Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
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.
For the lucky thirteenth annotation from the upcoming Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition, Timothy Zahn decides to make things grander than normal.
‘”I wanted HEIR’s villain to be a military leader, as opposed to a governor, Moff, or Sith. But a normal admiral seemed too commonplace. Hence, the Grand Admirals. I first ran across the title, by the way, in connection with the German navy in William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”
The novel is due out September 6th. While the slipcover is the new silver cover, the actual bound cover will be a reprint of the classic Heir to the Empire cover artwork.
In the twelfth annotation from the upcoming Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition, C’baoth gets snarky.
‘Admiral’ would be the normal shipboard form of address (‘Grand Admiral’ is awkwardly long for casual conversation), but C’baoth almost invariably uses the entire rank. Not as a form of respect, of course, but as a form of sarcasm.
The book is due out September 6th.
Del Rey was back today with a new preview of Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire annotations.
‘C’baoth,’ incidentally, is pronounced ‘SA-bay-oth,’ with the first vowel pronounced like the ‘a’ in ‘has.’ If I’d realized how hard it was going to be for everyone else to figure out, I would have changed the spelling.
Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition will be out (hopefully) on September 6th.
After a week off, we get our tenth preview from the anniversary edition of Tim Zahn’s Heir to the Empire.
One of the parameters I wanted to set for the trilogy was that Luke would be entirely on his own as a Jedi, with no one he could call on for help or advice. And though I didn’t know it at the time, the line about ‘the first of the new Jedi’ nicely sets up Kevin J. Anderson’s Jedi Academy trilogy, as well as many other future books.
Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition was is (at the moment_ scheduled for a September 6th release.
Del Rey editor Shelly Shapiro chatted with fans this afternoon on the Star Wars Books Facebook page. With more than 108 comments, you can’t say it wasn’t popular! Read on for a few high points, including Fate of the Jedi, book formats, typos, continuity, smugglers and more!
On the new edition of Heir to the Empire. We’ve been wondering if the 20th anniversary edition of Heir to the Empire would lead to Dark Force Rising and The Last Command getting a similar treatment. Shapiro said she’d like to do them, but Del Rey will “let the market guide us on that decision.” So if you want annotations for the rest of the Thrawn trilogy, buy Heir in September!
On the upcoming Wraith Squadron novel. Perhaps the biggest tidbit Shapiro dropped us was the time period of Aaron Allston’s 2012 novel. It “takes place around the end” of Fate of the Jedi! Future Rogue or Wraith novels are “Absolutely possible.”
Continue reading “Del Rey’s Shelly Shapiro chats with Expanded Universe fans”
Things go a bit random with our ninth look at Timothy Zahn’s annotations for the anniversary edition of Heir to the Empire.
“Someone asked me once what kind of modern-day car Karrde would drive. I told him that it would probably be a nice, simple, family-style sedan or minivan. A Toyota or Ford maybe … with a Lamborghini V-12 engine tucked away under the hood.”
Also on the Star Wars Books Facebook this week, a mockup of the new Heir covers.
The release of Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition was recently pushed back to September 13.
Our eighth preview of Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire annotations takes on the state of the Imperial fleet. There’s not a doubt in my mind that thisis from the first chapter.
I wanted to set up the Fleet as having suffered during the chaos and retreat of the years since Endor, slipping back from the generally efficient war machine shown in the movies to something less polished. Lieutenant Tschel was an example of the eager but inexperienced crewers that the Empire now had to whip into fighting shape, contrasting with Captain Pellaeon.
Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition will be out in hardcover June 28.
NJOE discovered a new listing for an audiobook download called Heir to the Empire: Behind the Scenes. Set for release the same day as the annotated novel, the audio listing carries the subtitle of ‘An Expanded Universe is Born’ and credits for both author Timothy Zahn and the book’s original editor, Betsy Mitchell.
I suspect this will end up containing an interview/discussion about the book and it’s long-ranging influences of the Expanded Universe. Or, if we look to the new audiobook art lurking in the Random House database – a new, unabridged recording. (The image credits Marc Thompson as the reader — according to Wookieepedia — Denis Lawson read an abridged version back in the day.) We’ll have to wait for an official announcement to know for sure!
Foreign pronunciation issues arise in our seventh preview of Tim Zahn’s Heir to the Empire annotations:
A small thing that I never would have anticipated, and never even knew before I was invited to a Star Wars convention in Munich: The “thr” combination apparently doesn’t exist in German, or so I was told. German Star Wars fans therefore have terrific difficulty pronouncing Thrawn’s name.
Pronunciation issues are fairly common in these books, even in English: Is it Mar-uh or Mare-ah? (Trust me: It’s Mar-uh.) How do you say C’baoth? Fey’lya? Damn apostrophes.
Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition will be out in hardcover June 28.