A&A The Official Jason Fry Discussion Thread

Jason Fry? I thought he was a legend.

 

It's a planet

Funny enough the novel of the movie actually explains rather well how it works.

 

Not sure I remember why no SK Base. (If that seems crazy to you, the book started taking shape more than a year ago -- publishing means really long lead times.) Suspect it was a combination of feeling like it belonged more to a Locations-type book and when we see it in the movie.

 

Can you tell us if Starkiller Base was built on Ilum and/or if it uses Kyber Crystals?

 

That it uses crystals is a given, it was in the Visual Dictionary. Given also is its location and its climate, so I would say that if it isn't Ilum, it must be its little brother.

I might get that, then. I guess I derive twisted pleasure from watching authors try to make sense of crazy stuff that filmmakers and conceptual artists cooked up with no regard to how the thing would actually work. (It's the same reason Death Star physics papers are a thing.)

 

jasonfry

There were some (albeit briefly) New Republic capital ships shown in orbit of Hosnian Prime in TFA. Any chance we'll see/learn more about them? I ask because you're just the sorta guy to expand on them, so this may be more of a plea than a question.

Great job on the Incredible Cross Sections, BTW. The Resistance Transport is a perfect example of blending in old EU stuff into the new canon. Well done sir, well done!!

--Adm. Nick

 

No plans from me for more capital ship explorations. Got a trio of unannounced projects in the hopper but none of them touch on that. Glad you liked the book!

Re SK base, what Starkeiller said.

 

Rey's Survival Guide was a fun little read. It helped it me understand and accept certain things about Rey's character that didn't make much sense to me the first time I saw the film. Plus, it was just full of fun little tidbits about Jakku and made neat little nods to a couple other stories I've enjoyed in the canon. Glad I picked that book up! It's not the kind of book I'd usually read, so I was pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed it so much.

 

Is there more information about Tekka in it?

 

Not from what I remember. I could be forgetting though...

 

Ugh, I forgot those, didn't I? Bless you for asking.

Here's the JFBAM link for Rey's Survival Guide. And for Cross-Sections.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas, whether it's a religious holiday you observe, a government-mandated break, or a day on a calendar that folks elsewhere get all fired up about.

 

jasonfry

Not sure if you've already asked this, but is the reference to "thousands" of weapons on the Resurgent-class really accurate? That is ALOT of firepower on a +/- 3km warship. Unless that includes a lot of point-defense guns. Not criticizing, just curious/surprised to see so much firepower on a relatively small frame.

--Adm. Nick

 

I remember several hundred guns of various designs on the wartime Lucrehulk-class. That's mildly comparable to the Resurgent-class, even though it is ringed. Those were primarily different kinds of turbolasers, though, both the original quad-guns and heavier caliber. The Resurgent number might be for everything on board, since it has the missile launchers, as well.

 

jasonfry My father and brother are huge Mets fans, and I'm a huge Star Wars fan, so you have my family covered.

 

I was figuring after reading it that it's "individual barrels" and includes all the lightest weapons that can be called "turbolasers" rather than "laser cannons". As I recall, it did not say "batteries".

Wookieepedia doesn't include the concussion missiles in the description - I don't think the book included them in the 3000+ figure either.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Resurgent-class_Star_Destroyer

EDIT: It didn't - only says "More than 3000 turbolasers and ion cannons" - number of concussion missile batteries is unknown.

 

Probably given info while the movie was still shooting, this happened to the novelization, at least.

 

Ugh, missed this. Think I know what happened here, but am away from my notes for Xmas vacation. Ping me a week from today if I haven't responded?

 

Jason, I had a question about Teshik's vision in Warfare. It's a really awesome, surreal piece, sort of serene and horrifying at the same time, but I couldn't ID everything Teshik saw.

* "Great beings of light" - Celestials
* Ships made of rods and cones that scream as they fly - Rakata?
* Warships with mirrored hulls - Tionese
* Ships crowned with "terrible spiked cathedrals" - Pius Dea
* "Hammerheaded battlecruisers" - No idea
* "Slab-sided Mandalorian constructs" - Mandalorians, of course
* Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari cruisers - Galactic Civil War
* Ships made from "clumps of multicolored wire" - No idea
* Ships that looked like "organs torn from living beings" - Yuuzhan Vong?

Minute question, I know, but I was just blown away by this sequence.

 

Sounds a bit like the Nagai:

 

I took that as being Republic Hammerhead-class cruisers.

 

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. All credit to Erich Schoeneweiss at Del Rey, who read the original beginning about the Celestials/Rakata and then a whole bunch about Xim and ancient Coruscant (see the Author's Cut stuff) and then asked me (with a kindly twinkle in his eye, to be sure), "So is there gonna be any war in your Warfare book?" I sulked and muttered and maybe even swore at him a bit, but he was right, so I rethought the beginning as a bookend of the end reflection.

Rakata and Vong are correct. And your fellow posters got the other two right -- the hammerhead Republic ships from the Mandalorian Wars and the Nagai warships. Good eyes folks!

 

Thank you for your quick reply! I particularly liked Teshik's musing that perhaps the ships were filled with all those who perished in a war in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. Was this perhaps intended as a Star Warsy take on the old "boat/train to the afterlife" trope? That was the impression I got.

 

For Christmas, here's something my pal and ace Star Wars artist Jeff Carlisle worked up to support the note on the Falcon as a tug with a side-mounted cockpit. We weren't able to adapt his sketch for TFA: ICS, but I still love it and wanted to share it.

(Sorry if this doesn't work. I got bad mojo sharing pictures.)