A Glance Into The Past: Valhalla Returns

You might remember my article on Han Solo and the Lost Hungarian Legacy, which explained a whole lot about Valhalla Páholy’s Star Wars novels. Now, after some interesting searching, I have found that only did Valhalla publish Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, Brian Daley’s Han Solo trilogy (along with the omnibus), and a four-book sequel series, they also reprinted many of Bantam Spectra’s classic 1990’s novels, and the novelizations of the original trilogy. Including the aforementioned 9 novels, they produced an additional 14 novels. Altogether, the 23 novels are:

·         A Birodalom örökösei (The Thrawn Trilogy Book 1 – Heir to the Empire)

·         Sötét erők ébredése (The Thrawn Trilogy Book 2 – Dark Force Rising)

·         0: Erőpróba (Splinter of the Mind’s Eye)

·         1: Han Solo hadjárata (Han Solo at Star’s End)

·         2: Han Solo bosszúja (Han Solo’s Revenge)

·         3: Han Solo küldetése (Han Solo and the Lost Legacy)

·         4: Han Solo nomádjai (Han Solo at Doomsday’s Edge)

·         5: Han Solo a birodalmi ügynök (Han Solo’s Gambit)

·         Csillagok háborúja (A New Hope)

·         A Birodalom visszavág (The Empire Strikes Back)

·         A Jedi visszatér (Return of the Jedi)

·         Az utolsó parancs (The Thrawn Trilogy Book 3 – The Last Command)

·         6: Han Solo és a fejvadászok (Han Solo and the Bounty Hunters)

·         7: Han Solo háborúja (Han Solo’s War)

·         1-3: Han Solo legendája (The Han Solo Adventures)

·         Különbéke (The Truce at Bakura)

·         Szökevények (The Courtship of Princess Leia)

·         A koréliai rajtaütés (The Corellian Trilogy Book 1 – Ambush at Corellia)

·         Új Rend (The Jedi Academy Trilogy Book 1 – Jedi Search)

·         Sötét oldal (The Jedi Academy Trilogy Book 2 – Dark Apprentice)

·         Az Erő bajnokai (The Jedi Academy Trilogy Book 3 – Champions of the Force)

·         Mos Eisley mesék (Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina)

·         Fekete kard (The Black Fleet Crisis Book 1 – Before the Storm)

I still am not sure if these novels are even partially official, despite the fact that the actual interior content has been approved. Either way, Valhalla Páholy (translating as “Valhalla Lodge” in English) sure tried to make the novels seem official, going so far as to using the name of the father of Carrie Fisher (who played Princess Leia), Ed Fisher, as a pseudonym for András Gáspár, who apparently “translated Pendragon Books’ (an earlier name of Valhalla) Han Solo at Doomsday’s Edge into the Hungarian language.” The trend of using the real author’s name as the Hungarian translator carried on through the fake Solo novels, when Nyúlzi Zsolt (or Zsolt Nyúlzi), whose pseudonym was Dale Avery, translated all of, well, erm, Dale Avery’s novels from English to Hungarian.

P.S. If you want to see the list of these fake books, along with the covers, search for the article “Valhalla Páholy Star Wars könyvei” on Kaminopedia, which is the Hungarian counterpart to Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki, or just go straight to the link below:

https://starwars.fandom.com/hu/wiki/Valhalla_P%C3%A1holy_Star_Wars_k%C3%B6nyvei

Thank you for reading, and see you next time on THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM!

Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls

Welcome back to THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM....

As you might not know, I love investigating about fake Star Wars items. What I also enjoy seeing is when people make out that something is real, and that it isn’t fake. This story isn’t fake. It just doesn’t exist. Anyway, while looking up about the cancelled graphic novel Lightsider (if you didn’t know, it bridges that gap between Dark Horse Comics’ Dark Empire and Dark Empire II), I came across the title “Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls.” It sounded pretty much fake, but anyway, as usual, I had a nice long search for this title. One of the things that came up was an article on “Bib Fortuna and theRise of the Dark Falls” on Simple Darthipedia, which is unsurprisingly the Star Wars humour wiki. There were also A LOT of Jedi Council Forum threads that appeared, such as “Rise of the Dark Falls – The Forgotten EUMasterpiece!” and “The Official Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls Discussion,” so it was just too tempting to not look at each and every one of them.

