I just started re-reading the Thrawn trilogy. A close friend of mine bought me nice hardcover first printing editions of them, which are beautiful. But my god...Zahn wrote these so well. They really are terrific reads. I'm about halfway through Heir to the Empire and loving it. I never liked EU, but when it comes to Zahn...he's not perfect, but I think he gets it. Even when I liked other EU novels--even when Alan Dean Foster was writing them, and he's one of my favourite sci-fi writers--no one wrote Star Wars quite like Zahn. Is there any reason why he couldn't script Episode VII? He would hit it out of the park.