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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit Your First EU Experience

Discussion in 'Literature' started by HipsterChewie, Jan 12, 2013.

  1. darthzac14

    darthzac14 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    I was a freshman when I had just finished the Left Behind series of books. So I was looking for something new to read, so I came across the SW books at the Barnes and Noble and found a book called Order 66. I didn't see the Republic Commando subtitle at the time and now here I am.
     
  2. EUdiscoverer1136

    EUdiscoverer1136 Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 18, 2012
    Well, as far as Old School.. Marvel Star Wars, Splinter In the Mind's Eye, and the (insert dark, ominous music here) Holiday Special.
    As far as EU proper... I never wanted to delve that much into it, continuity issues and all. But picked up DH's Empire TBs.. which got me curious. Loved the CW current series, and heard it featured interesting EU characters.. got me MORE interested. What nipped it was the Thrawn Trilogy. That made me want to explore it. Then I found out how vast the EU timeline was! I could really loose myself in this!
    Current issues with the canon/non canon debate have kinda have me ticked, but I'm still gonna explore, and decide for myself which is and isn't canon!
     
  3. HipsterChewie

    HipsterChewie Jedi Padawan

    Registered:
    Jan 12, 2013
    That does sound pretty interesting! :) Yea I've read the Dark Empire trilogy, so the next chance I get I'll have to stop by the bookstore to pick up Crimson Empire, add it to mt collection!
     
    General Immodet likes this.
  4. windu4

    windu4 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 15, 2008
    I started reading Glove of Vader in Elementary School I really liked it and wound up reading Vector Prime next. Naturally I was upset by Chewie's death. For my class we had Secret Santa and I received Destiny's Way and the Episode 2 novelization. I loved Destiny's Way even though I skipped like a dozen books (including Star by Star).

    I actually read the Stover Ep 3 before the movie came out and I've been hooked ever since...not necessarily a good thing
     
  5. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2005
    Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. It blew my little mind.

    I only got "into" the EU following the release of KotOR, however, with the Star Wars Fact Files eventually (it took a long while!) going on to make an inclusivist (i.e. "everything is canon!") out of me. If you ever go stalking previous posts of mine, you can discount pretty much anything written before late '06 as the ramblings of a semi-purist douche. (Not to say all purists are douches, but I certainly was!)
     
  6. DarthApprentice

    DarthApprentice Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    May 17, 2011
    I was really young, maybe 6 or 7, when I first was introduced to the Thrawn trilogy and Truce at Bakura. I read all 4 books within a month and have been hooked ever since...
     
  7. saltmanz

    saltmanz Jedi Master

    Registered:
    Jan 29, 2009
    I remember the Ewok movie and comic book. Novel-wise, sometime in elementary school I discovered Han Solo at Star's End and must have checked that bad boy out two or three different times. That was it until my dad handed me a copy of the just-published Heir to the Empire. Haven't looked back since...
     
  8. Juicebox52

    Juicebox52 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jan 14, 2013
    I purchased the first two novels of the Jedi academy trilogy from a used book store when i was 10. Not sure if those were the first, but they were the books that i remember the most and probably was what got me into the series. I never appreciated the movies until I was older.
     
  9. Bib Fartuna

    Bib Fartuna Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 2012
    Technically, my first EU "experience" was as a youngster with the book-and-read Planet of the Hoojibs.

    From a purist point of view, my first true EU experience was when Heir to the Empire was released in the early 1990's as a teenager.
     
  10. instantdeath

    instantdeath Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 22, 2010
    In order.

    KOTOR/KOTOR II
    Splinter of the Mind's Eye (wanted to read the first EU novel. I didn't mind it, but it didn't leave me begging for more, so I put off reading another for about a year)
    The Thrawn trilogy
     
  11. rumsmuggler

    rumsmuggler Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2000
    I was very young, but I'm sure it was a Star Wars book/cassette combo, or a Star Wars comic.
     
  12. TrakNar

    TrakNar Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 4, 2011
    I don't know how I could forget about a Star Wars book/record I had and watching the Ewoks cartoon while growing up. I guess because "EU" hadn't even entered into my vocabulary yet, then I didn't count them as EU experiences. But, that's remedied now; my first EU experience was a book-and-record, and I think it had something to do with Hoojibs. It's been ages and I had a lot of those types of books-and-records, so my memory is a bit foggy.
     
  13. Kyris Cavisek

    Kyris Cavisek Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 12, 2012
    Read JJK, then YJK growing up... Imagine my thrill when I picked up NJO that not only were the Solo kids in it but Lowie as well... Been an EU fan ever since...
     
  14. Zorrixor

    Zorrixor Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 8, 2004
    Memory is a strange thing... I suspect my recollection may not be in its correct sequence...

