Let's Read Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker

The year is 1976. Gerald Ford is President of the United States. The highest-grossing film of the year is Rocky. The top hit single is "Silly Little Love Songs" by Paul McCartney and Wings. A young writer/director named George Lucas is making a little film called Star Wars.

That December, a novel is released for the upcoming film. Ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster and credited to George Lucas, it is simply titled Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. This is a time before episode numbers, before the Expanded Universe had a name, before anyone knew what a Wookiee or Death Star or lightsaber was. This is the beginning of Star Wars.

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[blockquote]
[b]Luke Skywalker Challenged the Stormtroopers of a Distant Galaxy on a Daring Mission?Where a Force of Life Became the Power of Death![/b]

Luke Skywalker was a twenty-year-old who lived and worked on his uncle's farm on the remote planet of Tatooine...and he was bored beyond belief. He yearned for adventures out among the stars?adventures that would take him beyond the farthest galaxies to distant and alien worlds.

But Luke got more than he bargained for when he intercepted a cryptic message from a beautiful princess held captive by a dark and powerful warlord. Luke didn't know who she was, but he knew he had to save her?and soon, because time was running out.

Armed only with courage and with the light saber that had been his father's, Luke was catapulted into the middle of the most savage space war ever...and he was headed straight for a desperate encounter on the enemy battle station known as the Death Star!
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Exciting! (The back cover also lets us know we get sixteen pages of full-color photos from the movie inside, helpful for the 1976 reader trying to visualize this strange new universe.)

So being the first Star Wars product ever, this holds an interesting little place in the franchise's history. It would, technically, be considered the first EU product (though the honor of the first product to have a story outside the films will be reserved for about a year, when "The Keeper's World" is released in the UK). As such, there's a lot of little bits that would end up becoming well-established EU facts in years to come. There's also several things much odder, some of which will be ignored by later EU, films, and even quite a bit different from the very movie this is based on.

I will be reading through the book chapter by chapter, highlighting various notes of interest as I go, discussing how things have changed in Star Wars and the continuity since 1976?or how they haven't. This is [i]Let's[/i] Read, so feel free to pick up a copy of the book and join in the commentary. We'll begin with the Prologue.

 

PROLOGUE

Because this is so short, and has quite a number of curiosities to it, I'm going to quote this part alone in full and just sort of give general thoughts, which won't be the usual format I use.

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[blockquote]Another galaxy, another time.

The Old Republic was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. No need to note where it was or whence it came, only to know that... it was the Republic.

Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match.

So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside.

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions.

But a small number of systems rebelled at these new outrages. Declaring themselves opposed to the New Order they began the great battle to restore the Old Republic.

From the beginning they were vastly outnumbered by the systems held in thrall by the Emperor. In those first dark days it seemed certain the bright flame of resistance would be extinguished before it could cast the light of new truth across a galaxy of oppressed and beaten peoples...

From the First Saga
[i]Journal of the Whills[/i]

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes."
Leia Organa of Alderaan, Senator
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This is one of four of the novelizations to begin with a prologue. Return of the Jedi's is the first scene of the movie, and Attack of the Clones' is a prelude scene; the one that this has the most in common with is the prologue of Matt Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelization, both of them giving a big picture overview of the dark state of the galaxy at the beginning of the story, and ending with that note of hope. Appropriate, given the two movies'/novels' placement in the saga.

Both parts of the prologue are also epigraphs, a device not used often since in Star Wars?Karen Traviss includes them in all her books, and Force Heretic and Shadows of the Empire include single quotes at the beginning of their books, but that's all I can think of. I wonder if Foster was inspired by Dune here, a novel that loved using epigraphs in each chapter to establish the massive scale of its setting (and started with a quote by a princess!).

But let's get to the content. This is odd in that so much of what's described is different from how it would later turn out to be, yet much of it is also extremely prescient. For starters, it doesn't begin with "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." The movie starts off describing the situation between the Rebellion and Empire, with the Republic not even getting mentioned until Obi-Wan's speech, and intentionally dropping the viewer into the middle of the action to figure out what's going on. Foster, on the other hand, immediately goes for creating a sense of the history here, with the legend of the unassailable, mythological Republic giving way to the present.

The mention of "the massive organs of commerce" hel

 

I had always thought that the creation of the Corporate Sector came from the offhand reference to the "organs of commerce" - WEG's Corporate Sector SB seemed to tie various loyal corporations to the Emperor.

