A Thinker in Space

If you’ve gotten to know me at all over the past, I dunno, 22 years, you will probably know at least one thing about me: I love Star Wars. Always have, always will. Star Wars has been a very significant part of my life – I am the proud owner of all 150+ Star Wars books written before the Disney buyout, and have read and re-read many of them in my time. If you’ve been following the news at all within the past several years, you will know that Disney purchased the rights to Star Wars, and decided to scrap all of the preexisting canon except for the movies and The Clone Wars. This ruffled quite a few feathers, my own included. I loved the universe, and a part of me will always be very sad that the Star Wars I fell in love with will never have new additions to its world. That world that I have been so immersed in is commonly referred to as the “Star Wars Expanded Universe”, including the books and comics that came after and before and in-between the movies. There were tons of adventures here, continuing the stories of Han, Leia, and Luke, and creating more characters that were just as engaging. To me, Star Wars was more than just a three or six movie saga, it was a whole playground of stories to immerse myself in, starring some of my favorite fictional characters. That playground was torn out from under me, and I felt set adrift, lost in the stars without anywhere to moor.

Fast forward a couple years, and BAM. The Force Awakens hits the theaters with box-office breaking records, world-wide critical acclaim and millions upon millions of viewers.

It was one of the most significant cultural experiences of the 2010s, and we all got to be a part of it. The emotions I felt as I sat in front of that screen were a mix of the thrill of the experience and almost a sick dread. The film began, and it was an amazing experience. The audience was enraptured with the characters, laughing, applauding, glued to all of the action and waiting with baited breath to see what would happen next. I left the theater even more conflicted than I had been when I first walked into it, unsure about how I felt. I had enjoyed the movie, but something had felt very wrong to me. My Luke would NEVER have run away, no matter how bad things got! My Han and Leia would never have split when things went sour. And so on. I was later able to pinpoint exactly what bothered me about the movie, even though I enjoyed the experience so much. The first thing was that Luke ran away from the fight. At this point, we didn’t know why he did this, and I hoped upon hoped that it wasn’t what it turned out to be (that he was kinda just a cowardly wuss). The second was that Han and Leia had split. Han and Leia have always been my favorite fictional couple. When I was younger, I admired them for sticking to their guns no matter how difficult things got (and things got a lot tougher in the EU than they did on the big screen). They were the picture of a couple that got through some difficult times, and didn’t let the grief and pain they had suffered. Now that I’m older, not only do I agree with what the aforementioned reasons, but Leia also very much reminds me of my current fiancée in the old canon (and therefore has qualities that I obviously find admirable).

The third and other largest issue I had with the new steps of the franchise was that the stakes of the original trilogy were lost. Luke, Leia and Han blew up the Death Star, the Emperor was defeated, and they won the fight. So what? The New Republic lasted like five minutes and then blew up by another totalitarian government. And now, the overarching plot is the same. “Evil government is evil, rebels have to destroy it.” It upset me and felt unoriginal and uninspired. There was more, of course, but these were the major issues I had. But I hadn’t given up on the franchise. At least, not until The Last Jedi was released. I will be honest, this was the first movie I have ever loathed. I left the theater angry, and upset. And I was finally able to say that I had completely given up on the Star Wars franchise. In the past couple weeks, I have become very content with my apathy. It’s comfortable, in a way, to no longer have to feel divided between two canons. I will continue to love my Star Wars, and I will watch the new stuff, but won’t feel torn and polarized.

And now we come to the point that I wrote this article to make. I didn’t come here to rant about how much I don’t like the new canon (although I could probably talk about it for hours). I came to make it clear that though I don’t like the direction Star Wars has taken, I also am no longer blind to the issues of the EU. After watching The Last Jedi, my first reaction was to go home and start reading Star Wars books, GOOD Star Wars books. I started with Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, and the trilogy it is a part of. This series is brilliant. It is the Star Wars: Episodes VII, VIII, and IX that we deserve, with stories and depth that, in my opinion, rival the Original Trilogy. The characters are rich, everyone plays their role perfectly, and the new characters are deep with a lot of thought thrown into them. But then I took a step out of Zahn’s masterpiece into some other works of Star Wars. The first Star Wars adult book I ever read was Kevin J. Anderson’s Jedi Search. I loved it, and it opened my hunger for the rest of Star Wars. For a long time, I heralded that series as one of the best Star Wars stories ever told.

