The Del-Ray Discussion

CANON
According to Ali:

The universe revised and edited as necessary for sanity.

For anyone who's been living under a rock for the last year or so, LFL has sold the novelization rights (legal term questionable there) to Del-Ray. What this means is that a)Bantam Publishing is out, b)no more Zahn, Allston, or Stackpole, and c) a twenty-book story arc.

First of all, Bantam had it's issues. "The Crystal Star".... "The Jedi Academy Series"... "Darksaber"... (well, in short, mostly anything involving KJA), but they've been shaping up lately. They start the X-Wing series with Stackpole, hand it off to the extremely capable Allston, bring Zahn back out of the Unknown Regions of Authordom, and generally begin to get their act together. Then Del-Ray got the rights.

1. They kill of Chewie. Ok, that's fine. It hurts like hell, but I can accept that his death was both well done and opened a wealth of possibilities for the oh-so-boring main characters.

2. They let Bob Salvatore write Vector Prime. I love his work... Drizzt D'Urden is one of my favorite characters, ever. And, the people he kills off tend to stay dead, much to my delight/dismay. However, I have a couple of beefs with his SW offering.... does it seem to anyone else like the Vong are just a much improved version of the Ssi-Ruuk from Truce at Bakura ? Evil invading aliens from outside known space, seeking to colonize the established areas, with interesting views on sapient rights? (replace the man/machine meld with the vong/skipper meld... see what i mean?). Also, what's up with dovin basals? I accept that SW scientists have a much more expanded control of gravity, but these people are still afraid of the Maw (an area of super-concentrated black holes), and even with a stretch of the imagination I have trouble accepting that you can pop a black hole open like a ziploc baggie, suck in some energy, and not have adverse affects on things like fighters and other ships getting sucked in. Not only that, but in astronomy I thought I heard that BH's get stronger, not weaker, the smaller they are. For lack of a better excuse, I'll blame it on Bob's familiarity with writing for a genre that isn't as marginally scientific as ours is.

3. They bring Stackpole in to write the next two books. Good decision. Instant readership, guaranteed best-seller list...

4. They put KJA on the advisory board for future work. OH, THE HUMANITY!!! WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!

5. They DON'T invite Allston or Zahn to play, or Stackpole anymore, for that matter.... now, I'm all for finding new authors, but if they're going to keep KJA, who practically RUINED the universe before, why ignore the ones who revitalized it, and brought sooo many new aspects (read: the rogues and the wraiths) to play instead of THE BIG THREE (read: puke, leia, and han)?

It's okay, though. What I'm hoping will happen is that they won't be able to sustain the Jedi emphasis they've begun with (like I said, KJA), and will FALL FLAT ON THEIR FACES!

Why my bitterness? At DragonCon, after being drilled on the cameo by Asyr Sei'lar in Onslaught, Stackpole said that Del-Ray doesn't really have any interest in bringing back the Bantam characters. I intensely dislike such attitudes. One of my favorite aspects of alternative universes is that they are self-contained. You have a specific set of people to work with, for better or for worse. This is especially true of Star Wars, where the main characters (ahem... MY main characters, not necessarily just the Big Three) are inherently tied to the power structures of their society. Hell, they FOUNDED the power structures of their society. And, if Del-Ray can't find it in themselves to accept that fundamental truth, then they deserve to suffer.