It’s been a while since we’ve had any of these, but Roqoo Depot has pointed out various directory listings: Untitled Star Wars #1, Untitled Star Wars #2 and perhaps the weirdest of all – a rerelease of Anderson’s Jedi Academy trilogy? Or a new Jedi Academy trilogy? Or are all three destined to be rereleases of the previous books? A Thrawn trilogy omnibus, perhaps? (And what would that mean for the Expanded Universe and Episode VII? All three books have fall 2014 release dates.)
The author of all three listings is simply ‘Ballantine’ – a Random House imprint like Del Rey and Bantam. And while the third listing is on the often untrustworthy Amazon, the first two are on Random House’s own catalog.
The future of Del Rey’s Star Wars contract may still be in question, but we do know they have several books left on it – particularly if Sword of the Jedi and Paul Kemp’s duology are shelved, as is increasingly likely. A division of Random House printing these may not mean anything – both Bantam and Del Rey published new Star Wars books in 1999, the last time the license changed hands.
Whatever the case, hopefully the appearance of these listings means we’re getting closer to finding out something.
I wonder if they’ll be doubling down on the canon at some point: re-issuing the stories that are actually in canon while allowing the others to lapse. Or something.
A canonized version of older stories could be fun, and the Jedi Academy would be an easy fix: Change the location if necessary, change a couple of characters, and bamm, you’ve got yourself the first new trilogy. On the negative side, we might lose Dunc’s sanity in the process. :D
Alternatively, it would make sense, to simply change labels before starting a new timeline. Makes things slightly less confusing for everyone.
I’m crossing my fingers for the Kemp books, just so we can find out what the hell they are.
Be very interesting to see, we posted about (if I remember) Star Wars 26′, a november release (via Amazon France) and this Jedi Academy news a while ago. Gut says re-release but with reboot being the word who knows!
Yeah, I did see the JAT thing earlier but I was waiting to see if anything developed before posting it.
What are authors’ rights for novels tied to movies? In other words, if LucasFilm decided to rerelease a book like Jedi Academy but significantly edit it to conform to canon, would the author have to be informed? Do they need the author’s permission to make major changes? I suspect even LFL can’t have unlimited control over an author’s work because his name is on it.
I’m not sure about editing, but Lucasfilm does own all the rights to the books. Though honestly, I’m not sure if they’d bother? Granted, most of the PT conflicts were fairly minor, but they never touched the texts post-films then, why do it here?
Noticed that Amazon US has removed reference to “Jedi Academy” from its listing. Given that Amazon UK has a listing for a UK edition of “Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion: Untitled Luke Novel [Hardcover]” for release in hb by Century (UK Random House imprint) for November 20th, gut feeling is that release of third E&R may have been pulled forward to Nov.2014. At least then we get three SW novels this year plus E&R is over and done by 2015. So Amazon US & RH listings with Nov. 4th release could be for this third E&R novel.
As for the September listing – Rebels tie-in novel?
Fall 2014 is pretty much what we’re expecting for the Hearn book, so that’s a potential, yeah. That still leaves two mystery books, and whatever the hell was up with that JAT thing. I assume they’re just waiting to have the full slate ready before announcing the second half of ’14, but… JAT?
I doubt any of them is a Rebels novel, but that would be a good sign that the adult contract remains with Random House. Maybe.
Sorry Dunc, there’s only two mystery books. “Untitled Star Wars #2” on RH is the *same* book as the Amazon US listed JAT book, but now it’s just listed by Amazon as “Untitled Ballantine #43” – both have same ISBN.
Ahh. Well, we’ll see.
Looks like a listing for the Hearn book has showed up on Edelweiss (via) – the audio version, so no help in the ISBN department there. But it does give a January release.