Well, I just re-read it for perhaps the first time since I read it in middle school all those years ago. And it was… not good. Now let me preface this with the fact that I genuinely greatly love and admire Anderson as an author. He wrote one of my favorite trilogies that I have read over the past couple of years, the Terra Incognita series. His writing style is well-crafted, and his stories are rich and well-written. So imagine my shock when I open up Jedi Search, and I immediately feel like I’m reading a B-class young adult novel. The prose was poor, the characters were a bit out of wack, and there were a lot of plot points that were hastily developed and not well executed. The plot itself is actually really good – as a Star Wars story it is a very interesting and well-developed idea. However, the execution is sorely lacking. I was very disappointed as I plowed through the trilogy, and I came to find out that this series was published in ’94-’96. Ten years before the Kevin J. Anderson series I love so well. Obviously, he grew a lot in those ten years into an excellent writer – it’s just a shame that his Star Wars entries were written while he was still getting his act together. And then I started the following trilogy (which is one of the few trilogies I had never read before). Called The Black Fleet Crisis, this trilogy is much more well written and polished than the Jedi Academy series by Kevin J. Anderson… but the characters are nothing short of atrocious. And by characters, I specifically mean Leia. She’s trashy, ignorant, and her idealism is sharpened to the point of blatant incompetence. A conflict comes up during the first book that pits her and Admiral Ackbar on the opposite sides of a tactical decision, and she could rightfully be called the antagonist. She is a bad mother, a bad sister, and, dare I say it, a bad person. It seems to me that the author of this series never liked Leia, and thought she was given too much credit in the books, so he made her the most unlikable character ever. The series has other significant issues as well, but I won’t get into all of that. Suffice it to say that that the EU is not without it’s problems.

So what’s my point in all of this? I guess what I’m trying to say is simply this – I bear no resentment against Disney for rebooting Star Wars. I love the EU. And despite fact that there are a few quality dips, it still has some of my favorite characters, plot lines, and novels of all time. I will continue to read and love the EU for my whole life. But in order to release an Episode VII, they needed to do a refresh. Dump the stuff that is less quality and keep themselves from getting boxed in. It was inevitable. Am I sad that Star Wars books that are in my universe will never be written again? Of course. But am I going to fume about it and whine about the fact that Legends will never get continued? Not anymore. I just wish that they had created their new universe better, instead of making it feel so disconnected from the original series, pandering to political agendas, and making a Mary Sue out of a potentially engaging lead. They had a lot of room to do things right, and they just… didn’t. And the problems that the universe has now have shaped the rest of the universe for the rest of its life, whereas the issues that the EU had were easy to repair and move away from.

Star Wars will always be one of the most special universes to me, and will always have a place in my heart. But will I be raving about how the EU is collectively the greatest universal work of fiction of our time? No. I believe some of the arcs are some of the best science fiction have to offer, but it has issues of its own. But I am incredibly sad with the state of the universe, and the division of the fans and the polarization of the different canons. Star Wars was once united under a single banner, and now it is a kingdom divided. Disney has proved it can do some good – Rogue One was one of the best Star Wars stories out there (much better than the EU’s version), and I have heard that Rebels is pretty good. Their novels have also been pretty decent as well. I just wish their overarching story was as good as the EU’s, and that they had used more of the already-prepared content, characterizations, and styles to create a universe that would have been just and rich and promising as that of the EU. The hardest thing for me to accept now is that the Star Wars universe could have been brilliant, full of fantastic stories put onto the big screen. And to give up on a series so near and dear to my heart is hard for me. But I no longer feel regret or remorse, and I am satisfied with the long, amazing story that has already been told in the EU. While there are pitfalls, there are in any series *cough* Love and Monsters in Doctor Who *cough*, and there is so much good there that I would be a fool to give up on all Star Wars even though I have taken off the rose-colored glasses. I wish things had panned out differently, but we’ve all been dealt a hand as far as this series is concerned. We just have to figure out what to do with it. I hope there are things that you can appreciate with whatever Star Wars world you choose to envelop yourself within, as I have. Just remember that no universe is perfect, and there will always be both good and bad, no matter what you choose. Enjoy the good, do what you will with the bad, and if you want recommendations for good books in the EU, feel free to shoot me a comment or message! And,

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