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

Lit Possible new Stover novel? (false hope!)

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Kablob, Oct 19, 2014.

  1. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    The 1.2 million clone warriors figure - came from AOTC novelization - but people complained loudly that it was far too small.

    I'm not sure if people gave him grief over Vaapad as well - but it did crop up in a discussion of ROTS, where he said it wasn't his choice to make Mace a Vaapad user:

    http://boards.theforce.net/threads/author-analysis-matthew-stover.23141067/page-3#post-23633106
     
    Gorefiend and mes520 like this.
  2. JediKnight75

    JediKnight75 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 15, 2011
    I don't think that would prevent him from wanting to cone back. I know he wrote LATSOM and the ROTS novel after Shatterpoint and he may have even written Traitor after it. So that experience already hasn't prevented him from writing Star Wars.
     
  3. Arawn_Fenn

    Arawn_Fenn Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2004
    It's also in the film.
     
  4. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    Actually, whether "units" means individual clones or literally military units isn't clear from the film alone.
     
    Iron_lord likes this.
  5. ThreadSketch

    ThreadSketch Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 22, 2013
    Because it hasn't been whipped out yet...

    [​IMG]
     
    darklordoftech likes this.
  6. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    Which was source of the grief that poor Stover got - to which he replied that he was told in no uncertain terms by Lucas himself that yes, it was 1.2 million clones, and yes, six months into the war there were still only 1.2 million clones.
    Stover didn't like the figures either, but he played by the rules of the franchise's creator.
     
  7. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 30, 2012
    Another author that I want to see again is Michael A. Stackpole. His novels played a major role in developing the Galactic Civil War and I love X-Wings and TIE Fighters.
     
    Darth Ganthet likes this.
  8. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    Stackpole's star has sunk pretty low in my estimation.
     
  9. Vialco

    Vialco Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 6, 2007
    Really? Why is that?
     
  10. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    I feel like the majority of fans no longer view him nearly as positively as they did. It doesn't help both that a consensus seems to have emerged that Allston's X-Wing novels were better in most ways and that his frequent collaborator Zahn has arguably fallen even further. Certainly my own personal opinion of him has taken a fairly sharp downward turn.
     
    anakinfansince1983 likes this.
  11. stung4ever

    stung4ever Jedi Grand Master star 3

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    Being inferior to Allston is nothing to be ashamed of.;)

    I think you can make the argument that he's not as highly regarded as when he left. When he left, he was probably in most people's top 3 SW authors (with Zahn and Allston).

    But, IMHO, that has less to do with viewing his work as time has gone by and more to do with what's come after him. Stover put together masterpiece after masterpiece. Luceno wove bits and pieces from many other works into his great stories. John Jackson Miller has put together quality story after quality story. You could also argue Paul Kemp, who brought good stories to an era that's widely hated.

    Stackpole's stories certainly have their flaws. His stories certainly aren't Stover quality. But is he anywhere near Denning or Traviss? No.
     
  12. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    I simply don't understand why people lump her in with Denning as a bad author. Sure, she vilifies the Jedi a bit too much in her later books, but overall the quality of her stories are much higher than Denning's, IMO. And they are better, to me, than a fair number of the Bantam-era books. Are they the best SW books around? No, not by a long shot. But I also don't think it's fair to put her way down on the very opposite end of the totem pole.
     
  13. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    I suspect because LOTF was utterly terrible and she was not only one of the writers for it, but actively contributed to its badness - compare Golden, who was one of the three authors for the pretty much equally reviled FOTJ, but only has one moment I can think of that's really standout awful. Allston only gets a pass for those series because he's nearly universally beloved otherwise.
     
    Gorefiend likes this.
  14. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    That's fair. Personally, I enjoyed (parts of) her LOTF books. Most of Bloodlines, the first part of Sacrifice (and all the parts between Mara and Ben), and Ben's parts in Revelation were all pretty good to me.
     
    Force Smuggler likes this.
  15. stung4ever

    stung4ever Jedi Grand Master star 3

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    I really liked Hard Contact. Triple Zero was fine enough, although it was a foreshadow of what was coming. After that, though, things just went downhill so fast. You could probably say the same thing about Denning, with Star by Star, followed by the Dark Next Trilogy.

    One thing Traviss has over Denning is that, being as she spent so much time on Clone Troopers and Mandos, her terribleness had a rather limited impact in the big picture. Whereas Denning's terribleness sent the whole universe down the crapper.

    And, yes, to be fair, she's not the worst. The Bantam era had a lot of garbage. Hambly just felt so out of place in the SW universe. KJA was bad (at least in novel form, it's been a long time since I've read his comics). And there were a few one and done authors that just weren't worth bring back. Traviss is one of the few authors with more than a trilogy of books in the SW universe. Among those authors, she's much closer to the bottom than to the top.

    And I feel like I'm rambling.:)
     
    Iron_lord, Vthuil and Force Smuggler like this.
  16. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    I'll grant you that HC and TZ are by far her best books. And IC: 501st is probably my least favorite, followed by TC, with O66 somewhere in the middle. I think her Jedi hatin' isn't so bad when you consider that most of the characters hatin' on the Jedi are characters who logically would hate Jedi–Mandos and those trained by them. Sure, when Jusik and Etain started coming in with the Jedi hate, it got too strong. But overall, if you take it in context, it's not as bad as some make it out to be.
     
    Iron_lord likes this.
  17. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    When I say "actively contributed to its badness", I'm thinking less of individual scenes and more how she was as bad as Denning about doing her own thing in her books and to hell with trying to make a coherent overarching narrative. While FOTJ was even more incoherent in some respects, it didn't have quite the same degree of authors advancing their pet themes.
     
    Gorefiend, TheRedBlade and Revanfan1 like this.
  18. TheRedBlade

    TheRedBlade Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 17, 2007

    I REALLY liked his two Crown Colonies books, which were something of a retelling of the French and Indian War/pre-Revolutionary America with magic and dragons. However, it seems like he got into some kind of fight with his publisher, so the last book of the trilogy is written, but unreleased.

    This seems to be something of a pattern for Stackpole: write some great stuff, the relationship with management/publishing house gets weird, and he torches the bridge with an angry blog post on his website. I LOVE the guy's writing, but I don't know that I've seen a successful author with worse self-preservation instincts.
     
  19. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    Dennings best SW work is actually Tatooine Ghost :p though only like 8 people seem to ever remember that book.
     
    Riv_Shiel, cdgodin, werpudel and 3 others like this.
  20. JediFan215

    JediFan215 Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
  21. ATimson

    ATimson Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 19, 2003
    As of May 2013, the last book hadn't been written yet. (It had been delayed to give Stackpole time to write his WarCraft novel, and then the publisher went broke. The "fight" you're talking about was with the publisher trying to sweep up Night Shade's assets on the cheap, and he was hardly alone in that.) Have you heard anything since then?

    I think that I have to disagree. Here's the history as I know it:

    Roc: Offered him a contract for less than his prior book, despite increasing sales. Jumping ship was the right thing to do. (And they were happy to have him back for more novels later on.)
    Bantam: I don't recall seeing any bridge-burning with his original fantasy; the sales just weren't there.
    Del Rey: He chose to focus on his original work instead of Star Wars.
    Night Shade Books: Company went belly-up and was acquired by someone else.
    Simon & Schuster: Did the one WarCraft novel, nothing since.

    So ending his ties with Roc after Prince of Havoc is the closest he's come to torching the bridge that I know of. Is there something that I'm missing?