Star Wars makes an appearance at Yuletide

KarrdeputerYuletide, the annual rare-fandoms fanfic gift exchange, had a rule change this year that suddenly made it relevant to our interests – they allowed requests from lesser-ficed parts of large fandoms like Star Wars. So, for the first time, we’re seeing Star Wars fanfics among the offerings. 32 of them, in fact, including a whooping 13 X-Wing fics. Other requests included the Thrawn trilogy and The Old Republic.

EU-based fanfic has never been exactly rare, but it does tend to focus on the big ‘ships (ahem) so if you’ve been looking for something a little different, check out the listings. The authors are all currently anonymous, but will be revealed on January 1st, per Yuletide tradition.

Star Wars celebrates an important date for the Expanded Universe – and Club Jade – today!

This Day in Star Wars

StarWars.com has been featuring a number of important dates on both the site and through social media – and today’s is one particularly relevant for our purposes! The Facebook numbers are pretty impressive, even for the official account – More than 13,500 likes, more than a thousand shares and almost that many comments.

And, of course, without the Thrawn Trilogy, would there be a Club Jade? Probably not.

The tweet’s doing pretty well, too!

Why don’t these guys have a Tumblr yet? (If you want to reblog it there, we did the honors.)

EUbits: Making of Return of the Jedi coming in October

Ewoks behind the scenesUpcoming nonfiction. Guess what’s appeared on the Random House online catalog? It’s J. W. Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, with a release date of October 8. In other Rinzler news, he’s announced that the next art book will be devoted to concept art. As someone who already owns all six concept art books devoted to the films, I hope we’ll get to see something new from the actual movies… If it comes out next year, would it be too early to hope for an Episode VII peek?

The blogside. Tor’s Ryan Britt looks at how Heir to the Empire turned Star Wars into science fiction. Lucasfilm’s Jennifer Heddle discusses balancing between work and being a fan. And Tosche Station’s Bria visits two extremes of the EU with The Crystal Star and Starfighters of Adumar.

Conventions. Dark Horse had a panel at Emerald City Comicon yesterday, and Amy Ratcliffe was kind enough to live-tweet it for those of us playing at home. While there was no breaking Star Wars news, there were a few insights into Star Wars and Legacy comics.

Short stories. Del Rey’s Frank Parisi reveals that John Ostrander has an Insider story coming up, ‘Eruption,’ with cover art by Jan Duursema. (It’ll also appear in the hardcover of Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void.) A Jason Fry story featuring a Clone Wars character was also recently greenlit. He also hints at something we’ll be seeing in Miller’s Kenobi.

The Last Jedi. Author Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff talks to NJOE (with Del Rey’s Shelly Shapiro) and TFN.

Gaming. We don’t even try to cover gaming anymore – trust me, it’s for the best – but if you’re curious about the (rumored) fate of 1313, well, here’s the word on the street.

“The books were always just the books:” Timothy Zahn on the Star Wars sequels and fan hopes for Heir

Entertainment Weekly caught up with Timothy Zahn to talk about the week’s big announcement and the amount of mainstream attention that the Thrawn trilogy has been getting due to all the speculation – and what he knew of possible plans for a trilogy after Return of the Jedi.

That means Zahn’s books won’t be directly adapted, but the author says that was always the case: “The books were always just the books.”

But years ago, he was briefed on Lucas’ plans for sequels, and how the Thrawn books would fit in. “The original idea as I understood it— and Lucas changes his mind off and on, so it may not be what he’s thinking right now – but it was going to be three generations. You’d have the original trilogy, then go back to Luke’s father and find out what happened to him [in the prequels], and if there was another 7th, 8th, or 9th film, it would be Luke’s children. The Thrawn Trilogy really would have fit into the gap,” the author said.

Tim talks – vaguely! – about what kind of things he’d like to see in the new films.

Zahn: 20th anniversary edition of Dark Force Rising not likely with current Heir sales numbers

Timothy Zahn has addressed the issue of further Thrawn trilogy anniversary editions on his Facebook page… And it’s not looking good.

It is now probable that next year will *not* see a special edition of DFR. However, she [Shelly Shapiro] does leave open the possibility that if there’s a groundswell of sales on the Heir 20th, it’s *possible* that the Higher-Ups at Del Rey will reverse that decision.

I’m certainly not trying to push anyone here (an author pushing people to buy books? Inconceivable!), but merely passing on information.

I bet the new Heir to the Empire makes a grand holiday gift for your more casual Star Wars fan friends!

I also wonder if perhaps a cheaper version is in order… Maybe a large trade paperback edition (hardcover sized) containing the entire Thrawn trilogy with annotations? Granted, it might be on my mind since I just reread the first couple Pern books that way (sans annotations,) but given the sheer amount of Star Wars books there are these days, collected editions make a lot of sense – for far more than just this trilogy.

New Heir to the Empire still getting around

Entertainment Weekly has an brief interview with Timothy Zahn to celebrate the re-release of Heir to the Empire. They do refer to Mara as “crimson-haired,” which makes my 17-year-old self wince, but I’ll forgive them. Just this once. If only because they’re not trying to cast the thing.

Suvudu has no such excuse. It’s no secret that faux-casting games drive me batty, so I’ll just point you at theirs: Captain Pellaeon, Talon Karrde, Joruus C’baoth, Wedge Antilles and, finally, Mara Jade. Remember, what goes on at Suvudu stays at Suvudu, kids: No casting games here, or you’ll make me redo this. Only worse.

As a palate-cleanser, Wired also has a tribute to Heir.

Heir to the Empire annotation #14: Vader’s finest

For our final teaser annotation of September’s Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition, Zahn talks about stormtroopers and namechecks the 501st.

After the 501st Imperial Legion fan group began, it was also established that Vader similarly liked to grab the Empire’s best stormtroopers and add them to his personal legion. I got to play with that idea a bit in later books..

We’re just two weeks and change away from the book’s September 6th release.