 

Since the story of Star Wars was developed in the Vietnam War/Nixon/Watergate era, and recalling that George Lucas indicated that Emperor Palpatine was based in part on President Nixon, I thought I'd do this little experiment, inserting people and corporations that might have served as examples to those in the prologue:

The Old Republic was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. No need to note where it was or whence it came, only to know that... it was the Republic.

Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match.

So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside.

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government(CIA Director Richard Helms, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), and the massive organs of commerce (ITT, United Fruit, Anaconda Copper, SOCONY), the ambitious Senator Palpatine (Richard Nixon) caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor (The "Imperial Presidency") , shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers (John Ehrlichman, John Dean, H.R. Haldeman) he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy (JFK, MLK, RFK), the Imperial governors (Ronald Reagan-CA) and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy (National Guard on college campuses, Kent State). Many used the imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions (Alexander Haig?).

But a small number of systems rebelled at these new outrages. Declaring themselves opposed to the New Order (SDS, New Left, Abbie Hoffman?) they began the great battle to restore the Old Republic.

From the beginning they were vastly outnumbered by the systems held in thrall by the Emperor (Nixon landslide in 1972 election). In those first dark days it seemed certain the bright flame of resistance would be extinguished before it could cast the light of new truth across a galaxy of oppressed and beaten peoples...

What do you think? Or am I just off-base?

 

CHAPTER I

Chapter I covers the beginning of the movie up to Leia being captured and Threepio and Artoo leaving in the escape pod.

The novel opens exactly at the same point as the movie, over Tatooine as the Tantive IV (not named in the novel) arrives. If we're keeping track of the novelizations, ESB starts once scene later than its movie, TPM and AOTC start quite a bit earlier.

There's a bit more of the science fiction vibe here over the fantasy, as Foster goes into a little scientific detail about the Tatoo system (the stars are G1 and G2, the yellow color of Tatooine is due to the large quantities of sodium in its sands); he'll do more of this later.

Cool little bit about the discovery of Tatooine in here: "It was a vast, shining globe and it cast a light of lambent topaz into space-but it was not a sun. Thus, the planet had fooled men for a long time. Not until entering close orbit around it did its discoverers realize that this was a world in a binary system and not a third sun itself."

The droids, of course, get the first appearance and dialogue of the novel.

Line Change
"There's no escape for the Captain this time." Not the Princess. Interesting.

The stormtroopers make their famous entrance through the ceiling, not the hatch.

Vader introduction: "Two meters tall. Bipedal. Flowing black robes trailing from the figure and a face forever masked by a functional if bizarre black metal breath screen-a Dark Lord of the Sith was an awesome, threatening shape as it strode through the corridors of the rebel ship."

The Way Things Were
"Fear followed the footsteps of all the Dark Lords." Could easily be interpreted to be referrring to previous Dark Lords, but the implication at the time seems to have been that Vader isn't the only one.

For all he criticizes Artoo's language, Threepio has a foul mouth of his own: "Uttering curses in several languages, some purely mechanical, Threepio raced fluidly after his friend."

"'Chaos take your mission!' Vader growled." Clearly the angrier ANH Vader?and about as odd-sounding with the later evolution of the character as the comic's "by the dark gods of the Sith" line?and also the first use of this curse.

When asked about the tapes, the officer Vader is choking replies "Only... the Commander knows." I guess this isn't Antilles who gets killed in the novel.

Named minor character: Lieutenant Hija. Must be important, since other than the droids and Vader he's the only character named in this whole chapter.

"If they landed near a civilized city, [Threepio] would seek elegant employment in a halcyon atmosphere, something more befitting his status and training." Yes, Threepio, I'm sure working on Tatooine would befit your training.

I haven't really given any plot summary here, since it's exactly the same as the movie. Next time we get deleted scenes and actual expanded material, as we finally meet our titular hero.

 

Note the author's use of "heavy weapons emplacements" and "computerized energy battery"; looks like turbolaser hadn't been thought up yet. In fact, I don't think the word "laser" appears in any of Alan Dean Foster's first two Star Wars books.

Also, the Star Destroyer is described as a "cruiser" mounting "dozens" of heavy weapons emplacements; I wonder if this what WEG used as the basis for their "60 turbolaser batteries" stat in the sourcebooks.

 

With magic searching powers, I can confirm this. Good catch.

