Correct me if I'm wrong, but did George Lucas come up with the idea of Kyber Crystals? I always thought a better name for the ore in a lightsaber would be "astromagnetite". Feel free to criticize me.
One of the early drafts by Lucas described a "kiber crystal" which was said to amplify the Force. The spelling and description/use have changed a few times but the general name and idea were there pretty early on.
Kiber crystals weren't used in lightsabers. AFAIK that wasn't a thing until the Disney era - though there were crystals in lightsabers before that, but they usually weren't particularly special. In fact, the Kiber Crystals in early SW script drafts were more like talismans that extended and increased a user's Force power - modeled on the Lens of the Galactic Patrol in EE "Doc" Smith's Lensman SF series, as well as perhaps a more benevolent version of Tolkien's One Ring, or more straightforwardly, like the Phial of Galadriel. In the January 1975 second draft there was only one such crystal, which was kept hidden by Luke's foster family on the desert planet Utapau (later Tatooine), and which Luke had to take to his elderly Jedi father, a leader of the Rebellion, to renew his powers. However, in the August 1975 third draft (which is much closer to the final film in its storyline), the Jedi had possessed many of the crystals before their downfall, but they had been lost with the rise of the Empire. So while the other heroes are rescuing Princess Leia, Ben Kenobi steals one of the crystals from a repository where Vader and the other Sith Lords are keeping it, so he can give it to Luke. The 1978 novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, whose plot George Lucas and Alan Dean Foster came up with before the first film came out, is also about Luke and Leia trying to retrieve a Kaiburr Crystal (with a new spelling) from an ancient temple, while also trying to keep Darth Vader from obtaining it instead. Aside from the new spelling, this is pretty much the same sort of "Force talisman" seen in earlier script drafts. Its power is demonstrated at the climax, when Luke uses it to heal Leia after she's critically injured in a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader. In Lucas' early notes for ESB and Leigh Brackett's first-draft script, the location of Dagobah is encoded in a removable crystal embedded in the hilt of Luke's lightsaber. Some of Lucas' notes refer to it as a "kiber crystal", but it doesn't seem to be a Force talisman of the sort mentioned above, nor the sort of crystal that powers a lightsaber.
Kyber crystals were defined and then named in The Clone Wars, pre-Disney and with script supervision and input from George Lucas. I'm not saying they were always a fully-formed part of the plan from the very beginning, but they're definitely one of his ideas.
Lucas never talked about how Lightsabers work. The EU was the first to do so and they came up with Adagen crystals as a primary focusing crystal. Others such as Coursca gems were used. Artificial crystals could be used, but in one story a cracked volcanic stone was used. The rush job in creating a Lightsaber and an unfocused mind resulted in a faulty weapon that resulted in an injury.
Why you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler! Seriously, that's a pretty cool name, but I don't feel that it has a Star Wars ring to it. I mean, it could be used for some other sort of ore in Star Wars, but kyber crystals... They are very special. Living entities in a way. And closely linked to the Force, the lightsabers and the Jedi. It's just appropriate that they have a more fantastical-sounding name, something that stands out. That's what I feel that "kyber" does. It's like a fantasy version of "cyber"!
Just don't ask about what "Khyber" (or its fuller version "Khyber Pass") means in Cockney rhyming slang.
I mean, isn't that the whole point of this place? To discuss and determine how much of this stuff got pulled out of there?
I’m not keen on astromagnetite if I’m honest. It’s a bit Marvely. It’s better than anything I could come up with though. Galactocalcite? Actually that’s pretty good. Cosmo-Ammolite? I think I’ve unlocked a hidden talent. I gonna trademark these before Disney steal them.
Force-ite? Foresight? Forsyte? Then we could change the title of Star Wars to The Forsyte Saga! Wait, that rings a bell...
Great summary! Indeed, lightsaber construction was only touched on during the OT in a deleted scene from ROTJ where Luke finishes building his new lightsaber. But we don’t see much, and what little we see does not involve crystals, it’s just your usual messing with electronics/circuitry. This fits with the idea from earlier drafts of the first Star Wars where lightsabers were not exclusive to Jedi but were just another of the many weapons people used in the galaxy. For example, in some of these earlier drafts even some stormtroopers carried lightsabers, so there wasn’t anything special about their construction. I’m not sure when the crystals were first introduced in the EU. Possibly it was in the Dark Empire or Tales of the Jedi comics. My first exposure to it was in the visual dictionary for the OT, which I think was made to coincide with the release of the Special Edition in the late nineties. But the comics predate this. From what I’ve read, the kiber crystal idea was abandoned during development of the first Star Wars as the story shifted more toward focusing on the protagonist’s connection to the Force itself. Then there was the addition of the Death Star plans, so there was less need for another plot device that could make things confusing. Lucas also said it detracted from the characters of Luke and Vader because it made them seem too much like supermen.
The macguffin of the 1978 novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye was a Force-imbued jewel known as the Kaiburr crystal. It had miraculous healing power, which is another idea that would return eventually.
