Lit Your First EU Experience

Hey there! I'm pretty new to this forum, so I just wanted to meet and connect with fans of the Expanded Universe. My question to you is what were the first EU books (or book) That you read? Mine were the Han Solo books by A.C. Crispin.

I honestly don't remember, because it was a long time ago, I was very young and I certainly didn't dive in.

Mostly it was just whatever my brother had.

It was either Marvel Comics or, if we're counting video games, ESB on Atari and NES.

If only books count then I think it was TTT or Vector Prime.

It was either the Jedi Apprentice books or Starfighter: Crossbones.

Probably the Glove of Darth Vader books. When all the boys in my class started going Star Wars crazy from the Shadows of the Empire project and the Special Edition pre-release merchandising, I got interested enough to make my parents rent me the movies. I had seen bits of them before because my grandpa was a huge sci-fi fan but I hated it when I was younger because it was way too weird. As a more mature 7- or 8- or whatever-year-old, though, I liked the movies and got interested in Star Wars, so while all the boys were bringing in Star Wars Micro Machine playsets and most of the girls were playing with Beanie Babies (I think this was when these were big), I was checking out terrible Star Wars books from the school library. The first storyline I remember actively following, though, was Galaxy of Fear, which is probably why I still have a soft spot for it.

I think the first adult SW novel I read in full was either Shadow Hunter or Star by Star but I'd skimmed through several others at Waldenbooks before that.

Tales of the Bounty Hunters was my first EU book. It was followed very closely by the SotE comics.

For a long while I read about the things that transpired in the EU via google, than just decided to finally go out and read one..

I bought the Thrawn Trilogy at Barnes, all 3 books of the trilogy. I picked them all up at once, so no excuses. Got into the first of the trilogy, Heir to the Empire, and was on Dark Force Rising by the end of the week. I loved this trilogy by Zahn, all the classic characters are back and there is great villainy throughout. Now i wanted to read more of the EU.

Read Shatterpoint next and loved how dark it was. Now im on book 2 of the Jedi Academy trilogy, Dark Apprentice, and will soon be on the third of the trilogy.

After that, im gonna read the Darth Plagueis novel. Ive had it sitting around and cant wait to finally get into it.

The first thing I read was the Hand of Thrawn. I was about 13/14 and I was staying at my dads for the summer holidays. He's a fan of the films and had brought HoT but hadn't read it cus he couldn't get into it. There wasn't much to do at his so I started reading it and I fell in love with it. Finished the book in about two or three days and some convinced my Grandma to buy me the rest of TTT. That holiday we went to three theme parks and I spent the entire duration there walking around the parks with my nose in the books barely even noticing the rides.

Oh my goodness, mine were the Glove of Darth Vader and Galaxy of Fear books as well!

I can't remember the novels. I know I read the OT but I can't remember what I read after that.

@HipsterChewie the Han books are fun.

I bought Jedi Search and The Last Command on the same day at a Sam's Club. This was when Jedi Search had just come out. I mistakenly read Jedi Search first(cuz it said book 1 on the cover). I can't remember if I read TLC then, or not. I do remember realizing TLC was before JS and tracking down HTTE and DFR... which resulted in me getting DFR in hardcover at an outlet mall discount book store. And then the waiting for Dark Apprentice... and then the waiting for Champions of the Force.... argh.

Of course, around that time I was picking up issues of Dark Empire II, tracking down a TPB of Dark Empire. And Tales of the Jedi. I remember getting some of that stuff in what amounted to adventures for me. I don't know why, I could have probably had Waldenbooks order stuff for me, but I don't remember ever getting that done. I remember getting the TPBs for Dark Empire and Tales of Jedi(the one with Ulic Qel-Droma and the Beast Wars of Onderon, before it was subtitled Knights of the Republic) in Fort Wayne, Indiana because I was there with my parents for some reason. That's about an hour and a half from where I grew up.

I kind of miss those days, when there wasn't a new Star Wars book coming out every week...

weird, me too. except not comics

Tales of the Bounty Hunters and Shadows of the Empire novelization. Before that i played X-wing computer game though.

I played X-Wing with copied 3.5 disks from a friend, and I didn't have a proper soundcard... so X-Wing was a silent experience for me, for a very long time. And then I bought X-Wing CD at some point. I still have that.

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

As a kid I had to do a book report for school, so I picked The Phantom Menace novelization. I liked it so much that I read the original novelizations. They are still my favorite Star Wars books.

The Thrawn Trilogy. As it should be.

That must be fun, reading the Crispin books first, seeing as they basically tied much of the then-existing continuity together... many "hey, it's that guy" moments reading through the rest of the Bantam era then, I guess?

Mine was Dark Force Rising, when I was thirteen or something. A friend had brought the whole trilogy to a holiday camp and was just re-reading HttE, so I started with book 2, then read 3, then 1, which was fun. I still like to dive into series somewhere during the middle (heck I started watching LOST at the beginning of season 5 ) and try to figure out what must have happened before.
Also I was making notes from the first moment on, in a tiny little book that I still have, setting the groundwork for my first 400+-page fanfic that I haven't dared look at again since more than a decade. Suffice to say that the main antagonist was Admiral Screed

And I fondly remember the days when I would check on that obscure game store somewhere in the back corner of a shopping street to see if they had any new copies of the Adventure Journal or other WEG RPG supplements that I could buy for my lunch money... but who needs lunch if you can have Otherspace instead

Courtship of Princess Leia was my first EU novel (not counting the OT novelizations I read as a kid - thank you Scholastic book club). I was so turned off, I didn't read any more for quite a while, until a friend insisted I give TTT a try.

Legacy of the Force was the first EU thing I read... it's a wonder I'm still reading

My dad found Star Wars Droids: The Pirates and the Prince at a Garage Sale. He could have gotten the OT as well but wasn't sure if I would like it. After watching the Droids VHS I was able to rent the OT from the video store and got hooked. Just in time for TPM I think.
My first books were the Jedi Academy Trilogy in a box set from my Grandparents.
My first comic was the last issues of Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, the 3rd issue of Vader's Quest or the 3rd issue of The Phantom Menace. My first actual TPB was probably The Phantom Menace.
The first game I got was Episode 1 Racer for the Gameboy

Betrayal, the first book in LOTF. Really disliked it but the series got better.

My first EU experience was most definitely this. Followed by the Ewok movies and cartoon series. No, wait - there was, of course, also this. Don't know if that was first or second, though.

If you mean modern EU, the first experience would be seeing HTTE in the new releases aisle at the bookstore and ignoring it because even around my eleventh birthday I knew something like that would never work. My next experience would be seeing Dark Force Rising in the new releases, probably a year later, and knowing that this would be really interesting after all. I think I even bought it first, but I'm not sure if I read it completely before getting HTTE, or if I just started that and realized that I was missing something.

Also, some of you are really young, aren't you?

Come to think of it, I had the Snoova action figure and Luke Skywalker in Coruscant Guard Armor action figures back in '96 or so.

It was a big surprise when I found out that there were people who didn't see the EU as canon. Hmm, and here's the particular issue of Crossbones, in fact:


Man, Nym is awesome.

I'm not really sure. My first SW book was Dark Apprentice. It's possible that I saw some episodes of the Ewoks cartoon series on TV before that, but I can't really remember. I also remember playing X-Wing a lot, which came out around the same time.