Lit The 181st Imperial Discussion Group: Vision Of The Future!

UR threats always fascinate me. You might find it interesting that, as explained in Essential Reader's Companion, the Vong were at one point supposed to be what KOTOR later developed into the Rakata. In fact, I to this day believe that some Rakata settled on Yuuzhan'tar and became the Vong.

 

In my opinion turning the Vong into what the Empire of the Hand is afraid of was the best choice to make the transition. The Vong needed to be a gamechanger - why then tell everyone that there's something worse (and more interesting) on hold? It only diminishes the Vong's impact. Now, what the NJO really would have needed to work with this would have been a large role for the supposedly huge Handpire. But as it stands, Stackpole and Zahn would have been the only probable writers to really include Fel and to dig up that old plot. Stackpole chose Jaina's love interest instead and made the Chiss some smartpants bystanders.

The NJO team more or less wanted to start from scratch. Making one of the factions a comparatively complex thing from the old book series wasn't what they were looking for. I guess Stackpole already did more with that than they wanted, just as he wanted to save Anakin's life by writing more about him. The Empire and whatever the Chiss and Fel are doing don't really enter the game until much later, probably around the time they realized that starting from scratch wasn't necessary and there were enough fans who wanted to see all the old stuff again, and see its continuation.

But why didn't the Handpire show up as soon as one of the ships in the hangar was repaired, or a supply vessel came along? I like your idea, Jeff, of the Handpire going through attrition battles offscreen, being just a shadow of the presumed powerful force we see here.

What I'd like even better is if the biggest part of the unknown regions threats turned out to be stuff the Vong seeded there over the decades. It could still be unknown mysterious scary stuff since nobody had seen Vong biotech before that. You know, the Handpire meeting up with colonies of firebreathers, acid monsters, black hole inducing rocks.

Other than that, the only thing that's actually supported by this text alone is that the Handpire saw no need to talk to Empire and Republic since Thrawn hadn't re-appeared to pull his sword from the stone or out of the lake or however this thing works. They remained in place, waited, maybe got weaker, always waiting for their commander to live up to his last command - but that particular clone never came.


Oh, and about Thrawn being good - no, he's only had a plan other than support Palpatine's principles when he tried to conquer the galaxy. He wanted to conquer the galaxy to prepare it for his Unknown Regions/Vong war. Even if there's some good intention in there - saving his galaxy - he's showing a pretty lousy attitude when executing his plans. Which is entirely in the tradition of Anakin killing children and betray his Jedi 'family' to make sure Padmé and his offspring will survive, or of Revan bombing the galaxy into submission to prepare them for battle against the TOR Sith. Thrawn was evil alright. He was a mastermind, and he had an ulterior motive other than your average conqueror, but he was still a pretty lousy person. And in that vein, it's okay to write him as someone better in earlier phases of his life; as someone who'd actually be nice enough to try to save the galaxy and only get lost in the process. I think the few glimpses Zahn can ever give and the lack of interpretations other authors have given us of early Thrawn, however, don't make for a compelling transition from good to misguided evil, and I think I might have preferred Thrawn to be a more clear cut sociopath, or as someone coming from a culture that cared more about the unifying force than the living force, i.e. society as a whole than individuals.

 

I am vigorously opposed to reducing the UR threats to just the Vong. The Vong may be one element of what Thrawn knows to be out there, but there are dozens, hundreds of other threats out there that exist independently and I really want to hear more about them. Zahn left us with a perfect setup to take the Star Wars narrative in a new direction -- I'm not criticizing the NJO, which was great, but it's sad to see that the potential that VOTF had left out there for the taking still has yet to be followed through on, and even sadder to see Elaine Cunningham and Williams/Dix bungle the EOTH. The Unknown Regions offer us new threats, new species, new societies and galactic powers. They offer the plot potential our out characters exploring the unknown, which is a new mode for them, a new story type, but which still connects with the core thematic power of the saga, the idea of a connection with the mystical, a journey into understanding. It's a perfect setup to give us a whole new wilderness to explore full of newness and potential, and I want to see that potential followed up on sometime. Luke's grandkids don't need to fight a big galactic war to give them their big story . . . they just need to explore the Unknown Regions.

 

If Zahn had decided to work with the other authors and be apart of the NJO do you think perhaps they may have gone that way more and written it better ?

 

YEAH!!!!!!!!

 

I don't think Zahn was ever part of the planning for the NJO, so it's not a matter of working with them. They had their planning meetings, and they wanted to go with something new and not reliant on a bunch of previous books, so I think that was more of a determining factor.

 

And then they find something that will plunge the galaxy into war!!!

...

Okay, that sounds an awful lot like Dark Nest.

 

And there would have been a peaceful galaxy, if not for those pesky kids!

SCOOBY-SCOOBY-VONG!

 

This really was the perfect ending for a discussion of the Bantam era's ending.