CHAPTER II

Chapter II covers the deleted Luke-on-Tatooine scenes, Vader's interrogation of Leia, and the capture of the droids by the Jawas.

Continuity Note
Tatooine has "flatlands formed by long-evaporated seabeds". Tatooine's ecological transformation in the distant past will not be forgotten by later canon. 27 years later, Knights of the Old Republic will give a possible explanation for it.

Dim the lights, cue the main theme: here comes Luke Skywalker, he of the adventures in the title.

Deleted Scene
Luke and a Treadwell droid are trying to fix a moisture vaporator, when he spots a gleam of light in the sky. He looks at it through macrobinoculars, then hops in his landspeeder to rush to Anchorhead. The Treadwell droid breaks, so Luke leaves it behind.

The Way Things Were
Luke is twenty here, as also mentioned on the back cover. Not a bad guess, as canon turned out.

Okay, slight tangent, what exactly is moisture farming? Collecting water from the atmosphere because it's the desert, that makes sense. But then why would there be a harvest season, as Owen refers to later? And what's with this line?"Still no sign of a cloud, and he knew there never would be unless he got that vaporator working."?that suggests the vaporators somehow produce atmospheric moisture?

Deleted Scene
Luke arrives at Anchorhead, almost running over an old woman, and goes to talk to Fixer, Camie, Deak, and Windy at Tosche Station, among whom he's known as "Wormie". He's surprised to find his old friend Biggs there, who just got his commission from the academy and a posting on the Rand Ecliptic, and has come back to say goodbye to his friends. Biggs is being evasive about something, but Luke is more concerned with telling his friends about the battle he saw in the space above Tatooine. His friends don't believe him, and when Biggs takes the binoculars and looks himself, the two ships are just sitting there. Camie and Fixer are jerks, and everyone goes back inside muttering about Luke.

Unusual Reference
"...he stood out in the room like an Oriental poppy in a sea of oats."

Back in space, Leia is taken to Vader. Like in the movie, Vader has red eyes.

Changed Line
Leia gets in an extra barb towards Vader: "Darth Vader... I should have known. Only you would be so bold?and so stupid."

Leia is named for the first time here, and unlike the movie "Organa" is mentioned. She claims to be on a diplomatic mission, etc.

Continuity Note
Vader: "You passed directly through a restricted system, ignoring numerous warnings and completely disregarding orders to turn about?until it no longer mattered. I know that several transmissions were beamed to this vessel by spies within that system. When we traced those transmissions back to the individuals with whom they originated, they had the poor grace to kill themselves before they could be questioned."

I don't know how much of that is Foster and how much was from the script, but the later descriptions of the Battle of Toprawa do a very nice job of matching with Vader's account here, down to Red Hand Squadron's suicide in the Han Solo Trilogy.

Leia spits on Vader as she's taken away. Vader drops the phrase "hidden fortress" for the first time here. He orders the Tantive IV vaporized, and upon being told of the missing escape pod, has an unnamed Praji search the planet for the pod. Interesting line: "Be as subtle as possible; there is no need to attract attention, even on this miserable outpost world."

Also: "Inform her father and the Senate that all aboard were killed." Kind of depressing that the last Bail knew of his daughter before his own death was believing she'd failed her mission and been killed.

On Tatooine's surface, Threepio and Artoo quarrel over the best way to go and split up. Threepio spots a strange vehic

 

The Biggs timeline always puzzled me - it seems like he's going to join the Rebellion, but most of the EU material acts like he's been a member for longer than just a few days.

 

Yeah, the EU likes to act like Biggs had a decent-length Rebel career, most notably in WEG and Stackpole. Even Darklighter, the comic, packs the entire lengthy mutiny process, two full Rebel missions, and the search through the jungle for Hobbie's cure in between explicitly depicting the deleted scene and the end of the film. And that doesn't even account for the couple of missions Stackpole had in Bigg's backstory, or the bonding with Wedge, or the whole development of the "thirds" thing with the other pilot, which implies a career of at least a month.

Probably the easiest thing to actually do (given that the dating of the film is too nailed down for it to ever be likely that they'd pull it up to say that the droids actually wandered for a week or two) is to cut out the deleted scene from Biggs's story (and ergo from Darklighter) and push it later in Biggs's story, well after he's actually defected, and have him merely hinting at the possibility of a future defection rather than admitting that he's already defected in order to cover himself and ease the truth out gradually to his friends and family. It's awkward, and rough on Darklighter and the intent of the scene, but it's less awkward than trying to pretend Biggs somehow fit all his actions and interactions into a day or two, and Wedge vividly remembers the best friend he knew for a day.

