Lower Decks

In the very beginning, of course, there was only ‘Star Wars,’ which probably few identified as ‘A New Hope.’ Maybe some thought of it as Episode IV. Eventually, two more films, a handful of books, some cartoons, two Ewoks movies (no, seriously), comic books. But, believe it or not, the Jedi and Darth Vader, the Empire and the Republic were not always as prolific as they are today, where you can read a new comic, a new book, a new TV show just about every week and almost never think about the six films that rest at the heart of the world George Lucas created. You can probably thank Timothy Zahn for that.

My family, as a whole, as a rule, was obsessed with Star Wars. By fifth grade, I was already thoroughly familiar with each of the original three films, had set about adapting them in every way I could think to, adorned notebooks in landscapes filled with lightsaber duels, wrote about it for school. We wanted to write the local newspaper question column about whether or not Lucas would ever make another one. In the early 90s, it seemed a remote possibility. Then, of course, Timothy Zahn came out with ‘Heir to the Empire.’ He imagined what might have happened to Luke Skywalker just a few years after ‘Return of the Jedi,’ what shape the remnants of the Empire might be in, who else might be lurking about. His wasn’t the first book, but he seemed to have gotten some official permission, like his story was establishing something important, the first time in ten years that Star Wars was going to have something close to canonical happen (with all apologies to Dark Horse, because I’m sure if I’d been reading their comics, I’d have different things to write about here, because I know they were doing important things of their own at the time).

Anyway, Luke was struggling to find the next step, but he wasn’t going to have to wait much longer. Zahn introduces the reader to Grand Admiral Thrawn, a blue-skinned alien suddenly in the position of commander to the Imperial fleet. He lets us meet a forgotten Jedi master (his past entangled in the mess of the Clone Wars, before anyone knew what the Clone Wars were, and suspected George Lucas would never tell us, so forgive Zahn his assumptions in this regard), Talon Karde (a cross between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt), Mara Jade. Of all the characters Zahn creates, Mara Jade is probably the most important. Eventually, we learn that she’s someone who was just at the edges of the adventures we know so well. Eventually, of course, she becomes Luke’s love interest, the second most important development in these post-film adventures (the first being the marriage of Han and Leia, and the children who make up a new generation of Jedi).

After Zahn completed his original trilogy, Kevin J. Anderson stepped in and wrote one of his own, and in the process solidified this new era of books as a permanent one. In the past, if anyone had the chance to write more than one story, it was a series of adventures for Han Solo, or his close counterpart Lando Calrissian. Plenty more books would follow. Perhaps the crowning achievement of this new movement was ‘Shadows of the Empire,’ which was a book, a comic book, and even a soundtrack. Action figures derived from it were the first to depict characters never officially seen on screen. When Lucas finally set about the second trilogy, this by no means diminished the phenomenon. If anything, it grew stronger.

For a while, my brothers followed the books pretty closely. Where I stopped at Zahn and Anderson, they enthusiastically chased ‘The Courtship of Princess Leia,’ the ‘Tales from…’ anthologies, whatever was released. They could tell you about the early Dark Horse comics, too. My sister, maybe they cared a little, too, but not as much. As for me, I read through Zahn and Anderson, yes, but I think I quickly realized this sort of Star Wars devotion wasn’t for me. (This was the same period where I read just about every Star Trek book in sight, an old habit that would die more begrudgingly.) The more obsessed everyone got about writing their piece of Star Wars, the more they drifted from what seemed to me the slightest bit relevant.

I blame and don’t blame, at the same time, Zahn for this. If he hadn’t gotten the ball rolling, this would probably have never happened. Then again, he set the bar pretty high. I wouldn’t say, as memorable as the trilogy he wrote was, that I would begin to rate his work to the level of the films, but they show more genuine ambition and narrative justification than the endless series of invasions and mindless conflicts that have followed. I’m a fan of both film trilogies, mind you, and as heinous an admission as that may be to some (because as highly regarded the original one is, the second one solicits an equal amount of apathy, or downright disdain), it means I view Star Wars as not just a random series of conflicts, a triumph of good over evil, but as a single story told over six films, the redemption of Anakin Skywalker set against the backdrop of Jedi and Sith, Republic and Empire dispute. There’s a reason why both trilogies end up sharing a number of characters, and it’s not just about familiarity, but to contrast events and set context. By the time ‘Return of the Jedi’ was released, it should already have been clear that Vader was no longer just a boogeyman or neglectful father.

