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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 5, 2024 6:48:44 GMT -5
I think different writers have done different things for sure. At it's core, it's a space opera(really Lucas wrote a western in space but it expanded out enough to be space opera).. but some other stuff drifts in now and then.
Also, I generally HATE Kevin Anderson... but honestly I haven't read a thing he's wrote since he was first on the EU, so maybe its not as bad as I remember...we'll see.
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Post by swansong on Jul 5, 2024 6:55:00 GMT -5
Kevin J Anderson is certainly not a great writer, but his comics were enjoyable. But overall, quality aside, he and Tom Veitch seem to catch that OT feel quite well. Wizards, big super weapons, adventure. Zahn e.g. reduced the force, made everything almost "realistic"... he really came from "military" scifi and brought this to Star Wars. In the PT Lucas took away the magic of the force again. I just think that by the late 90s Star Wars had lost a lot of the old "magic" itself. Isnt it like Veitch countered those arguments that bringing back the Emperor is lame and diminishes his deafeat and Vader's sacrifice by saying that this is just how it is in old space opera and thats what Star Wars sis... the bad guy always returns! Superhero comic fans can relate ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) I think he has a point here. But others want a more "realistic" universe.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 5, 2024 6:57:21 GMT -5
yeah, that's true... Zahn definitely went more for military sci fi.. but that made sense with his story. And I'm not sure clones and magic lizards that can eat the force are 'realistic'
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Post by swansong on Jul 5, 2024 7:01:05 GMT -5
yeah, that's true... Zahn definitely went more for military sci fi.. but that made sense with his story. And I'm not sure clones and magic lizards that can eat the force are 'realistic' Zahn’s strategic use of the ysalamiri was a storytelling tool to mitigate the Force's impact (by itself rather dumb, as the force is life in Star Wars, you cannot "block" it, okay, they probably block the "user's access", still its a lame cop-out), allowing him to explore the dynamics of military sci-fi in greater depth. While Veitch has the Emperor destroying whole stardestroyers on his own, lol.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 5, 2024 7:46:50 GMT -5
I never really looked at it that way, but it makes sense... but from the story standpoint and the real life reason.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,725
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Post by Confessor on Jul 5, 2024 8:48:54 GMT -5
I think different writers have done different things for sure. At its core, it's a space opera(really Lucas wrote a western in space but it expanded out enough to be space opera).. but some other stuff drifts in now and then. I agree with this -- especially the elements of a Western that often get forgotten. But it was "Space Fantasy" that was the phrase that Lucas used a lot in early Star Wars literature and promo material back in the late 70s (Marvel referred to SW as "the greatest space fantasy of them all" in the splash pages of its comic). Even the official 1977 promo poster for Star Wars by Tom Jung, featuring a very muscular Luke Skywalker and a very "damsel-in-distress" Princess Leia, makes the film look like barbarian fantasy in space. To me, "space fantasy" is still a pretty good fit for what Star Wars is. Also, I generally HATE Kevin Anderson... but honestly I haven't read a thing he's wrote since he was first on the EU, so maybe its not as bad as I remember...we'll see. I'm glad you said that. I've always found Kevin J. Anderson to be a very poor author too. I'm really not a fan of his at all.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 5, 2024 11:29:15 GMT -5
Anderson is a hack, pure and simple. His entire career has been mediocre work-for-hire writing, on other people's series (Star Wars, Dune, Superman, etc...) There are good work-for-hire authors who take what came before and add some new touches, interesting new characters, or what have you and then there are guys like Anderson, who churn out either rehashes of old plots or just dumbed down material and thinly sketched characters.
Man, I hated shelving his books, at B&N, while better authors got little space.
By the way, for military sci-fi Star Wars, you have the Mike Stackpole Rogue Squadron series. Stackpole wrote a ton of military history and reference material, before those books.
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Post by Duragizer on Jul 5, 2024 19:14:52 GMT -5
KJA is a hack, no bones about it. I read most of the Bantam-era EU novels and short story collections, so I should know. Though I do think his writing for comics is better than his prose. And he must've been more invested than usual when writing TOTJ: Redemption, because it is a truly moving story, even though it runs counter to Veitch's plans for Ulic.
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