Author Analysis: Michael Stackpole

I figured I'd make my next Author Analysis fairly timely, considering Legs's Stackpoled thread and the chatter that seems to have picked up about Stackpole.

So, how do you feel about Stackpole as an author? What does he do well? What does he do poorly? Weigh in!

Find other Author Analyses here:

Kevin J. Anderson
Matthew Stover
Michael Reaves
Aaron Allston

Go at it.

 

I applaud him for how he has handled Wedge and turned him into something other than a one line wonder in each movie.

I dislike him for what Corran Horn became.

 

Yeah, that sums it up. Corran was cool till I, Jedi. But his work on Wedge is great! I only like Allstons more, but really both authors write a mean (not litetally) Wedge.

 

Stackpole did not treat his characters the way parents treat their children.

Obviously had favorites, and only the underdeveloped ones ever died.

 

I didn't like the fact that he had Corran "die" in every other book.

 

Stackpole's done a lot of good work. He's created some good characters, some good plots, and some good lines. I like his treatment of Wedge, Tycho, and Winter.

However, he has a few problems. One, he is prone to a certain elevation of Corran Horn that at times is silly and conceited and which irritated me no end in I, Jedi. Actually, a lot about Corran annoys me. For instance, his self-psycho-analysis. It grates. Dr. Corran probes his own psyche, locates his problem with surgical precision and cold logic, gives himself a good talking-to, and voila! He is a better man!

Stackpole does this self-analysis with other characters also, but it's most prominent with Corran. The first example came early in the first book, when Corran met Lujayne Forge for the first time. As we well observe, Lujayne takes the opportunity of meeting Corran Horn to make the point, through ten minutes of arguing and questioning, "ADMIT IT! YOU ARE A BIGOT!" Now instead of acting like a normal, self-respecting person and telling Lujayne to jump into a lake, Corran does his little psycho-analysis routine and admits to her that, yes, his time in CorSec has tinged him with certain prejudices.

 

I like Stackpole's ability to create good OCs. Corran, Booster, Mirax, Gavin, Tycho, Isard, Elegos (half credit with Zahn), Fel, Ganner -- only Zahn and Anderson rival him in number of major OCs.

As for Corran, yes, he is kind of arrogant, but that's a character flaw that he's supposed to have, and it's never really grated on me. I'm willing to forgive that since Corran is by far the most well-developed OC in all of EU (has something to do with having his own first-person novel and five other books largely from his point of view, I'm sure).

Stackpole writes stuff that just "feels like Star Wars" and he's had a tremendous impact on the course of Star Wars EU. His overall ability, rather than any particular writing skill, is why I consider him a great writer and I like him.

That said, he does have his weaknesses. My main complaint is that he doesn't flesh out his supporting characters very well, and that undercuts his ability to write a good squadron with characters you care about. Everyone knows who the "main" characters are, and they rarely if ever die, while the undeveloped names are obviously the cannon fodder. This is especially glaring in comparison with Allston, who somehow manages to keep his characters from becoming redshirts.

 

Stack is great with plotting and getting into the psychology of his characters, and he seems to treat the universe with more . . . respect is the word, I think, than a lot of other authors. His main weaknesses, in my opinion, are that we seem to know that none of the major characters in any of his books are ever in any real danger, and his dialogue can be very, very bad at times.

That all being said, I think LFL should hand over general editorial duties to him. He'd shine there and make sure we got great products.

KW

 

Interesting proposal . . . there seem to be a lot of ways to let authors work to their specialties -- Luceno as continuity editor, Stackpole as general editor -- but I think that, in the end, if we let everyone play to just their specialty, it would become such a collaborative mess that it would make the NJO's editing look flawless.

 

I wouldn't be so fast to put Luceno as a continuity editor - he knows his stuff, yes, and he's a master at working in little references, but he's also made a surprisingly large number of flubs and gaffes in his more recent work. But that's a different author analysis entirely.

 

I recently discussed Stackpole in another thread somewhere so I won't bore any Sound of Music lovers with a repetiton of my accolade. I overviewed his X-wing quartet to 000 . . . somewhere.

What's his Cartography books like? I've never read a non-Star Wars Stackpolean novel before. I know his fantasy stuff is infested with elven cliche, but is this latest any good? I agree with some Amazon reviewers that he can sound like a classroom professor. He'll list someone acquiescing for two reasons, then expounds on those two reasons. You can almost see him finger-ticking his points as he does it.

 

Bump

 

I like this guy alot. He writes a solid tale and is able to bring old characters into new light. I see some do not like what he did to Corran in I, Jedi. Personaly that is one of my favorite books. I love how he gives a plausible reason for a few Jedi to fall between the cracks. The whole plant code bit was a feat of guniusness. One of the things that attracts me to books is how the author utilizes his/her imagination. I, Jedi is an execelllent expample of an author putting ideas on the table. Add to that the Clutch class starfighter and all I can say is WOW. As one might be able to tell from my icon the clutch is my favorite fighter class. It again shows an excellent use of imagination.
He know he is dealing with pirates that hate the Empire and is creates a ship that they would fly. Parts could come from defeated or destroyed TIEs, all in all very believable. As for making the snub fighter to powerfull. Well they are powerfull, that is how the Rebellion defeated the Empire in the first place! Back to the clutch. I was VERY glad to see a new classification. Dispite how much I do like the X-wing, I'm more than a little tired of the thing. Some one made an attempt to replace it with the E-wing but it didn't take. The clutch is another good fighter that can stand up to the x-wing but is used by the baddies. Makes the x-wing less dominant. Well that is my two credits hope it was worthwhile.

