Zahn's genius was also just good timing. He created the EU/continuity that now has locked in all authors and creatively stifled them. Creativity needs freedom and for me that's one reason why most of the written EU is poor (very heavy on continuity) and one reason why the Clone War show is so good (continuity with EU is basically ignored). The freedom Zahn had let him tell a story simply because it was a good story, instead of the now backwards way in which things have to be fit together.

Even though Star Wars is a really rich universe of possibilities, it really isn't big enough to support the amount of material created around it if we are going to at least pretend it's all consistent and continuous. No storyline or franchise is that big. After 200 books, 200 games and 200 different comic lines each with dozens of issues, it's so congested that it all implodes. That's the way it seems to me at least.