To whom it may concern,

In this letter I speak only for myself, but after monitoring certain fan communities and speaking to several others who, like me, are dedicated fans of the Star Wars franchise and have been so for many years, I believe my opinions are not too far removed from the vast majority of fans that may be out there.

The time has come to put an end to the Star Wars Expanded Universe, or at least the parts of it that continue the life stories of the core characters - namely, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo - that were introduced in the first produced film in 1977.  (That the expression “the first Star Wars movie” no longer applies to a specific film but could rather refer to either of two separate movies is itself a bone of contention, but is beyond the scope of my current comments.)

This week marks the official release of Invincible, the ninth and final novel in the so-called Legacy of the Force series.  These books detail events that take place approximately ten years after the last major Expanded Universe (hereinafter referred to as “EU”) storyline, the controversial New Jedi Order books, or for a more universal frame of reference, forty years after the Battle of Yavin (as depicted in A New Hope, the original Star Wars film).

In recent years, especially in the current storyline, the Star Wars universe has become very much a darker, more opressingly downbeat place.  This arguably started with Vector Prime in 1999, the beginning of the New Jedi Order series, and its now-infamous major plot development - the death of Chewbacca, a beloved character who goes all the way back to that first film.  Now, I don’t dispute the dramatic necessity of killing off Chewie, as it ended up being a catalyst for many interesting twists and turns of the overall NJO storyline, plus it served the purpose of establishing that, indeed, Big Things can, will, and probably should happen in the novels… and that not even the core characters were necessarily “safe” anymore.

Unfortunately, Chewie’s death might have also tipped the scales of balance in the EU entirely in a direction not even the Man in Plaid himself could have foreseen.

The Legacy of the Force series has been about nothing so much as the fall from grace of Jacen Solo (the progeny of Han and Leia), as he descends from Jedi Knight to Sith Lord in the manner of his maternal grandfather, Anakin Skywalker née Darth Vader.  And I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn to say that Invincible is built around the final duel to the death between Jacen, now going by the nom de guerre of Darth Caedus, and his twin sister Jaina - even if the blurb on the dust jacket didn’t strongly imply that, and even if the cover art didn’t depict Jaina and Caedus crossing lightsabers, the entire plot of LotF has been building to this inevitable confrontation as surely as Marvel Comics’ Civil War built to Iron Man and Captain America brawling it out in the streets over who had the right idea about registration… but that’s another peeve.

Now, friends, I am not naïve, and am long past the point in believing in “happily ever after.”  But even before the NJO, the EU had firmly established that things weren’t all peaches and cream in the “galaxy far, far away” after the Death Star Mk2 did its impression of the 2007 New York Mets in Return of the Jedi.  There was still the Imperial Remnant to be dealt with, internal strife and political in-fighting among the newly-rechristened New Republic, rogue elements (including Dark Jedi) in all corners of known space, and all manner of things of this nature.  And unlike what would happen in more recent years, Star Wars itself did not have to take a turn toward the “dark side” in order to achieve all this.

And the results made for some of the best Star Wars fiction on record.  I stand firm in my belief that Timothy Zahn’s original “Thrawn Trilogy,” the three books that essentially “launched” the EU back in the early ’90s - Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command - are at the very top of the heap when it comes to Star Wars prose.  Not only did they indeed expand the scale and scope of George Lucas’s space-opera playground, but they stayed true to the spirit of the original films, to the point that I could hear a John Williams score in my head while I read, and when the characters spoke, they did so in the voices I knew so well from my childhood.  It rang true to the spirit, the “living Force” if you will, of the movies.  (And yes, Thrawn’s end can be found in the dictionary under anticlimax, but it’s not nearly egregious enough to ruin the trilogy.  Besides, if you stop to think about it, it’s the only way he could have died, the only thing he could not have predicted, so in that regard it makes perfect sense.)

Where is that spirit today?  The New Jedi Order went a long way toward making Star Wars a darker, more depressing place overall.  Part of that, it must be said, has to do with the editorial decision to whack everyone’s favorite Wookiee in the first book of the cycle; it’s even spelled out in Vector Prime’s text, that when Chewie died, so did the innocence, in a way, of these characters who’ve been part of our lives for so long.  It reminded them, and us, that they weren’t invincible after all, that they’d been surviving for so long on good fortune, a little bit of skill (either with the Force or with a blaster), and of course the obligations of writers to ensure they all lived to fight another day.

Now, there is nothing wrong with removing that sense of immortality from your main characters… if this were almost any other franchise.  But Star Wars, no matter what some writers and corners of fandom might believe, is not and was never intended to be “hard SF” on the order of, say, the writings of David Weber or Elizabeth Moon.  Star Wars, from the start, was George Lucas’s homage to Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and the cheesy Republic “cliffhanger” serials of the ’30s and ’40s (a genre more thoroughly and classically explored in the Indiana Jones series), with a healthy dose of Joseph Campbell-inspired studies in the Hero’s Journey thrown in for good measure.  In short, these characters have taken on a life of their own; they are, if you like, a sort of “modern-day mythology” for a time and a civilization that has no real mythology to call its own.

