Resource Looking for resources on Star Wars military

I am a big fan of the 2000's Battlestar Galactica series and watching it had inspired me to want to write fan fiction set in that universe. I had never did it before but however, when I had finally sat down to try and write something a while back I just couldn't start for a number of reasons. The most important one is that the writing of the TV series is so good that even though I'm only writing for fun, there is no way I could compete with it's brilliance and I was just too intimated to go any further.

I've just watched the new Star Wars film and revisited the recent ones and the thought occurred to me to possibly write some Star Wars fan-fiction using the ideas and themes I had at the time when contemplating writing BSG fan-fiction. It sounds a good idea to me because they can be transferred to the Star Wars Universe and because the SW Universe is open ended and a lot of world building has already been done, hopefully I should easily slot in what I want to write without too much continuity errors.

The stuff from BSG that I liked and I wanted to write about was politics and military aspects of the series and there are a lot of elements in the Star Wars universe that can be covered by that.

With the political side of the SW universe, I am not really interested in the 'big picture' of the mighty clashes between the Republic and the Empire. I find minor politics just as fascinating as well the 'office politics' of the various factions as seen by Krennic and Tarkin in Rogue one. There is plenty of scope to be able to write there within the confines of established political events in the SWU.

In terms of military, that is a bit harder as there is so much to take in with the SW universe, particularly with the various military units/branches of both the Empire and the Rebel alliance which I will need to research to see how I can slot my ideas into them. Is there any links that can give in-depth detail of the SW military?

 

The SW military is a tricky beast. There are some aspects that correlate well with real-world militaries, some that are similar but different, and some that are completely unique. Part of the reason I like writing about the Rebels is that I can use their "looser, less-organized" approach without it sounding too strange or unrealistic if I flub some military detail here or there. Then I get to the more regulated Empire and I'm like, ".......uh oh......."

I would recommend taking a look at The Essential Guide to Warfare by Jason Fry. A lot of the RPG sourcebooks and supplemental rulebooks also have good tidbits on more specialized things like ground troops, starfighters, etc. If you're looking for OT-era, the Age of Rebellion rulebooks are good for that.

As for links, I think there used to be a discussion thread here in Resource about it... let me see if I can find it in my bookmarks. The Literature forum also has some threads talking about military aspects as they relate to the EU.

 

There is a book out - The Military Science of Star Wars by George Beahm. Author is a former US Army major. Book is interesting but it could have used a proofreading by a SW fan as there are some glaring errors in relation to the films. I don't have military experience so I can't criticize that part of the book but it was a pretty good read anyway. Amazon UK has it in pb. Book came out in 2018 so it goes up to Rogue One filmwise.

 

Thanks guys for replying, much appreciated.

I'll check out the mentioned books as they seem interesting as well as informative.

 

Also check out the Imperial Handbook by Dan Wallace. It goes into great depth as to how the Imperial military is structured.

 

@LAJ_FETT Hi, do we still have the Curtis Saxton Technical Commentaries, anywhere?

I'm fairly certain that was with us, though perhaps in the IGN days.

 

If you have access to the Inactive Forums you could try looking there: https://boards.theforce.net/categories/inactive-jc-forums.10833/ .

If there isn't anything there then they are probably gone. You might try asking in the Lit forum - maybe someone has them saved (or has a link). Try using the General Questions thread there.

 

Essential Guide to Warfare

The Star Wars Technical Commentaries

This might help a bit too

 

This is a very old thread, but it's the only relevant one I had saved from here in Resource. It's to help with writing combat and action scenes. There might be something useful in there for you.

T.A.C.T.I.C.S.