# Star Wars EU

One of the big things Disney pushed in the lead up to this year's Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you) was an event in Fortnite where Darth Jar Jar Binks made (what I assume to be) his debut. That's a Sith Lord version of Jar Jar Binks, I guess. They've also recently released season 2 of Andor, which I'm told on good authority is quite good, and I think there's a new video game too. 

Meanwhile, I decided to dip back into the Extended Universe - the Star Wars tie-in books that added two decades of plot after Return of the Jedi. I read a bunch of them years ago.

Some of these books are good, some are less good. Many are really weird. I find them quite endearing. Although they are official tie-ins to a multibillion dollar franchise, they feel like the homespun work of a handful of creators. I assume they had some coordination and ideas were approved and rejected, but a lot of odd stuff made it to the page.

In the current era especially, I find there to be a real charm to the small team feel of these books. It seems a million miles from the way Disney are managing Star Wars.

I'll give a summary of the one I just finished - which was good. It's called The Crystal Star and was written by Vonda McIntyre. She won the Hugo and Nebula awards for Dreamsnake in the late 70s.

This is set a few years after Return of the Jedi. Leia and Han have three children under five years of age. While Leia is on a diplomatic mission, the children are kidnapped by a former Imperial official who is planning to ressurect the old regime. His plan is one of the weird things in the book: he wants to sacrifice the most Force-sensitive child, Anakin, to a creature called Waru. In exchange, Waru might give the Imperial guy greater Force powers. Waru is a kind of faith healer who is made of dripping, congealing red goo, encased in moving gold plate armour. He is a pile of goo. People queue up and offer their ill family members to be healed by Waru. Sometimes he heals them, sometimes he envelopes the sick person in liquid gold, which then solidifies and crushes them while Waru moans.

Anyway, Waru is from another universe, that somehow was transported to the familiar galaxy far, far away by a black hole. He thinks he can get back to his universe by squeezing the life out of Anakin.

That's all pretty weird. Here are some other weird (and creative) things:

- A society where ritual, performance kidnappings are part of regular diplomacy.

- A species where lots of adults are accompanied by something like dogs. Later it is revealed that dogs are the larval phase of the species, so they are the children of the adults. 

- A fleet of slower-than-light Imperial transport ships carrying slaves in cryogenic sleep, destined for settling harsh worlds. 

It's a weird book! Incidentally, it actually makes some precocious child characters fun and believable, which is rarely successful in this kind of story. 

I read it, in an odd state of wondering how much of this stuff is in keeping with the tone and content of the original Star Wars trilogy. It was written before the prequels were made, which (although they have their good points) I believe went a long way to narrow the mythos of Star Wars. The Extended Universe (EU) made up a bunch of weird stuff, and is flawed in a lot of ways, but it just kind of powered along adding things, still leaving gaps and mystery, rather than peppering a narrow timeline with more prequels and interquels and further cementing some very restricted ideas.

I'm on holiday anyway, and I've left this old EU paperback on a book shelf in the hotel. Maybe it'll get picked up by someone and they'll get a kick out of it.
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