Does anyone really care about what happened to Robin Hood after he reclaimed his birthright?  Of course not; his story is over, his legend told.  There are always going to be those who wonder about what life was like in England after he took back the throne from John.  The Deconstructionist school of thought, of course, might suggest that, once given the power to rule over an entire land, Robin’s idealistic altruism might, in all likelihood, evaporate over time, eventually becoming, at best, a benevolent tyrant like many before him, and many since.  This is all well and good, but my point is we don’t need to know this; it would only detract from the legend and its importance to our collective lore.

By this definition, the authors of recent Star Wars novels can be said to have been Deconstructionist in nature.  They continue on, now decades past when Luke et al were last seen “in the flesh” in Return of the Jedi (which this month, incidentally, marks its twenty-fifth anniversary), and have not flinched in depicting the consequences of all their actions during the Galactic Civil War.  Luke did, in fact, go on to found a new Jedi Order… but has had only limited success in restoring the Jedi to their former station, and in fact has seen the Jedi branded as outlaws all over again, more than once in fact, due to various factors both in and out of his control.  The New Republic, founded after the defeat of the Emperor at the Battle of Endor, was always in danger of tearing itself apart from within, and eventually proved no match for the invading Yuuzhan Vong.  The Galactic Alliance that was formed after the Vong’s surrender soon became an even worse dictatorship than the Empire had been.  And Han and Leia, after finally admitting their feelings for one another, enjoyed at least 30 years of marriage… but two of their three children are now dead, one of whom became the embodiment of evil before dying, and their remaining daughter is the one responsible for killing her twin brother.  (Again, that’s a spoiler for Invincible, but I honestly cannot forsee anyone who follows the EU books being totally surprised by this outcome.)

Knowing all of this lies down the road for our heroes, it sure robs that final victory celebration in Return of the Jedi of a lot of its poignancy, doesn’t it?

Actually, this is another point.  That scene took place a good 35-40 years before the events of the Legacy of the Force novels.  You have to assume that Luke, who was about 17-18 when first seen in A New Hope, is in his early twenties when last seen in person surrounded by friends and dancing Ewoks.  That would put Luke easily in his sixties by the time of these books, and by extension Leia as well (they are twins, after all).  Han, several years older than Luke, would have to be pushing 70 with a Bantha by now, minimum.  Now, you can say what you want to about how a “year” might mean something different in the Star Wars universe than it does to us, or that medical technology (if not the Force itself) might allow a human in that universe to live a much longer life than we experience, probably well past their hundredth birthday on average, war permitting.  Even making those allowances… you can’t keep them alive forever, especially now that it’s been firmly established that time is marching on in the EU and is kicking our childhood heroes’ collective tuckuses.

Wisely, the books have moved the legacy characters, by and large, into the periphery of the storyline.  They’re still there, but mostly to remind readers that this is, in fact, a Star Wars novel they’re reading.  The main action is now taken up by the next generation of Skywalkers and Solos, as well as enough new and original characters to populate several Death Stars.  Yet still do Luke, Han, and Leia play key roles in the ongoing storylines.

Eventually, the time is going to come when someone - Troy Denning, Matthew Stover, James Luceno, Karen Traviss, or another prolific EU author - is going to have to depict their deaths.  And I may be in the minority on this one, but I do not want to see that.  I don’t think characters this iconic, this important to the firmament of the Geek Generation, should die, at least not where we would be privy to it.  Enough to move the EU into the future, a century or two after their time, and see what long-term effects their lives have had on the galaxy.  Enough to know they did die at some point, but let those deaths be the subject of speculation among fans.  Anything else would reduce the mythic to the mundane, in my estimation.

Even if they decide not to continue the story past this point, there is still ample ground to be covered in the established timeline.  The years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope is proving to be a fertile crescent, of sorts, for Star Wars fiction recently, with several YA novels and a few other tales being set in that rather nebulous period.  And there’s still an entire era defined by Knights of the Old Republic, some 4,000 years before the films, that is facinating in its own right, yet has not been properly mined for story material.  And there’s a good ten years between Vision of the Future (the last proper New Republic-era novel) and Vector Prime (the kickoff of the New Jedi Order cycle) where you could still tell worthwhile stories, I’m sure.

So, if I could speak to George Lucas or anyone involved at Lucasfilm in keeping the EU flame alive, I would suggest this:  End it.  Now.  Before any further damage is done.  The EU has done its job in keeping the flame of Star Wars alive, even when the prequels didn’t quite deliver the kind of story we were all anticipating after years of (perhaps impossible) expectations.  It has quite a legacy to fall back on, some excellent stories (and more than its share of klunkers, yes, but such is life) told in the millieu that rekindled interest in a “dormant” franchise, gently stoking the fires for the late-’90s awakening of the sleeping giant that was Star Wars.  But I feel, and I’m not alone in this, that the time has come for us to finally take our leave of the heroes of our collective childhood, let them fade away into legend, and either let the next generation pick up from where they left off and continue the story with a clean slate, or go back in time and fill in some of the (many) remaining holes in the backstory.

You can keep publishing EU books, but the story of Luke Skywalker has gone as far as it can realistically go.  It is time to retire him and the other remaining Original Trilogy characters.

Sincerely,

A lifelong Star Wars fan

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