Hungarian Han Solo Novels in Translation!

Chronicle of the Adventure on the Planet of the Ewoks is such a good title.

 

There is a short story featuring Chewbacca featured in K-Zone magazine that's worth adding to your bonus list of English-language works not released in the United States.

 

Great find, this was totally new to me! Thank you!

 

Awesome!!! I totally forgot about the Hasbro comic and AotC guide. I seem to recall from my Lostworlds research that the AotC guide counted as a Lostworld, as the author wasn't even aware of the book's publication. Don't know if this is true or not, though. Haven't done Lostworlds for a while. But brilliant job anyway! Looks like quite a list.

 

Needs "A Star Wars Story".

 

Why stop at just Ewoks? "Chronicle of the Adventure on the Planet of the Ewoks and the Duloks and the Gorax and the Yuzzum and the Jindas and the Phlogs and the Gorphs and the Wisties and the Dandelion Warriors and Mount Sorrow: A Star Wars Story." It's got a ring to it.

 

NJO titles got pretty lengthy too, especially with the sub-trilogy and duology names.

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse

 

Another interesting topic regarding foreign language exclusive content often overlooked is nonfiction and magazine articles. There are great ones in several fanclub magazines, be it the german OSWFC Star Wars magazine, or the dutch/belgium Teekay Magazine (for which I wrote some in the past myself even along with friends). Cataloguing this exclusive content for other fans and languages would be interesting maybe, or going by their nations wookieepedia clones there are great wook articles on jedipedia (german) and yodapedia (dutch) that are sometimes superior to the english wook even. Especially since some fan experts regarding alien species or unnamed movie characters/aliens kept great lists with screenshots etc. on those that are not always mirrored to the english wook. Many of them are authors for starwars.com, teekay mag, deAgostini mags, insider and else in the past even, but aside official work also had their well done unlicensed contributions there in their native languages.

I myself catalogue (offline so far) "Star Wars Online Content" and try to preserve that before websites change design or vanish, but that is a neverending ongoing task that is like Don Quixote's fight and madness. Undoable alone and sadly at several Gigabytes size already too large to be put online (unless someone requests something specific probably).

 

Would it be possible for a small group of fans to make an apocrypha wiki a reality? Does it cost money? I'm fairly busy, but I think an apocrypha wiki is so desperately needed that I'd gladly contribute articles. Get enough people in a discord server and anything's possible, really.

 

That's a great idea! Wikias are totally free to create, and aren't too difficult to maintain (Wookieepedia is quite sophisticated by most wiki standards). That could be a convenient way to archive certain material as @ColeFardreamer suggested as well, without any one person having to host a webpage.

Two quick weekend updates, as well: the translator of the Chinese webnovel is on board to work on the Ewoks manhua as well, and I've also rediscovered Once Upon a Galaxy..., a short one-page UK exclusive comic featuring one of the earliest depictions of the Rebels stealing the Death Star plans. We're really plumbing the depths of obscurity here.

https://scontent.fdnn1-1.fna.fbcdn....=915e2253c55f7402b6da529dd0e8a0ab&oe=6079B8CE

 

The number of different times the plans were stolen is patently absurd. What year is that comic from, if you happen to know?

 

1982, making it the 2nd (after the NPR audio drama in '81) of an infinite number of retellings. Those plans have passed through more hands than the Olympic torch!

https://scontent.fdnn1-1.fna.fbcdn....=62b286cb5b93f0beb871b2ca5dcd632e&oe=607BFBF7

 

Some earlier ANH scripts had dialogue partially explaining it as well. I'm pretty sure the three leads actually read some of these lines in casting videos.

Either way, it's probably the most rehashed thing in the EU. However, the Solo kids were kidnapped a lot of times, the Death Star had a few backstories, and the ISB was founded at least three times as well.

 

A quick update: while translating Han Solo’s Nomads, I’ve found that certain background plot details about the main setting on the planet Premont, as well as the titular Nomads, happen to coincide neatly with certain other details of Expanded Universe lore. I brought this to Joe Bongiorno’s attention, and without giving away too much, don’t be surprised if the Extended Edition of Supernatural Encounters includes a small reference to Nomads

 

Bravo!

 

That's pretty cool! Do those details coincide by chance do you think? Or did the author do some research into other Star Wars work while writing?

