Discussions Will we ever see a cross-sections book of EU ships and locations?

I was just curious if anyone else out there would like to see a Complete Cross-Sections book of EU ships and locations, and when we can expect one to come out. I mean, there are so many great examples that I would love to see, such as the bridge cities of Cato Neimoidia, or a Bantha-class transport. What about Lando's ship, the Lady Luck? Or what about seeing the inside of a Vong warship? Or seeing some locations from Csilla? I think that would be awesome, and only hope that something like that will come out soon...

 

It would be awesome. However, if Disney treats the whole EU as an "alternate universe" I can't see such a thing getting released.

 

Is there any hint that they will? I hope not, and I'm not sure the head of LucasFilm, Kathleen...(can never remember her last name...Kennedy?) will just lay down for that, nor Leeland Chee, for that matter.

 

Opinion is severely divided on that subject- with it regularly provoking argument on the Episode VII forums.

We may simply have to wait and see.

 

*sigh* Tis true, I suppose...

 

The Death Star Owner's Workshop Manual is one of the latest books to be released (this month, in fact) - still referencing EU stuff.

However- it may have been in the works since long before the announcement.

 

Uh-oh! New book! I want! Gimme-gimme-gimme! lol

 

There's already complaints that it's ignored newer material about the Death Star sizes, and gone with the old figures. Still, it fits the RoTJ novelization better.

 

That may have been Leeland Chee's rationale for making it cannon. He does tend to favor the novelization material a little more, probably because he can throw more detail into it than can be presented in cinema.

 

I for one would love to see this.

There's the numerous other classes of Star Destroyer that have been introduced, The Mon Remonda, Mediator and other new Mon Cal Designs, The Bothan Assault Frigate, E-wing, Tie Defender, Aleph, and dozens of others that are referred to but never explored.

 

I still want to see a proper Victory myself.

 

It should be noted that TCW is, at least technically, EU- and it got a book- Incredible Vehicles, which jasonfry helped write.

 

I doubt a book limited to EU ships and/or settings would work in the marketplace -- the movie/TV audience is so much bigger than the novel/comics/etc. audience that you're always going to need the iconic "screen" ships, locations etc. to make a book make sense financially for LFL and its licensing partners. You see that in books like the Atlas and Warfare -- they're overflowing with EU stuff, but from the beginning they were written and art was chosen so that a casual fan picking them up in a Barnes & Noble would see familiar ships, planets, characters and so forth.

Plus, honestly, I think the GFFA is a lot more satisfying when this stuff is integrated as best it can be, even if a side effect of that is hardcore fans like us get a lot of stuff we know by heart along with new material.

That's a good point that TCW is technically EU, but IMHO that distinction increasingly feels like a holdover from when most everything we had fit neatly into "movies" and "not movies." I suspect a few years from now the division will be more "movies/TV/video" and "everything else." Or perhaps all canon will have become much looser, with the common bond that these are all tales told long ago in a galaxy far, far away -- more like Robin Hood or King Arthur.

Obligatory: None of the above is derived from any conversations with people who'd actually know. It's just like my opinion and stuff.

 

Indeed. And there's always a certain amount of room for new material on things that appear in the films.

 

Definitely a fair point. But for example, it would be theoretically possible to publish two books - Star Cruiser Cross Sections and Starfighter and Transport Cross Sections (hopefully with much better titles), that would give space to include the classics (ISD II, Home I, X-wing, Tie, etc) while leaving most of the book open to explore other ships that didn't appear on screen (Eclipse, Mon Remonda, Aleph, Tie Raptor, etc)

Not exactly what I was thinking when I posted, but still getting at the same concepts.

 

Basically, this, but in two books, and as full cross sections rather than a couple of pics?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Essential_Guide_to_Vehicles_and_Vessels

 

This would be ideal, and since the market for us ship junkies is so small, they could charge the same they did for the encyclopedias, so long as the books were nice and thick. Hell, I'd pay as much as you would for the Blueprints book. You know, maybe they should just go ahead and open up the Holocron to the public, except for storylines stuff. You know Leeland Chee has all kinds of goodies that the public has never seen.

 

Actually yes thats almost exactly what I was thinking. (theoretically they could do a third volume of ground vehicles etc).

The problem I had with the new EGtVaV was they have one not-particularly great picture taking up one page, and the other having maybe 3/4 of a page of large print text, with an utterly terrible schematic at the bottom. I'd much rather see the left page being a cut away cross-section of the ship (ala cross sections), and the facing page being all type. MAYBE throw in a small picture of the non-cross sectioned ship somewhere. Somewhat more like the original EGtVaV was, but with better images and more detailed information.

 

Thank you! I thought I was the only one who thought those images were...less than stellar, shall we say? Let's get the guys who did the Complete Cross-Sections book to do the art work for all of them! Or better, let's make a division dedicated solely to producing ship-related artwork and schemata!

 

I'd love to see new ships!

 

From chats with cory voyek of Roqoodepot.com, and Tricia Barr of Suvudu, and Star Wars Insider, they've been hearing that the canon will be split between Pre, and Post Story group, Pre will be labelled, as ?Visions of Luke Skywalker, and post, will be the new SWU, that material including The PT, OT, Rebels, The ST, TCW, spin offs, and the books, and comics approved by the story group. On twitter Pablo Hidalgo has said he prefers the canon Boba, of the movies, and TCW, to the EU version.

As well as joking about the EU having centerpoint station much larger than the death star when both Han, and erdge, both being from corellia, should not have botn impressed by the death star, since they both would have been familiar with centerpoint. nd Pablo, is the one heading the new story group, so it sounds like we're looking at some big changes.

We might get the ship info, but only, if they cross over into the new SWU, or if it's published under the Visions line.

 

Why do I have the bad feeling that Michael Eisner is doing this to the EU in regards to the changes mentioned by newdawn12?



Must be the Corellian in me...

 

I hope so. Would be nice to have something like "an ultimate guide to the EU: cross sections, locations, etc" which could be over 300 pages long....

 

I have seen his comment on Boba Fett. Though I still don't quite get what he was referring to.

That aside, to borrow from another thread, his most recent response when asked about the EU's cannon status on Twitter was essentially:

@starsymbiotes I can say that in the past, if it was intended for the screen and developed by George Lucas, it was canon.
@starsymbiotes and then everything else was EU. Stuff that might be true. Might also not be.
@starsymbiotes in the future... We're working on it.

Which to me is either basically "we haven't decided" or "we can't tell you yet". Which hardly indicates that canon will be split. Other than a couple fan-generated rumors about the "visions" thing, there's been nothing remotely official about that. Maybe that speculation is right, but personally I would say that its only speculation at this point.