CHAPTER I NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES

Novels are a very important part in the Star Wars galaxy. They marked some of the beginning of the Expanded Universe, with Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, and have played a major role since. Sadly, not all of the manuscripts make it. Sometimes they’re cancelled due to business issues, the author gives up on them or sometimes they just might not be good at all.

THE PRINCESS LEIA AND HAN SOLO ADVENTURES

The first entry in this Lostworlds selection is rather small. Not much information is known about these books and no proper information has been released about them. The only information that is known is from an interview with Brian Daley which appeared in Star Wars Collector back in 1995. Daley made a remark in that interview about when he was first asked to propose the idea for a Star Wars novel. “At that time, Jack Chalker was preparing to write about Solo, and Leigh Brackett [[co-screenwriter with Lawrence Kasdan on ESB]] was scheduled to take on at least one Princess Leia novel. But all that changed very quickly, since Jack decided to finish the series he was working on and Leigh passed away.” Since their first proposals, the Chalker and Brackett novels have long since been forgotten.

THE HEART OF THE JEDI

“Darth Vader and the Emperor are no more. The Alliance has officially become the New Republic. As Han Solo, Princess Leia and new Chief-of-State Mon Mothma emerge triumphant against the diminishing Empire, the Imperial Remnant fights on until the long-silent Imperial Senate rises up to call for peace.  But not everyone wants peace, and High Admiral Tharkus has made plans to ensure the Empire will reemerge under his rule. At his side stands the mysterious Dioskouroi, beings of rare and deadly powers! For Luke Skywalker, exhausted from years of fighting, the time has come to depart upon a journey of discovery, a journey that will lead him to a secret long ago hidden by Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

The Heart of the Jedi was the first book in a proposed Star Wars series to be published by Bantam, presumably due to the success of Timothy Zahn’s The Thrawn Trilogy, and Kenneth C. Flint had the job of writing it. Flint was personally chosen to write the novel by George Lucas and had free rein over the plot, other than the fact that it had to take place immediately after the Second Death Star was destroyed. “I up front figured it would be most logical to deal with a defeated but not destroyed Empire, its military desperately trying to regroup and retaliate against the Alliance, while other elements sought to make peace.” Flint’s outline of the novel was sent to his editor, who sent it to Lucas. Lucas had only wanted one thing changed. “I had shown Sand People without their masks, and he said that that must never happen.” The first draft was sent to Lucas by Flint in 1992, but after months of waiting it was finally found out that Flint’s book couldn’t be published because it “no longer fit into the sequence for the new series.” “I was told that this happened because of my Spectra editor. She had supposedly promised another author of the group (a friend of hers, according to one source) that here book would be placed in Position One.” Finally, in 2015, Joe Bongiorno, creator of the Star Wars Expanded Universe Timeline, helped Flint publish the story online in eight monthly instalments with some continuity changes, such as the reference of shapeshifters by Imperial officers (In the original draft, the Imperials had never known of such things as shapeshifters. This had to be changed due to the appearance of shapeshifters in other pieces of Star Wars media, like clawdites in Episode II – Attack of the Clones.) and later as a 384-page PDF, featuring cover art by Paul Shipper.

Above: A mock-up cover created by Joe Bongiorno, featuring A New Hope art by Paul Shipper.