“Riseof the Dark Falls – The Forgotten EU Masterpiece!” was a thread begun by aw_heel_naw, explaining that he had recently come across a copy of “Rise of the Dark Falls,” and that it digs deeper into the “wars of Star Wars.” Information started being spread on this forum, such as it being authored by Derek J Reda, published by Skylark, and also that the cover text was “Rise of the Dark Falls, The Forgotten EU Masterpiece of Derek J. Reda.” Most believed that this was not a real book, due to the lack of an ISBN, or the fact that the term “EU” or “Expanded Universe” was not being used in 1985 (the so-called date of publication), although some did actually give in to the idea. Later on in the thread, it was revealed that there had been a Wookieepedia article about “Rise of the Dark Falls,” later deleted, followed by a section about the “book” in the real Bib Fortuna article! Sheesh!

In “The Official Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls Discussion,” much of the story is revealed, such as a two-chapter-long “Lekku scene,” which was dreaded by all of the readers for being too long and graphic, and an in-depth checking of the Dark Falls operatives’ vehicles. It was also said that Season Two of Dave Filoni’s 3-D animated The Clone Wars series was going to kick off with a three-part Dark Falls storyline, as well as there being a sequel, Darkness Falls on the Rise of the Dark Falls, and an interval story, The Search for Chewbacca’s Gold.

After some time, the story was apparently deemed fake by a member of Lucasfilm, Ltd. What had started out as a silly joke became an almost real Star Wars story.... A now remembered “EU masterpiece....”

Above: Original cover for Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls

Above: Rejected alternate cover for Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls

Above: Front and back covers of Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls

Star Wars: Han Solo and the Lost Hungarian Legacy

Welcome back to THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM....

While doing some research across the web, I came across the “Hungarian Han Solo Books” section on Joe Bongiorno’s Expanded Universe website. The stories were published by “Valhalla Páholy” in the early nineteen-nineties. I do not speak the Hungarian language, so the only words I could understand were “Han” and “Solo,” with some other words kind of easy to understand. I have not properly read through any of the books, although I was quite astounded by the copyright section. It appeared that the stories had previously been published as English books, except I didn’t know why a publisher would place an exclamation mark after the “All Rights Reserved” text....

I began to wonder if these were truly official Lucasfilm stories, so I started looking for answers, when I came across Withnail Books’ article on “Han Solo and the Lost Hungarian Legacy.” (The link to this article is: http://www.withnailbooks.com/2015/01/han-solo-and-lost-hungarian-legacy.html) It explains how one day, a book entitled “Erőpróba” was spotted in Budapest. The tale was a story centred on Luke Skywalker, and was written by Alan Dean Foster, with cover art picturing Luke with a shoulder-holster. It was later found out that the story was Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, although the title translated as “Showdown.” A few weeks later, books entitled “Han Solo Hadjárata,” “Han Solo Bosszúja,” and “Han Solo Küldetése” were found, and soon revealed to be Brian Daley’s classic Han Solo trilogy ( Han Solo at Stars’ End, Han Solo’s Revenge, Han Solo and the Lost Legacy ). Another book, known as “Han Solo Legendája,” was also found, and is actually a Hungarian reprint of Brian Daley’s The Han Solo Adventures, which collects all three of his books. All the covers were unusual, such as Han Solo in a literal space-suit, further questioning the fact that these were authorized.

Valhalla, the publisher of these books, were actually producing fakery, and later tried their hand at creating their own novels in the Star Wars Expanded Universe timeline. They produced four novels, which were:

·         Han Solo nomádjai (Han Solo at Doomsday’s Edge)

·         Han Solo a birodalmi ügynök (Han Solo’s Gambit)

·         Han Solo és a fejvadászok (Han Solo and the Bounty Hunters)

·         Han Solo háborúja (Han Solo’s War)

The English translations (which are in brackets above), were proved to also be fake (even though it did make the publication more authentic)! As for the writers, Dale Avery, who wrote the majority of the books, was actually just Hungarian author Zsolt Nyulászi, while Ed Fisher was the name of Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)’s dad! Lucasfilm later found out about these books, and forced Valhalla to cease these books to exist, except that didn’t matter to “Dale Avery.” He went on to create Császári Vér, which was now his fourth (fifth, if he created “Ed Fisher’s” novel) Han Solo knock-off novel! Even the cover (which pictures a Romulan Warbird from Star Trek, even though the story had nothing to do with that sci-fi series) was a rip-off!

The Lost Hungarian Legacy of Han Solo still remains quite a mystery to the galaxy, but hopefully it will soon be translated by somebody and be able to be read by eager Star Wars fans! See you soon! 

Above: Splinter of the Mind's Eye Hungarian novel.

Above: Han Solo at Stars' End Hungarian novel.

Above: Han Solo's Revenge Hungarian novel.

Above: Han Solo and the Lost Legacy Hungarian novel.

Above: The Han Solo Adventures Hungarian novel.