    I didn't see the OT until we all went to see the ESB special edition for a friend's birthday, up until then I'd only watched distorted bits and pieces of ANH and this weird old dude waving a silly glow rod. Until seeing ESB in the cinema, it had just all seemed lame. I do, though, still have the videos of the original theatrical edition, so I presume I must have then gone and bought that, as I also have the SE box set, but that obviously wouldn't have been until after ROTJ SE had also come out.

    I do, however, remember playing ROTJ Super Star Wars on the SNES... I sucked and never got past the eyestalk guard droid boss outside Jabba's palace. Yeah, that was level one. I was that bad at video games back then. (That probably didn't help my lack of interest in that stupid Star Wars stuff!)

    I remember playing (and sucking just as badly again) the SOTE game... I assume that was on the N64? I don't think I got much further than Hoth. :p

    I've got some strange memory of my brother once telling me there were more stories beyond ROTJ and telling me there was some story called something like Forest of... something, Solitude, Tranquility? I can't remember other than it having the word Forest(s) in it. I definitely recall seeing the title... but no clue where or when that memory is coming from (and having looked on Wookieepedia before, I can't find anything that would seem to fit).

    I... don't know when I bought X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, but I saw it in Woolworths once, got it... and that was the end of my social life. I must have played that (and then X-Wing Alliance) like mad for years. Years. Back on my crappy AOL dial up connection, I somehow discovered the joys of custom mission packs (not realising they weren't official releases at the time) and somehow worked out how to slice the game to add my own custom starfighters (yay copying the TIE Defender model from the rerelease of TIE Fighter and inserting it into XvT!).

    Somewhere around this point I discovered a book called Vision of the Future on a page in a magazine for my mum's book club... I think I was around 12 or something. I didn't read fiction outside of school back then, but managed to get through half of VOTF during the coach trip somewhere for a geography trip... I didn't finish it, but found it interesting. I have no recollection of when I finished it, but remember not understanding what was going on with the whole Flim story (I had no idea who that Thrawn person he was impersonating even was or why it was important!).

    I only read Spectre years, years later, but VOTF was effectively my first step into the literary world of the EU.

    Winding back to my addiction with XvT and the other flight sims, I eventually joined an online gaming club called the Emperor's Hammer after I discovered it had a huge load of custom missions (I would have joined it a couple of years earlier, but the join form asked if you wanted to join the navy, and I took it literally, so was too scared to enlist :p). From there, I discovered the existence of TOTJ, bought the comics, and that's the point where everything snowballed and I grew addicted and just wanted more. That must have been around end of 99 I think, so TPM must have had something to do with it too.

    I saw TPM in the cinema, so I obviously must have already been intersted enough at that point, since I very rarely saw anything on the big screen... but I can't recall which of the above events would have occurred first.
     
  15. Allana_Rey

    Allana_Rey Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    How did you know when each book was coming out?
     
  16. SiouxFan

    SiouxFan Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 6, 2012
    ^^^The first one caught most of us by surprise, but it did so well that the Waldenbooks in my town (if you don't remember, Waldenbooks was a bookstore that was a fixture in most malls) had a flier announcing the release about three months prior. What sucks is that they were the ONLY SW books around, (well, not really, they re-released Splinter of the Mind's Eye, but only as a shameless cash grab....wait). I finished book 2 in about 8 hours and I'm like....crap, now I've got to wait 'til next May.
     
  17. Force Smuggler

    Force Smuggler Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    I remember Waldenbooks. Haven't thought of that store in years
     
  18. Kyris Cavisek

    Kyris Cavisek Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 12, 2012
    I snuck out of school to go buy Betrayal the day it came out... Is that bad? Do I have a problem?
     
  19. instantdeath

    instantdeath Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 22, 2010
    My best memories of high school are of skipping it.
     
  20. Force Smuggler

    Force Smuggler Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    I found Betrayal at a Barnes & Noble 2 days before it was to be released. The stores near me always have books come out later.
     
  21. Kyris Cavisek

    Kyris Cavisek Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 12, 2012
    The worst part is that I snuck back in
     
  22. Tim Battershell

    Tim Battershell Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 3, 2012
    Might that be "A Forest Apart", Zorr? If so, it's a short (originally an e-book). It was bundled with one of the mainstream PBs, but I can't recall which one, offhand.
     
  23. instantdeath

    instantdeath Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 22, 2010
    For whatever reason, the first thing I thought he might be talking about is that old comic The Way of the Wookiee o_O
     
  24. Kyris Cavisek

    Kyris Cavisek Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 12, 2012
    There was a kid that told me about Lando using a black lightsaber and Boba Fett living. I was like in 1st Grade. I didn't believe him
     
  25. Kyris Cavisek

    Kyris Cavisek Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 12, 2012
    I think it is like Taatoine Ghost or something along that lines that it is paired with