 

The way Biggs' story is now, it's more like Tatooine folklore or a hagiography commissioned by the Darklighter family. First it was Biggs, the First Mate aboard a freighter, abandoning his post to join the Rebellion. Then it turns out he attended the naval camp at Prefsbelt IV, classmates of Hobbie Klivian, Tycho Celchu, and others, as well as a student of Soontir Fel. Jumping ship turned into a "mutiny", leading to the downfall of Fel. The Rand Ecliptic went from a freighter to a frigate, and Biggs was also involved in secret missions involving Rivoche Tarkin, the niece of Grand Moff Tarkin.

 

Huh. IO9 just did an interview with Alan Dean Foster, where they asked him a few questions about this book. Not much new info, but Foster confirms that he wasn't allowed to say that he had written the novel until that fact was leaked in the 80s.

 

It could be that Biggs is just telling Luke that he "plans" to defect, when (in fact) he already has - just in case Luke had developed Imperial sympathies, in which case he would "rethink" his decision.

 

Going back to Chapter 1, I found this paragraph interesting tech-wise:

It seems like the PT and beyond has given droids more fluid movement (especially in the case of the IG-86s and the commando droids). Did the pre-PT EU consistantly portray droids as significantly more inflexible than humans, by any chance?

 

Note also that getting hit by a blaster bolt is much more graphic in the novel than in movie, such as this: "The figure shifted its big rifle around in armored hands--too late. A beam of intense light struck the head, sending pieces of armor, bone, and flesh flying in all directions."

Or: "Red, green, and blue bolts ricocheted off polished sections of wall and floor, or ripped long gashes in metal surfaces. Screams of injured and dying humans--a peculiarly unrobotic sound, Threepio thought--echoed piercingly above the inorganic destruction."

And: "The trooper who had been unlucky enough to find her fell first, his head a mass of melted bone and metal."

 

The radio drama, at least, takes a similar approach - Biggs is attending the Academy for the Imperial equivalent of the Merchant Marine, rather than the Navy.

 

@COMPNOR: As a rule, the EU tends to be a tad-bit more graphic than the movies and TCW.

About the issue of Biggs's service, one can theorize that the galactic Academy system became so militarized in its curriculum that it could produce military-grade personnel no matter if cadets applied to an actual military force or to a merchant marine (which Biggs was supposed to volunteer for in the novel). Likewise, the Empire's Merchant Marine became so militarized that it became a de-facto branch of the Starfleet. We see that the Merchant Marine of Biggs's day used military-style uniforms and military-grade equipment, while Merchant Mariners could painlessly be drafted into the Starfleet proper thanks to the Academy's new military-oriented training. I believe this theory does a good job of tying together the two general backstories for Biggs provided by the EU, as well as show how the Empire was nefariously corrupting every institution possible to serve the "glorious" purposes of the New Order.

 

I don't know about Haig, unless someone's psychic. Haig would attempt a bloodless coup (well, relatively; the only blood was Reagan's, spilled by some crazy guy who saw Taxi Driver and thought this would free Jodi Foster).

How could you forget the American Indian Movement, the Chicano Movement, the unions, the Black Panther Party, and the rest?

I love that Vader's term for hell became canon.

Biggs' Rebel career may have been short, but he was a hero when it counted. The entire Rebellion would've died if not for him, and all those other pilots who died so Luke could fire one shot.

 

CHAPTER III

Chapter III covers the meeting aboard the Death Star, the purchase of the droids, and Artoo's message.

We open in a conference room where "eight Imperial Senators and officers" are gathered. This is, I believe, the only source that mentions the presence of senators at this meeting; given the subject of the upcoming conversation, I imagine it'll be a bit awkward there.

Continuity Note
Mostly in these I'll just be sticking to what's in the novel, but I want to break for a moment and see what canon makes of these eight here. Tarkin and Vader have yet to enter the scene, so they aren't counted. There are only two individuals identified in the novel as being in the room: Tagge and Romodi (Motti shows up later in the book, but not here). The movie actually only has seven present; in addition to Tagge and Motti, we have Bast seated to Tagge's left, and two individuals later identified as Wullf Yularen and Cass, both to Motti's right. There's two more in the seats flanking the door, both in standard olive uniform, the leftmost (when facing the door) of whom is bald. Neither, as far as I can tell, has ever been named. One of these two, or their third (seemingly invisible) companion, would be Romodi; he's a bit of a puzzle, and more on him below.