 

Seems to be mostly coincidence in this case, although both Gáspár András and Zsolt Nyulászi were clearly very familiar with the Expanded Universe up to the release of the Thrawn trilogy (which they also translated before writing the Han Solo novels). There’s a possibility there will be some inspiration from Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, but I’m not far enough in the story to say for sure.

To give a small peek, in Nomads there’s a few references to a non-human species that ruled the galaxy tens of thousands of years before the Empire, how they were overcome and defeated by other species banding together, and how they were mostly forgotten about in galactic historical records. In the Hungarian text they are referred to as “Gundarks,” which is hilarious in the context of modern lore which established those to be animals. I took the liberty of changing the name to the Rakata, which Joe loved.

And that’s not even getting into the weird stuff

 

The Gundark Infinite Empire. I'm on the floor here.

 

I'm pretty sure that the Infinite Empire was first named and described in KOTOR. It sounds like these novels were written well before the game came out, am I correct in these assumptions?

If that's the case, was there a general concept of a precursor empire in the EU before KOTOR came out and fully established it, or was this just a huge coincidence?

More sneak peaks would be appreciated

 

The idea of an ancient alien race that once ruled the galaxy is a common scifi trope.

 

Heck it's not only a trope in Fiction or scifi... same trope applies to many religions and new age movements. And according to some, actual history!

 

Correct, the Infinite Empire first appeared/were mentioned in KotOR. To my knowledge of the EU as it was circa 1992/93, there were no prior mentions of an ancient interstellar empire up to that point. Though as others have said, it’s a fairly common sci-fi trope, so Gáspár András may have just drawn from the general concept.

Usually with these translations I try to be mindful of the time period the books were written in when certain contradictions pop up. For example, I’ll change references of Earthly animals to a Star Wars equivalent, but I try to keep such references limited to things that existed in the early Bantam era (in other words, things that feel appropriate timewise out-of-universe). So “tiger” might get changed to “Corellian sand panther,” but not “nexu,” as I try to avoid referencing anything from the 2000s when I can. But in cases like this, it’s more harmonious to the overall EU to make a reference to the Rakata, since they’re such a well-established “Big Bad” from the long, LONG ago part of the timeline. Which leads me to those other sneak peeks...

There are Forceful shenanigans in Han Solo’s Nomads. I find this particularly interesting because Han’s not supposed to believe in the Force or have seen evidence of its existence at this point in time. Han Solo: The Imperial Agent flirts with this too by making the character Go Rien Moss (from whom I got my username haha) Force-sensitive, but it works because Han thinks the limited powers he displays are basically parlor tricks. When I began to realize where a certain plot point in Nomads was heading, I skipped ahead in the book and found references to Ashla and Bogan, the ancient names for the light and dark side going back to Lucas’s early drafts of A New Hope. What I’m expecting is any bizarre occurrences Han has in this story will eventually be explained as a result of those phenomena, without them explicitly being labeled “the Force” as such. So Han can just chalk it up to being some of the “strange stuff” he’s seen while flying “from one side of this galaxy to the other.”

 

Whoa, really interesting stuff. Literally can't wait for the translation. My interest has just perked in ye olde Star Wars days, in fact, just started reading Dawn of the Jedi again playing KotOR for the first time. Absolute blast.

Anyway, back on topic, I love the Gundark thing. It's absolutely hilarious. But just thinking about the "keeping it with the period of publication", it did say in the original Hungarian books that Mr Avery's and friends' books were translations of English books from the 70's, so...

 

One of the reasons I’ve more or less ignored the phony English names and dates (other than to avoid confusion over whether these are truly long-lost 70s novels) is that the books were clearly written as products of the Heir to the Empire publishing era. We get references to Coruscant and Yaga Minor in Nomads for example. Back in the 90s before the internet took off the publishers could get away with that, but any Wookieepedian worth their salt nowadays would immediately see right through it Plus, I’m not a huge fan of the Brian Daley novels themselves, ironically. I’ve really come to prefer the Hungarian books in comparison for feeling more connected to the wider universe.

 

I'm danish, so I'll translate the Attack of the Clones Visual Guide. It might take a long time, since I'm dealing with some health problems at the moment, and also has other projects I'm working, such as my forthcoming youtube channel.