But if I were to read some of those Star Wars books again, I would read Zahn’s, and not just his original trilogy, but the later ones as well. He kept on writing about Thrawn, and then he just plain on kept writing, not a lot, but just enough to further establish himself as the most important of this version of Star Wars creators. I work at a bookstore, and while there aren’t many Star Trek books still on shelves that I would have read, there’s a large section for Star Wars, unwieldy enough that I can’t get everything in perfect order without knowing more about them, but easy enough to group in logical runs new and old readers will appreciate. Not everyone is so careful about this, so I often find myself grouping them back together, and I always start with Zahn, first all of or as many of the original trilogy as possible, then the rest of them.

It does seem weird, thinking back now that there was a time where new screen Star Wars was hard to come by. Whereas the current renaissance of Star Trek fiction began during a period of extreme abundance of such material, comics and books were seen by many Star Wars fans as the only source for new stories, and it was an incredible blessing when they started pouring in. Like the readers who flocked to the Star Trek books, those fans probably became attached to this work, to the point where they didn’t need the original movies anymore. They were just a starting point, and this is perfectly natural. After a while, no one needed to know about the actual Trojan War to enjoy ‘The Iliad,’ which doesn’t tell about the origins of the conflict, much less its resolution, just that the great warrior Achilles, petulant and mighty, defined it whether he was on or off the field. There were other stories that filled in the gaps. The funny thing is, ‘The Iliad’ kept the entire story alive, kept it relevant (that and its companion piece, ‘The Odyssey’), so that today you can hardly think about the Trojan War without ‘The Iliad,’ or vice versa. Imagine what someone who stepped out of the 1940s would think of to know that Superman is still around, that the animated features and serials, much less comic books and cartoon strips, he knows were succeeded by a TV show, three films, more shows, another movie, and that the comics themselves continue to thrive!

You might argue that Star Wars ought to be different, that like Sherlock Holmes, if one advances from the theory that people still read ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ (not the earliest but surely the most-remembered of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales), despite a history that has advanced quite a bit in film and print since then (and is about to expand into an entirely new movie interpretation). For some fans, the films might as well by the Frank Baum version of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ since the Judy Garland film is inarguably more popular at this point. Star Wars, either trilogy, both, consistently conquered the box office. No matter how many fans now prefer to read than watch, can their numbers, their opinions, really compare? Well, perhaps. As outrageous as that may seem, their numbers swelled the opinions, if not the success, of the new films, which is evident from the lack of decline in the fiction output over the past ten years. Maybe a lot of kids love the new movies (why else, again, is Star Wars thriving on TV?), but they’re too young to sustain the books. The franchise took on a life of its own, and no actors were required.

Zahn’s importance, again, can not be stressed enough. He proved it was possible to sustain interest in a world with new characters, new situations, ones that had nothing to do with Anakin Skywalker. The basic tenets, Jedi knights and struggling republics, are continually evident, and to be a fan means you find an interest in all of this. A few years ago, the books killed off Chewie, and I thought this would be something that might rouse the old curiosity in my brother, but he had, finally, lost his interest. The new films, maybe, or he just got worn out from his earlier experiences. It was something we never really talked about. Who knows what might have happened if Lucas himself had told his new stories earlier, or if the print adventures had taken a different, less demanding approach.

To be a Star Wars fan today is different than it was fifteen years ago. It means a lot of different things, but it’s a lot different now because it’s clear that Lucas has completed his story (he insists he has no interest in telling a third trilogy set after the original one), and that many others have taken the charge on for themselves. There are no hungry fans left, I think, no one wondering where the story goes from here. Unlike Star Trek fans, who have periodically wondered if their franchise was dead because often they had screen material that seemed to last forever and then didn’t, and their own imaginations to fill in the details, Star Wars fans can now confidently turn to books and comics not just as replacement but as the main nourishment (it’s not so curious that the Star Trek books attempted to replicate this experience). What started out almost as desperation has turned out to be almost an assurance that no one else will make another actual Star Wars film, ironically. Those who will always cherish what George Lucas did can consider his movies timeless, and in the meantime have the work of Timothy Zahn and others, too, as a means to keep it alive, in whatever form it takes, choose between the two, or find some way to have both, no matter how they might contradict each other.

That’s the art of modern storytelling for you, pretty much same as it ever was.