 

I think Stackpole is an ok author. I've read I, Jedi and also the Dark Tide Duology in NJO. I agree with the assessment that he focuses on some characters way more than others and then neglects the rest. This doesn't bother me overly much but it does show how guys like Zahn are better in embracing many characters and their developments. I don't dislike what he did with Corran. I actually gained a renewed interest in Corran. He's not my favorite character but Stackpole put him in new light for me. I also enjoyed reading a SW novel in first-person for a change and it was nice to see the events of JAK from another person's point of view. For some reason I seem to like all Corellian characters, Han, Wedge and Corran to mention a few.

 

I recently read the x-wing series, and one of the main problems I had was keeping up with the who's who. Like many have said, the minor characters are hard to follow and relate to. You don't know much about them, and certain ones aren't mentioned for 100 pages, then they pop up again and you have to look back at the front to remember who they are.

 

How'd I miss this?

I think my thoughts on Stackpole's writing are pretty clear, anyhow.

 

My only real issue with him is that in a team book like X-Wing, he pretty much focussed on two or three characters.



Best example of this? Rhysati Ynr. I believe she appeared in every one of his X-Wing books. What do we know about her?


- She is from Bespin.
- She hooked up with Nawara Ven (Think it was him, right?), but this happened outside of the books.


That's it. From FIVE books!




Also, he stacked too much upon Corran IMO. The ace pilot? Corran. Former Corsec officer? Corran. Jedi? Corran. Big romance of the series? Corran. Escaped from the SSD? Corran. Couldn't some of that have gone on other characters?

 

Corran Horn is the Gary Stu of Michael Stackpole.

Here's your proof:

[image=http://www.starwars.jp/character/image/corran_horn.jpg]

Yes, that's Stackpole as Corran Horn and even though he's a Gary Stu I like him best of all out of the EU character except for Jacen Solo.

But we're talking about Stackpole here, not Corran though given the nature of Corran we can easily get confused.

I'm no gusher, but I am a fan of the X-wing series as I consider Stackpole to be one of the few EU writers who can do spacebattles

 

Corran Horn is the Gary Stu of Michael Stackpole.

Here's your proof:

[image=http://www.starwars.jp/character/image/corran_horn.jpg]

Yes, that's Stackpole as Corran Horn and even though he's a Gary Stu I like him best of all out of the EU character except for Jacen Solo.

But we're talking about Stackpole here, not Corran though given the nature of Corran we can easily get confused.

I'm no gusher, but I am a fan of the X-wing series as I consider Stackpole to be one of the few EU writers who can do spacebattles justice. In most EU I skip over the space battles as they can be confusing, I never do this with Stackpole as he writes them as neither confusing, complicated or even boring.

I love the way he has characteristied Wedge as well as how he took the EU away from the Skywalkers, something that still needs to be done as they really need a break. And Corran may be an expert on self-psychoanalyis, but he's no Luke Skywalker (as I think Wedge said in the first line of Rogue Squadron).

One thing though that detracts from Stackpole is that he tends to overuse characters, particularly the Horns/Halcyons, for some reason they have to pop up in ALL his novels even though other authors like Greg Keyes and Zahn have used them quite well.

I have one question: Why didn't Stackpole write Jedi Trial? I think he could have done the book justice and perhaps sorted out the stuff-up that is the Horn/Halcyon continuity. He has written with Del Rey (NJO) and he has done some short stories in the Clone Wars era (like a really good one with Aayla Secura). Why?

 

Just because an author models for a character doesn't mean that character is a "Gary Stu". Zahn did the same with Karrde.

Anyway, I like Stackpole. I, Jedi was a great book. It was easy to get into and I loved seeing the Jedi Acadamy through Corran's eyes. Dark Tide was also very good, with the destruction of Ithor being one of the defining moments of the NJO for me.

As for the character of Corran Horn, I like him. Sure, he's arrogant and sometimes stupid, but his lack of perfection is what makes me love him.

 

Hack hack cough hack bleargh blegh cough cough



Anyhow, much as I dislike Stackpole's writing, I do like Corran as a character. Mostly because he has more personality than almost all other EU characters-- I actually feel like I know the guy.

 

I love his writing. I got to know him from his BattleTech books, and so far, all his work has been stupendous. Well, his latest fantasy trilogy feels a bit...detached, but at the final of book two I was completely riled up to get to book three immediately.

What I most like about his writing, is that he can write *complex* work. Of course that means that a lot of people will dislike it for being too complex for them, but thems the breaks.

Magnus

 

Very true. I think that's Stackpole's strongest point.

 

I am in total agreement with you on this point!! He will have a character say, "I don't think we should attack the enemy fortress for 3 reasons. Reason 1, We are outnumbered. Reason 2, our forces are malnourished. Reason 3, and most importantly, the enemy has big guns."

I really like alot of Stackpole's non-SW fiction, but they, too, sport the "lists" as noted in the paragraph above. For instance, the Dragoncrown War Cycle is really awesome . . . until to get to the very last novel. Its almost like he was rushed in penning this novel and was writing straight off of his outline. Lots and lots of "lists" there, often every other page!!