(Just for completeness, there's also the two guards, Tajis Durmin on the right?identified in the CCG?and Nova Stihl on the left?identified in Death Star.)

Tagge is "one of the youngest" of the eight men here. He has "climbed far and fast by methods best not examined too closely", and no one here really likes him. He tells his fellow Imperials that "this Sith Lord inflicted on us at the urging of the Emperor will be our undoing"?shades of the attitudes in the Betrayal comic, perhaps?and goes on with a similar speech to the movie, talking about how the Rebellion poses a threat until the Death Star is complete (he notes that the Rebel pilots are better).

Instead of Motti responding as in the movie, the "Dangerous to your starfleet" line goes to Romodi, a heavily scarred older man. The novel identifies him as an officer; Leland Chee later stated he was a Senator. I suppose it's not impossible that he could carry both titles. If so, that makes the "Senators and officers" line fit better with the movie, which has everyone at the table in uniform and bearing insignia; some of them are pulling double duty, I guess.

Anyway, Romodi thinks Vader's on the right track trying to find the Rebel base. Tagge thinks the Death Star is a power play by Tarkin, and the Rebels will find support in the Senate. With perfect timing, Tarkin and Vader enter just then with news.

Unusual Reference
Tarkin is described as "a thin, hatchet-faced man with hair and form borrowed from an old broom and the expression of a quiescent piranha."

Tarkin tells them that the Senate has been dissolved?although technically, "it has merely been superseded for the duration of the emergency." (The Imperial Sourcebook will later use this exact phrasing in Ars Dangor's announcement of the event.) Tagge's worried about the Rebellion, and Tarkin gets off a shot at Vader regarding the Death Star plans: "Of course, we all know how well guarded, how carefully protected, such vital data is. It could not possibly fall into rebel hands." But he's not worried about the Rebels, the Death Star can withstand anything.

Vader picks up a cup of tea or coffee or something with the Force, as he chides Tarkin for thinking his technological terror is more powerful than the Force. I'm not sure that little gesture actually helps his argument. We get the second "hidden fortress" reference as Tagge steals Motti's line and gets choked by Vader for it. Vader cedes to Tarkin's command, but apparently he's being sarcastic. Everyone looks at Tagge and decides not to comment on it.

So, a bit more inter-Imperial rivalry and bickering here than the movie shows, or at least it's more directly stated. No one really likes anyone else at the table, much as they may respect their command. Tagge doesn't care fo

 

That line might be a throwback to Lucas's original take on Threepio's personality, that of a sleazy used car salesman. Foster probably didn't get to see any of Anthony Daniels' performance while writing the novel, so he would have had to go on Lucas's description of the character in the script and old drafts and whatnot.

 

Ha-ha, hidden fortress, and the whole thing's an homage to...

 

That's in the film as well... at least the part of it that Motti manages to get out before the choke.

 

Regarding the Academy, presuming it is indeed a military academy, is it obligatory for members to join the Imperial Navy? Perhaps not.

 

I really like this chapter in the novel due to the descriptions and attributes of the characters, particularly Tagge/Motti: "A certain sliminess clung cloyingly to him, a sensation inferred rather than tactile." Lord Hydro has already mentioned Tarkin's description as a cross between a straw broom and piranha, but I think Foster really nailed the description of Owen Lars as a burnt out moisture farmer unwilling to accept defeat.

Also, there a small bits of dialogue that really bring the characters to life as well, such as Lars asking Threepio, "I presume you function."

 

Years ago, I read the OT novelizations in their three-pack:

[image=http://0.tqn.com/d/create/1/0/R/N/4/-/Star-Wars-Trilogy-novel.jpg]

... released some time in the nineties, but one thing I remember from the ANH novelization was that "droid" was always preceded by an apostrophe. So, it was always 'droid. What I took from that was that 'droid was originally supposed to just be an abbreviation of android rather than a unique term. That makes me wonder if it was the EU that took the term "droid" and ran with it as a unique word. Hydro or COMPNOR, does the original The Adventures of Luke Skywalker also put an apostrophe before 'droid?