Heir to the Empire annotation #6: Pellaeon

Our sixth preview of Tim Zahn’s Heir to the Empire annotations features the origin of Gilad Pellaeon’s name:

Pellaeon, by the way, was named after Pelleas, an idealistic young knight in the King Arthur mythos.

Although Pellaeon was never as flashy a character as Thrawn or Mara, he did go on to be a staple for much of the post-ROTJ EU.

As for those who fear that they’re burning off all the annotations on Facebook before the book is even out, Del Rey’s David Pomerico says in the comments that there will be nearly 200 in the whole book – and I believe we’re only getting 14.

Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition will be out in hardcover June 28.

Heir to the Empire annotation #4: A larger galaxy

StarWarsBooks brings us our fourth Timothy Zahn annotation from the 20th anniversary edition of Heir to the Empire:

One of the subtle tricks George used in the Star Wars movies was to show us only a few different planets, but to then use throwaway mentions of others along the way, thus giving us a feel for a much larger galaxy than we were actually seeing. I wanted to continue that technique by throwing in short visits to lots of different worlds such as Bimmisaari.

The new edition will be out in hardcover June 21.

First Heir to the Empire annotation: Star Destroyers

The Star Wars Books Facebook page posted their first excerpt from the annotations of the Heir to the Empire 20th anniversary edition.

“Each of the three classic Star Wars movies includes a Star Destroyer in its opening scene. All of my Rebellion-era books do the same.” — Timothy Zahn

Okay, so many of us have reread the Thrawn trilogy dozens/hundreds of times and are already pretty familiar with this. But Del Rey says in the comments: “They get longer…just wanted to get everyone’s feet wet.” One down, 13 to go!

The annotated edition will be released June 21.

Heir to the Empire anniversary edition cover, details confirmed: Metallic cover, introduction from Zahn

The new information pretty much lines up with what Del Rey’s Erich Schoeneweiss told the EUCast earlier in the month, but we do get a title for the new Thrawn novella – and word of an introduction from Timohy Zahn:

Del Rey Books is publishing a commemorative edition hardcover of Heir to the Empire, with commentary-style annotations by Zahn and other behind-the-scenes people responsible for making the book a reality. Zahn will also pen an introduction to the book.

The book features a reflective jacket (fitting for the book’s platinum anniversary) and also has a specially printed version of the original cover underneath. It will include a new Zahn novella, Crisis of Faith, featuring Grand Admiral Thrawn. Heir to the Empire: The 20th Anniversary Edition is due out from Del Rey on June 21, 2011.

EUbits: Grant Gould’s ‘Thrawn Legacy’

Namesake corner. Artist Grant Gould did a Thrawn trilogy/Tron: Legacy mashup for the cover of his 2011 sketchbook. I LOL’ed.

I gotta see how they managed that. Apparently there’s a full-color excerpt from the Knight Errant comic in the Knight Errant novel. The paperback. It’s on glossy paper, but is it readable at that size? I guess we’ll find out. Maybe we should ask author John Jackson Miller, since he’s taking questions and all.

Map love. Entertainment Weekly dug up the galaxy map from The Essential Atlas, so it’s been making the rounds. Again! Oh, internets.

Comics. Dark Horse has posted a preview for Legacy: War #2.

Review. Book Legion says Year by Year is the “best Star Wars book to date.”

EUCast squeezes Heir to the Empire 20th details out of Del Rey’s Schoeneweiss

The EUCast had Del Rey editor Erich Schoeneweiss on their latest podcast, and he revealed a few tidbits about upcoming projects. Most notably (at least to us,) is that we have some confirmation that Timothy Zahn is not the only one contributing annotations to the book; Editor Betsy Mitchell and a few folks at Lucasfilm (Leland? Pablo?) will be as well.

He also said that the cover art we’ve seen for the Heir to the Empire 20th Anniversary Edition is likely to be close to the final, but:

To my knowledge it hasn’t been completely approved yet, but that’s definitely the direction that we want to go. I believe the plan is that that will be the jacket, and it will have sort of treatment, some sort of silver foil treatment on it. But then when you take the jacket off of it, underneath, (kind of similar to what we did with the Death Troopers hardcover) it will have the original book cover as the paper-over-board cover.

Does this make me a prophet? Well, except for the part about it being the original (ugh) art.

In other news, Schoeneweiss said that Jason Fry’s The Essential Guide to Warfare is being pushed back to 2012 and an Essential Guide to the Underworld is in the planning stages. Updated versions of the character and ship guides are also likely in the next few years.

They also got in touch with Shelly Shapiro, who said that while they’re still discussing Paul S. Kemp’s duology, “There’s a good chance” it will be in the Old Republic era.

Random House catalog offers preliminary cover for Heir to the Empire anniversary reissue

NJOE (via) was first to spot that Random House’s summer catalog has gone up for public consumption – and in it is an early cover for the Heir to the Empire 20th Anniversary Edition on page 75.

Cover art that appears in the catalogs tends be very preliminary, so it’s hard to say if the final will look anything like this. But you know what? I don’t mind it. And if they do it in foil, it’ll stand out nicely from the crowd. Granted, I loath the original, so your mileage may vary.

The catalog also contains a listing for Choices of One (page 79,) but I’m not seeing anything new there. But also appearing with a preliminary cover is Jason Fry’s The Essential Guide to Warfare (page 89.)