In Defense Of The Expanded Universe
In Defense Of The Expanded Universe
Apr 09In the X-Wing novels, you find out that Wedge Antilles has two giant black circles painted on the nose of his X-Wing. They represent Death Stars.
I had a very caustic, very fannish rebuttal to Matt’s post about how he hates the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It maybe needs some fleshing out, but it’s practically ready to be published.
In retrospect, I’m quite glad that I didn’t press the button.
Not because I’m no longer a fan of the EU; in fact, I’m still way more involved with it than I should be; it’s the friend with benefits of licensed fiction. Why? Because of the moments like the Wedge one I mentioned above. The EU, for all of its structural problems (and there are several structural and tonal problems that date back to the era when Bantam held the rights to publish EU material – this is the age of Star Wars fiction that drives people away from it, with its overreliance on hokey superweapon plots and forced love interests for Luke), has some great moments, from running jokes about Ewoks to Darth Vader’s grandson standing imperiously on the deck of a Star Destroyer, clad head-to-toe in black and looking out into space while being hailed as the galaxy’s new big hero. Chewbacca’s death at the hands of a freaking moon. The entirety of Rogue Squadron resigning their commissions to pursue a private vendetta. From the outside, they’re cliche and silly, but if you are connected to the font that the fiction is springing from, they are also exquisitely resonant. Kind of like comics.
It also flirts with breaking the 4th wall in the most entertaining ways, from the Imperial head of state vowing that the Empire will always strike back to in-character discussions that seem to secretly castigate forum trolls (it’s no shock that a majority of the EU authors are also active posters on TheForce.net). In that sense, the metacommentary and the string of callbacks and payoffs create an appealing and comfortable sense of momentism – writing toward iconography. The Expanded Universe at its best is, in short, the most delicious comfort food you’ve ever had served in a fully-restored ’40s diner.
I’m thirty years old; I don’t know a world that has never had Star Wars in it, and I’ve loved it since probably when I was in the womb. In a very real sense, it is my mythology more than any Greek or Roman myth is. I’m not obsessed with it, but I know it. Some dark corner of my mind regards it as a real story, and knowing that there is a history and a future that lives in the spaces around the films perpetuates that feeling, even if some of the books (The Crystal Star, anyone?) are simply not very good.
If you like Star Wars, there’s a good deal of EU stuff that you’ll like. While there is a canon, it’s not vital to read the whole thing. Just read the stuff that’s good – good not on a ‘licensed fiction’ level, but on a ‘that was actually pretty good’ level. At least, I think they’re good. Books like:
The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn
Rogue Squadron by Michael Stackpole
Shatterpoint by Matt Stover
Dark Rendezvous by Sean Williams
I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole
Vector Prime by RA Salvatore
Traitor by Matt Stover
The Unifying Force by James Luceno
The Legacy of the Force series by Aaron Allston, Troy Denning and Karen Traviss
I found both Roque Squadron and Wraith Squadrons to be greate reads, with Wraith actually having me laugh out loud in fast food joints on lunch.
And yes – Crystal Star is one on the worst books I have ever read. And let me just throw one character out there: Callista.
(barf)
The entire Callista ‘cycle’ gives me acid reflux. You know, they could bring her back the way they brought Lumiya back in Legacy of the Force – as a disgruntled ex-lover of Luke’s out for revenge.
I need to think more on this to reply, but it’s not so much the reality of the EU as it is the IDEA of the EU that ultimately bothers me.
I’ve always felt that Trek is the franchise that best suits itself to an expanded universe–pick a ship, pick a crew, pick a planet, and you’ve always got a story.
For Star Wars, if we can say it’s some kind of modern mythology, then why do we need these books and comics and shit telling us what happened to our Zeus and our Apollo and our Athena after their time on Olympus? I’m sure there was an EU for Greeks back in the day but it’s the good shit that survived, for a reason: It resonated.
They may very well be great stories; I’ve read some of it, and enjoyed some of it. I even like the old wacky shit, primarily because as I’ve said, it’s old and WACKY, and less confined by the limits of what the SW universe has become. (That says it all–the confines of an expanded universe! crazy.)
But fundamentally, all I want Star Wars to be, all I need it to be, is the movies. More specifically, the original trilogy, and maybe Episode III, haven’t decided yet.
But then, this relates back to comics too, in that ultimately, whatever the scope or the content or the stories of the universe, we all sorta make our own version of it in our heads–the SW universe is smaller probably to me than it is to you Jeff, because I haven’t read all this shit, and some of the stuff I have read, I reject cause I thought it sucked. Just as fans will reject storylines in comics that they hate and just sorta pretend they never happened.
anyway. here’s what I want: Give me ONE SW novel to read that will blow my fucking mind. I’ve read the Zahn trilogy several times, Shatterpoint, the first Karen Traviss novel, and a few others here and there. What will sell me on the EU at this point, and tip me over the edge?
(and shit, having said all that, I do really groove on the Clone Wars cartoon show, so what the fuck am I talking about, anyway?)
Good article. People who are ambivalent that the EU exists at all should know that the editors at Lucasfilm, and many of the writers themselves, are right there with you — nobody claims (or expects) that the EU should be taken with as much seriousness as the films even though the spinoff material is technically canon. The films trump everything. There’s even a term for it: “G-canon” (for George).
Good piece.
I was heavily into the Thrawn trilogy and some other stuff when I was about 14. I think ultimately that’s the era that any sort of expanded universe — Star Wars, Star Trek, etc — really, really worked for me, because I felt like I *needed* it. I needed MORE Star Wars and MORE Star Trek and, to be honest, I don’t think I really cared too much about the quality. (I also needed it to be sanctioned somehow, which I guess is why fanfic did not quite fill this gaping need — hey, even if whatever isn’t technically canon, it is LICENSED and has a LOGO.)
Though I still think the Zahn stuff is actually good.
That’s about where my feelings on the EU end — I appreciate that it’s there, I suppose. Certainly not against it, but haven’t read much of it since that specific era.
The canonicity of Star Wars can get me going for days.
I don’t know, I prefer “All this happened except for the stuff that obviously makes no sense,” to the “this is all bullshit” approach that Trek fiction takes.
Ultimately, I just don’t like that I have to have that conversation at all–to me, if it’s myth, then it’s got to be really special and big and it’s gotta punch the world in the gut. Like the original trilogy. To me, even really great stories outside that core “mythology” just diminish the films, to a degree.
I do hear lots of good things about Rogue Squadron–where do I start there?
I’d stick with the novels over the comics for right now; the first book is Rogue Squadron, then Wedge’s Gambit, the Krytos Trap and the Bacta War. It’s a big, long arc story that leads to a big development in the Galactic Civil War and does some good character work on the background pilots in the movies: Wedge, Hobbie, Janson and Tycho. It’s really pulpy and fun and has awesome bantery dialogue.
This post warmed the expanded universe of my childhood memories.
-mE.