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anyone reading the eu novel death star?

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it reads like a bunch of strung together vignettes with a larger story thread.

despite a couple interesting scenes like daala and tarkin it is rather a sucky novel.

the most interesting thing is the maw installation and the prototype death star are mentioned, meaning kevin j anderson's stories were not outright rejected even being retrofitted to fit the prequels, LOL. down to a new hope when the final death star I blows sky high.

the most irritating thing is the praxis ring from star trek VI that lucas saw to put in the special edition is mentioned, wow that was gay and lame all at once.

Of course it is called the plasma ring, LOL.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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EU needs to DIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!
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I'm following the discussion on stardestroyer.net. It sounds like an attempt to weave together disparate and sometimes contradictory versions of the same story, i.e. the mostly-coherent EU version of the Death Star history that has been developing for the past couple of decades and the giant monkey wrench that the prequels threw into the works. Since I'm not interested in retrofitting the EU with the prequels, I don't think I'll read the book.

On the plus side, they're correcting some of the mistakes that were made earlier regarding the Death Star's size and the gun complement of an ImpStar. These aren't revelations (see, for instance, Curtis Saxton's site which has been up forever) but it's still nice to see them getting wider circulation.

Also, it sounds like the novel doesn't really have a plot, like it's just a pop history of the Death Star with some cutout characters. Does that sound right? I would love to read a Jedi-free military sci-fi book set in the Star Wars universe, I'm just not sure Death Star is it.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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Originally posted by: Scruffy
On the plus side, they're correcting some of the mistakes that were made earlier regarding the Death Star's size and the gun complement of an ImpStar. These aren't revelations (see, for instance, Curtis Saxton's site which has been up forever) but it's still nice to see them getting wider circulation.


That's a plus? That's everything that's wrong with the EU. They cater way to much to the tech heads who are worried about whether or not the destroyed death star over Endor would've caused an ecological disaster. That's something the EU needs a lot less of. Shadows of the Empire was a prime example of that crap. It's not the laser they see go by when they're being shot at in an X-Wing, it's the finding beam (which is immediately followed by the invisible laser). Finding beam? Geez. Can't we just accept that it's a space opera and put the hard science aside? Why is it such a big deal if the Death Star's size isn't correct or is different depending on the source? Why does any of that matter?

IMO, that is one of the things that has completely destroyed the EU. They're no longer telling good stories. Now they're just injecting hard science in places where it shouldn't be.

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You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Thank you for your opinion. Here is mine.

Consistency adds verisimilitude. No consistency, no verisimilitude, and the whole thing becomes an exercise in surreality. Some people bitch about George Lucas changing things between the OT and the SE, or the OT and the PT. Other people bitch about EU writers changing things from the movies. I liked the movies, so I don't like it when people ignore them and make things up.

Furthermore, the Star Wars universe is a setting that can support many genres of storytelling. Film purists sometimes pick up an EU book, see that it's not a good-vs.-evil epic with a smattering of Eastern philosophy, and give up on the whole thing. And that is their right. (Heck, I pretty much gave up on it when I saw they were going back to the epic style.) Some of us delight in writers that tell new stories, in new modes, using familiar elements. You want military specops? Comedy? High-level political and martial strategy? Romance? Fantastic alien cultures and life forms? Epic science fiction history? Highly detailed references to a created world? Metafictional stories about the power of Star Wars itself to inspire people? All of these and more exist in Star Wars.

One of the reasons Star Wars is so compelling is that the films continually hint at the larger universe. That adds verisimilitude. (There's that word again.) The EU has given talented writers, et alia, many thousands of pages to explore the rest of the universe and tell stories about it. There's nothing wrong with that. It gave us a fleshed-out Wes Janson. That alone makes the entire enterprise worthwhile.

I haven't read Shadows of the Empire in about a decade, but I don't remember any hard science in it. Not as much as, say, a Michael Crichton novel. Or even that Hardy Boys/Tom Swift crossover where they travel back in time in a truck. That was an awesome story, and I wish I still had my copy.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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Scruffy, I get what you are saying, but I've got to agree with lordjedi. And his complaint isn't solely about the hard science in Shadows of the Empire. It's how stupid facts are introduced to the SW world.

I know the one that bugs me is how (I forget the name of the book now) we find out from EU that Sifo-Dyas was indeed the person who made the order for the clones, and Dooku found out about this and killed him off afterwards. That's just really fucking stupid because why would a Jedi go off on his own to create an army, especially after Mace's "We're not soldiers" line, and where did he get the money?

Not to mention the rather outstanding coincidence of Sifo doing this and Dooku finding out. It would have made much more sense for Dooku to kill Sifo and impersonate him to the cloners, but nooooooooo, someone had to throw in a ridiculous twist.

