of novels. Which means he is unassailably writing Star Wars for grown-ups, making the long, long ago feel more real and challenging and gritty than any amount of practical special effects and exposition dumping opening crawls could ever do. He takes full advantage of the opportunities the novel form offers to really explore and fill out a world, with fascinating, if at times disheartening, results.

But that's not to say it's any less fun than the movies, etc. we've loved all these years. Just because the real problems of regime change and consolidation are the focus doesn't mean there isn't plenty of action, character drama, and, yes, humor as an ex-Imperial official, a kickass bounty hunter, a hot-shot pilot, her crafty and gifted son, and a host of other new characters struggle to figure out their roles and places in this new world in the brief bit of breathing room everybody is sort-of enjoying while the New Republic tries to form and begin to heal the galaxy -- and while the Empire struggles to regroup and plan to reconquer.

Of particular note is a droid that stole my heart even more completely than BB8 did in the latest film: Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones is an old Imperial battle droid, of risible memory from the prequel films. You know rolling around, committing acts of incredible ineptitude and saying "Roger Roger" every few seconds. But Mr. Bones, Mr. Bones is badass, because young Temmin Wexley (the hot-shot pilot's son) rebuilt it (partly out of animal bones, hence its name) and reprogrammed it with a lot of weird software modules that have made of the thing a seriously formidable bodyguard that has a bizarre tendency to laugh psychotically and break out into mondo crazy song and dance routines while it kills and maims. I would watch a spin-off series of this droid's adventures, yes I would.

Also notable is an Imperial admiral, Sloane, who is stuck balancing competing interests as she tries to pull together what's left of the Empire's military to take stock and figure out new strategies. Notice again the female pronoun: Aftermath, like the film that has followed it, is an artifact of a much more inclusive universe that may well be one without sexism, or at least without very much of it. Just as the film gives us the fabulously competent, fierce and sensible Rey, this novel gives us a gifted and dedicated female pilot, Norra Wexley (who is dealing not only with her military role in the rebellion but also with the effect her career has had on her relationship with the son she left behind in his aunts' care). The bounty hunter character is also female, and never once is anybody's gender an issue; never once is there any suggestion that they are exceptions to any rules, no "great pilot for being a woman" backhanded compliments, none of it. Even Sloane, who is on the receiving end of a lot of contempt as her side falls into in-fighting, doesn't get it for being a woman; she gets it for making a plan and sticking to it in the face of bullying opposition and dirty dealing.

It's all just so damned refreshing! Too bad it's just science fantasy. But it's pointing the way, and doing so without giving up any of the pew-pew-pews we go to science fantasy for.

But so, I'm pretty psyched to read the other two books in this trilogy when they're available. But then, I hope Wendig goes back to writing his very own stuff. His very own stuff is really, really good. Better than this, even. I mean, come on, this is the guy who brought us Miriam Black. I don't begrudge him his payday, but... cough. Thunderbird. Cough.

*I had to be physically escorted from the theater when I made the mistake of going to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, and got a scorching migraine for my troubles My concerns were real! To say nothing of all of the other ways that film sucked.

Timothy Zahn's HEIR TO THE EMPIRE #OneBookAtATime

What a strange thing it is, to be spending time with Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Artoo and Threepio after all these years. I've not read any of the Star Wars spinoff-novels before, you see, though I've heard plenty about them, even have a friend who basically reads nothing else. But yes, I must sheepishly admit to Heir to the Empire being my first Star Wars read since The Star Wars Storybook back when I was eight.

The narrative starts off a few years after the destruction of the second Death Star. A fledgling New Republic is slowly establishing itself; the Empire is in tatters but there are still pockets of loyalty to the old regime here and there, mostly on the edges and fringes. Leia is a diplomat, making contact with planets and offering them help and aid and protection from Imperial renegades in exchange for loyalty to the Republic; Han is now her husband and sort of just tooling around doing stuff that is sort of helpful to the cause; they are expecting twins. Luke is around, again, without any particular role except in teaching Leia to be a Jedi and developing a curriculum for his yet-unborn niece and nephew. The droids are the droids. Everything seems to be going well enough...

But remember what I said about the fringes. An Imperial warlord, Admiral Thrawn, more or less the titular heir, has been seething out in space and developing a plan to take back the Empire. He's not quite a Sith lord, but he's got some uncanny abilities and a whole blue-skinned, red-eyed head full of military strategy, tactical genius, intelligence and patience. And some animals, the ysalamir, that project a sort of "anti-Force" useful for neutralizing Jedi. Mind-bogglingly useful creatures, those ysalamir, surely the Babel fish of the Star Wars universe.

For most of the novel, we watch Thrawn and his forces gather strength and spring trap after trap that Leia and co. keep narrowly escaping, which is fun and satisfying in the same popcorn-chomping way the original film trilogy was fun and satisfying. More satisfying is the introduction of an important new character, Mara Jade, who has a most unusual past and promises to have a most interesting future, especially if the flavor of bickering mistrust that characterizes her exchanges with Luke portends what I'm sure it portends, wink wink. I mean, come on, we can't expect Han and Leia to shoulder all the burdens of making new little Jedi, can we?

So all in all, Heir to the Empire was a fun little palate cleanser, much needed after a lot of dark and depressing fare so far this year. Jar Jar Abrams would do well to work with this material for his films. If he gets someone decent to play Mara Jade, I might even forgive him some lens flare.