Okay, even though negative 1 hasn't been back to this thread that I've seen, I'm going to start going through the exhaustive list he gathered for me. But he did gather so much that I'm not even going to attempt to work on everything at once. In fact, I think I'm just going to do one at a time because I know I have a lot to say about the first one. So, just to be sure, I'm not ignoring all the work you did. I'm just going to take it slow.
I'm going to start with Splinter of the Mind's Eye, seeing as how you listed it first, it's technically the first EU novel, and I just read it, so it's fresh in my mind.
First of all, I just want to say that, as a blanket statement, a lot of the stuff from this novel, in my opinion, gets something of a reprieve because it was written before The Force was really fully established, even in terms of just the original trilogy. In fact, there were some things there that I was quite surprised to see and ended up being quite close to what would be in the sequels. For example, Force-users in this book do a lot of object manipulations, ie, moving objects with The Force, a power that wasn't established in the movies until The Empire Strikes Back. It makes me wonder how closely Alan Dean Foster worked with Lucas to write this book, if at all. And also, it makes me wonder if object movement was something that Lucas had come up with and decided to let Foster use in his novel or something that Lucas borrowed from Foster for The Empire Strikes Back. So, as I said, since Foster was probably only working under the first movie and whatever information Lucas might have imparted (which was obviously before Lucas invented many pivotal additions to the saga, including elements of The Force), he probably had to make a lot of assumptions about The Force and what it could do, but, in my opinion, not as many as you might think.
First of all, as I'm sure you probably know, the Kaiburr crystal was a Lucas idea. It was the Macguffin in one of the drafts of the first movie, where Luke Starkiller had to return the Kaiburr crystal to his legendary father, The Starkiller. He even had the crystal on board his snub fighter when Darth Vader was chasing him down at the end, and it was the Kaiburr crystal that Vader could sense emanating from it. In fact, the leagues of the Sith could sense a disturbance in the Force emanating from the crystal from the other side of the galaxy. And it pretty consisted of the basis of what you see in Splinter. It's a crystal that magnifies the power of the Force in whoever uses it. Granted, you asked how the crystal fits in with the way The Force is portrayed in the movies. Since this plot point never made it to the movie, I guess you could argue that it might not have any place at all. But since Lucas saw fit to use it in what might have been the theatrical sequel to Star Wars, it indicates that it was probably still connected to Lucas's concept of The Force circa 1977 which means that the original movie operates in a universe where a Kaiburr crystal is a legitimate companion to The Force.
As for its other powers, such as healing, well, like I said, Foster probably had to come up with Force powers on his own. And I suppose you could say it doesn't necessarily contradict anything we later see from The Force if such a power is only capable through the crystal. And if other sources do have Force-users portraying healing abilities... well, it makes even more sense that the Kaiburr crystal would be able to.
As for the rest of that stuff you quoted in the article... well, I've touched upon it already. I still think it's silly, especially the assertion that Vader's intent was to capture Luke and Leia alive. I never got the impression that he ever cared about bringing them in alive, even when he was miles away from the crystal. It's just a pretty sloppy rationalization and makes quite a few assumptions.
But I actually have my own observation about what I consider to be a true anomaly in the concept of The Force as expressed in Splinter: Size.
Towards the end of the book, Vader seems to prove to Luke that he is more adept at using the Force than Luke is by pointing out that the rock he levitated was much bigger than the rock Luke was able to levitate. Of course, this completely flies in the face of Yoda's infamous, "Size matters not," monologue in The Empire Strikes Back.
And so, after just criticizing continuity-saving rationalizations... I'm gonna attempt to make up my own, just for fun. While Yoda says that size doesn't matter, he immediately adds that it only makes a difference in one's mind. And, despite Yoda's insistence in the theory that size doesn't matter, in practice it clearly does to Luke, as he is able to levitate stones but simply cannot raise his X-Wing, a much heavier object, out of the swamp. So to one who is not as in tune with the Force or does not possess as much faith, size certainly is an obstacle.
Anyway, that's all fine and dandy for Luke, but what about Vader, who should be competent enough to know better? Well, I have three possible rationalizations for this. I know, right? The first is that Vader is simply pointing out what I said in the previous paragraph, just in a shorthand. He knows that his faith in The Force is stronger than Luke's, therefore a larger object is possible for him to lift, while it isn't for Luke.
The second and third rationalization depend on which version of Vader you're working with. If you go with the version of Vader that this book was originally working with (ie. when Vader and Father Skywalker were two separate characters), it might be that Darth Vader abandoned his Jedi training before he was taught this tenet. While not explicitly stated in the movie (although hinted at in the previous Kaiburr crystal draft), Vader left Obi-Wan before he mastered the Jedi Arts. And then we can just assume that the whole size issue is not touched upon by Sith.
Finally, if you go with the Father Vader version of the character... well, we'll just have to accept that Anakin must have been sick the day Obi-Wan was going to explain this, or that it was part of that basic Force education package that Anakin missed because he didn't train with Yoda as a... *shudders* Youngling. Oh, yeah, and we also have to accept with this theory that the Sith don't care about size.
Well, I think that just about covers Splinter. I'll try to address the others later.
^_^