"The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels," by Bill Smith, Doug Chiang,Troy Vigil [Del Rey, 1996]

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Summary:

Every Star Wars fan knows that Slave I is Boba Fett's tricked-out bounty-hunting ride. But how many know about its short-lived successor, Slave II? And what average fan has ever laid eyes on an Imperial MT-AT walker? (Imagine a huge, arachnid AT-AT.) Heck, most SW buffs will even try to tell you that Vader's Super Star Destroyer is the biggest bad-boy this side of the Battle of Endor. Not likely: Emperor Palpatine's probably got bigger shuttlecraft on his 17.5-kilometer-long Eclipse-class ship.
Bill Smith's illustrated Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels--a veritable blue book for the Star Wars universe--lets you kick the tires on all these ships and more. Researching not just the movies, but also Star Wars novels, comics, computer games, et al., Smith tirelessly details 100 different ways to get around--and dish out destruction--in the land of sandcrawlers and speeders. Descriptions of familiar vehicles ("That's no moon... it's a space station!") blend seamlessly with the more obscure (can you name six kinds of TIE fighters?). This is one showroom-floor tour you won't want to miss out on.

Read the TF.n Book Staff Reviews!

 

This is an exceptional Essential Guide, both in terms of text and artwork (Doug Chiang?).

 

Doug Chiang?

Doug is the quite masterful artist of this book.

 

Great book. The Chaing drawings (he did the drawings, not the tech drawing right?) could have been a bit better, but that's OK.

Can't wait for the new version to be released later this year.

10.

 

9.
It was great, but i just personally think that reading about these things can get a little boring at times.

 

With Amazon taking a millenium to finally give me my EGVV, and the price cheaper to import it halfway across the world than purchase it locally for over double, I'd rate it four out of five stars.

Graphics

The sketches and outlines are actually quite impressive, the former almost as good as genuine colour work. Finally! You can see what obscure ships like Hapan warships, auxiliary assault vehicles, and heaps more actually are.

Some simplicities were given, like pointing to an area of the ship and labeling it "armour plating" or "computer control".

Incomplete size data

There were deficiencies, and quite a few of them. Many entries had partial specs, though. The sandcrawler, for example, was given a height but not a length; the TIE Defender's tractor beam wasn't included; and no length was given for the Ubikkrikan cruiser. Just to name a few, unfortunately there were plenty more. Since no small trouble was taken to produce these text entries, it would have been good to have fuller size specifications.

The stuff from Dark Empire also featured heavily.

Inconsistencies

-The Sun Crusher image differs substantially to the Dark Apprentice novel's depiction
-The Juggernaut was never texted as capital J, which was odd
-The Escort Frigate titled Rebel Cruiser???!!!
-The Gallofree freighter called Rebel Transport???!!!
-Star Home's hundred guns now only forty

Excessive redundancy

Too much excessive redundacy. The could have been just two landspeeder entries, rather three; one swoop, instead of two; and one B-wing, instead of two. This would have left room for many omitted features.


Omitted entries

Some important ones that needed to be shown included:
-Golan battle stations
-A separate entry for Assault Frigates, rather than just part of the Escort Frigate entry
-The Floatng Fortress
-Loronar Strike Cruisers

 

Whoops, forgot to add Corellian Gunships to the above omitted list. They're popularly used, but weren't included.

 

I agree with Excellence that there was too much redundancy. But all in all, a good reference book. I can't wait for the NEGVV!

Horn out