I've read some good EU that can cast a unique light on the events of the films, and a lot of bad EU that just really makes a mess of things. Rebuilding the Falcon without Han's approval, are you kidding me?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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The Sifo-Dyas issue is the EU writers having to clean up what George messed up. IIRC, the character was originally named Sido-Dyas, and would have been Darth Sidious posing as a Jedi Council Member to order the army. But this might have too obvious to the Jedi or the audience, so George made some changes and Sido was changed to Sifo. Jango was then introduced into the mix as being recruited by Tyrannus on the moons of Bogden to account for the creation of the clones and to legitimize the newly created character of Sifo-Dyas, who was now a legitimate Jedi who still might have ordered the clones and [insert murky plot here].

This created the biggest plot-hole of episodes 2 &3. By the middle of AOTC, Obi-wan Kenobi knew that Jango Fett was affilliated with both the cloners of Kamino as well as the makers of the droid armies of Geonosis. And that doesn't sound suspicious to anyone?
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is it just me or did george lucas leave plot holes so big between the original trilogy and the prequels big enough to float a death star through, LOL. seriously he even created new incontinuities that were not there before.

he really must have been thinking harrison's line from raiders while he was writing the whole saga " i don't know i making this all up as i go".

I don't want to harp on the issue but the things George forgot about star wars is pathetic. in an interview he could not even quote the enchange between vader and kenobi from star wars 77, he wrote the damn thing and he forgot.

Lazy and moronic maybe he should have re-watched the oot and read the scripts again and consulted his star wars continuity buffs he hired at lucasfilm. he pays them to keep continuity in the eu but don't bother with those prequel movies. wow! the sheer audacity of his stupidity.

i mean how pathetic is it that they can somehow bring the star wars holiday special, the ewok films and cartoons and droids cartoon, the marvel comics, the videogames, the dark horse comics and del rey and bantam book lines into one eu continuity but lucas cannot bring the prequels in line with the oot.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Originally posted by: Sluggo
The Sifo-Dyas issue is the EU writers having to clean up what George messed up. IIRC, the character was originally named Sido-Dyas, and would have been Darth Sidious posing as a Jedi Council Member to order the army. But this might have too obvious to the Jedi or the audience, so George made some changes and Sido was changed to Sifo. Jango was then introduced into the mix as being recruited by Tyrannus on the moons of Bogden to account for the creation of the clones and to legitimize the newly created character of Sifo-Dyas, who was now a legitimate Jedi who still might have ordered the clones and [insert murky plot here].

This created the biggest plot-hole of episodes 2 &3. By the middle of AOTC, Obi-wan Kenobi knew that Jango Fett was affilliated with both the cloners of Kamino as well as the makers of the droid armies of Geonosis. And that doesn't sound suspicious to anyone?

Of course it sounds suspicious, but does that mean we need some stupid convoluted story to explain it? Can't we just leave it a little ambiguous? It's as bad as explaining that a lightsaber can cut through a magnetically shielded door. It didn't need to be done. If George can't be bothered to write a cohesive story than the EU authors shouldn't bother trying to weld these things together.

Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
he really must have been thinking harrison's line from raiders while he was writing the whole saga " i don't know i making this all up as i go".


I believe that was from The Last Crusade, not Raiders.
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You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Nope, Raiders. After escaping the well of souls and regrouping with Sallah.





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Originally posted by: Johnny Ringo
Nope, Raiders. After escaping the well of souls and regrouping with Sallah.


I stand corrected. I guess I need to watch those more often
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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So does Lucas.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Just finished Death Star (I know--a little late).

I think that the authors have been really influenced by the great Paul Dini, with whom they both worked on the classic Batman: The Animated Series. If you read Dini's writing--especially in DC Comics' Countdown, but also elsewhere--he skips around a lot and changes settings, character, and even pacing (but does it better than the authors do here). I think there are too many characters, too many subplots, and it had a predictable ending. I would have much rather spent more time during the construction and testing of the Death Star than finishing it off with the scenes we all know from the first movie. I'm also fairly certain that the timeline is completely incompatible with what we see in the end of Episode III and the beginning of Episode IV, but of course that's because the timeline within the movies is similarly incoherent.

They incorporate some Special Edition changes--the blast ring coming out when the Death Star and planets blow up--but they also make a much-needed de-SEing: When Han charges into the battalion of storm troopers, there are only six (I think) rather than the hundreds that appear in the SE.

I think it's better than the last few I've read--even better than Allegiance--and certainly better than the Legacy series, which I've never cared for. But it still pales compared to the original Zahn trilogy and the best of the comics EU work.
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Sifo-Dyas had dreams of staging the largest musical ever performed on a Corsucant stage. Being in charge of Bingo Night at the Jedi Temple, it was easy for him to skim off the weekly take to secretly fund his dream.
Unfortunately, a defective translator droid on Kamino mangled "massive chrous line" into "massive clone army", and the rest is history!
originaltrilogy.com Moderator

Where were you in '77?

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Originally posted by: SilverWook
Sifo-Dyas had dreams of staging the largest musical ever performed on a Corsucant stage. Being in charge of Bingo Night at the Jedi Temple, it was easy for him to skim off the weekly take to secretly fund his dream.
Unfortunately, a defective translator droid on Kamino mangled "massive chrous line" into "massive clone army", and the rest is history!


Sadly, this is as believable as what Lucas tells us.