Is the era of the Star Wars mega-series coming to an end?

Sue Rostoni, when asked about future plans for the Expanded Universe, said this today:

Honestly, we’re not presently looking at another long series — more stand-alones, duologies, and trilogies. At least that’s where we’re headed today.

After Legacy of the Force’s Mando-derailing and a (sorry) lackluster start to Fate of the Jedi, I’m all for something on a smaller scale, at least for a while.

17 Replies to “Is the era of the Star Wars mega-series coming to an end?”

  1. That’s awesome! As someone who is just about to read TUF and finally be done with the NJO, this is really great news.

  2. i wonder if this is sales-driven or author-commitment-driven. the longer series tend to probably be a bit more stable for sales, (so long as the authors don’t back out), but the one-offs give a chance to bring in new talent, and are probably a bit more uneven in sales – some might be bigger hits and some might not do that great. or have they found that readers just aren’t into multi-author arcs anymore.

  3. Thank God. Maybe now they will stop trying to blow up the universe/destroy the republic/Kill All Humans every ten minutes.

  4. I haven’t read anything since legacy of the force, most of the things I want to checl out are smaller, like the new darth bane. I’m mainly just waiting for all this new stuff to come out in paperback. I’m fine with just 1,2 or 3 shots at this point, especially after NJO.

  5. Sweet. I think the super long story arcs are getting old and overdone, for now anyways.
    Anyways. I get the suspicion that someone big is going to die, like Luke, Han Or Leia. I know you were all expecting it to happen at the end of LOTF (I didn’t read that series till recently), but what better time to kill one of them off then at the end of the last long series?

  6. It makes sense. I think NJO turned out great, But I hear it was a huge amount of work, too much to be worth it. LotF and FotJ might be less work to organize, but I don’t think it’s working. The authors are clearly having a very hard time writing, and I can’t imagine it’s very enjoyable. I think it would be better if longer arcs were plotted but not so strictly regulated. Give the authors the time they need to write good stories. What we have now is an extremely fractured storyline which is turning into a polite tug-of-war.
    I’ll be happy to see more Dark Nest trilogies, or Crosscurrent series, or (fingers-crossed) EU character focused books like Blood Oath (I know it’s history, but I liked the idea).

  7. I think that’s a good thing. I stopped reading the EU almost completely, after ‘Traitor’. The Yuuzhan Vong never felt like a Star Wars thing to me, and the exaggeration of some events sometimes made me wonder if I was reading a Dragonball Z novel.

    I’d love to have some ‘single shots’ like Allegiance or Outbound Project, or loose trilogies.

    I’m a fan of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, and one thing I absolutely love about it is how magic is rarely used, and never in an over-the-top manner. They should go for the same with the Force (and whatever else they made up since), in Star Wars novels.

    Maybe then I’d be able to get back into one of my all-time favourite universes. :)

  8. Don’t even get me started on the NJO… ;)

    I think LOTF was a valiant effort to salvage the format – it started off so well before it went off the track. And FOTJ isn’t a lost cause yet. But it feels like there’s not much juice left and more contained stories seems the best way to handle it.

  9. Yes, to what everyone here has said.

    Even though the smaller books seem to be either hit or misses, it gives you the chance to find the hits. If a long storyline premise doesn’t intrigue the fan, then you’ve lost them until that arc is done.

    I think it’s a great move. And hopefully it will open up a creative new line for the OT characters and their offspring.

  10. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed LOTF and FOTJ has been okay but the things like “I,Jedi” and (although I have yet to read it) “Crosscurrent” are where I think a lot of fans’ hearts are really at. Stories that focus on individuals rather than huge epics that bounce around from plot point to plot point.

  11. Part of the problem with these expansive arcs is that the authors pinball back and forth, so you have a constantly shifting focus. Let single authors do a 2 or three book run, and then move on to the next author, and then there will be much more stability in the flow of the story (consider the X-wing series — it would have been really distracting if Stackpole and Allison alternated). Of course, then you can’t pump the books out three times as fast, but oh well, you get a better series. It’s not the scope that is bad – it’s just jarring to jump back and forth between authors so often — it doesn’t let you get into the author’s story because it isn’t really the author’s story — it’s just their take on the metaplot.

  12. It would be neat if this was LucasBooks’ way of making room for tie-ins and spin-offs for the much anticipated live-action TV shows (which in-itself would probably air when FotJ ends). We could have stand-alones as well as short spin-off series (duologies and/or trilogies).
    Recent new authors feature some who have already contributed to TV show franchised spin-off books, eg Karen Miller (Stargate SG-1) and Christie Golden (Star Trek).

  13. To be honest, I’ll be glad of this. In the end, I liked NJO, even though there were some books in the series that were lackluster and that the series could have been better without. When the series where Jacen turned to the darkside came out, I started losing my enthusiam for Star Wars novels all together and stopped reading Sacrifice half way through. The doom and gloom of the series put me off as I could not ever imagine Jacen falling to the darkside, plus the Skywalker-Solo centric, even worship of the series started to grate on me after a while, like they were the only characters capable of saving the galaxy. Also, with many of the characters from the OT aging (and it’s the same problem with Fate of the Jedi, with Dalaa and everything) it just started to get a little far fetched. Hopefully, if the focus has now changed we’ll get to see novels which explore other parts of the Star Wars galaxy, for instance, I liked the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy in the late 90’s and of course, the X-Wing novels by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston. Maybe even see what happened to the Rogues and Wraiths and their family, or focus on the other Jedi like Zekk (we can always hope) or finally get some decent books with Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan and Padme, the Jedi of the Old Republic and Bail Organa, etc, are just some of the characters I’d like to know more about. Perhaps now my interest in Star Wars novels will resume.

  14. I would love another single-author starfighter series, like X-wing. But not on a OMG SAVE THE UNIVERSE level, just like normal, awesome SW peeps doing missions and maybe saving babies or something. LOL. My wants are modest. Ish.

  15. …why did it take me so long to see this article? I could have improved my year months ago!

    The multi-author series have bothered me for a while, probably because each author characterizes a character a different way, so within a series the characters didn’t seem to have consistency. Or at least that’s how NJO felt to me. I’m fine with the fact that characters are going to be written differently depending on who’s writing, but it’ll be nice to have some consistency within story arcs, kind of like what Eric said about focus.

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