Lit Books Star Wars Timelines (New Star Wars Sourcebook coming!!)

Not sure the Fandom Menace really exists anylonger. Many of those channels have been neutered over the past year.

 

They still around only now just **** on new lord of the rings Amazon tv show.

 

You know they are desperate for content when they are crapping on something that hasn't even come out yet.

 

Funny is they compared it to the last jedi.

 

The YouTube algorithm must be fed.... with meat.... any meat.... preferably fresh.

 

So they are Drengir!

 

Kind of fits - perpetually hungry, near unkillable....

 

What's funny is those people are trying to crap on Lord of the Rings now but if it has good to great feedback from people when it opens up you won't hear another peep about it from them.

 

Preview images.

Spoiler

 

Kind of weird seeing the events of ep.4 listed as "1 BBY".

 

Yeah, that's very odd.

 

I have to say, it's a little eyebrow-raising to see some dates being given as estimates in an official sourcebook. Don't get me wrong. I know how thorny it is to nail down specific timelines, especially since this creates the potential for contradictions as the universe continues to grow and new stories are told. There are entire threads on these forums devoted to untangling those knots. But the role of a sourcebook is to provide official, canon rulings on these sorts of things. I'd much rather them say something definitive and retcon it in the future if needed than for them to deliberately leave it nebulous.

 

Yeah, these dates are just ... blah. Come on, just date the movies and tv shows in a twelve-month calendar, then they can have fun with working stories around them. I could happily write a story into an episode of CW or TPM. At least I'd have an idea of what I'm working with.

 

Considering how conservative they've been with nailing down specific dates lately, a "Timelines" book does seem like a bit of an odd choice.

I'm very curious about the 1 BBY thing - is it just an error, or are they getting rid of 0 BBY? Wookieepedia's method for determining the dividing line between 1 and 0 BBY has never made much sense to me, but I'm not sure this is better.

 

I could see somebody, at some level, making some pedantic argument about how there is no 0 (B)CE. The French Republican calendar (which I guess is the closest analogue?) also never established a 0 year and made the day after the establishment of the Republic Year I. So there's real-world precedent even though it definitely would mark a conscious shift away from the old measurement.

 

I feel like that's exactly what they're doing here. We know Pablo's been keeping a pretty detailed timeline with his C.R.C. stuff, so creating a workable timeline without a Year Zero (or two Year Zeroes, I suppose) makes sense.

 

I would argue that you're setting yourself up for disappointment if this is what you're looking for from DK or similar books. That's not their purpose. They exist to provide another avenue through which to immerse yourself in the universe - less of a "story" format, more of a "visually appealing reference book" format. They can and do add to the lore, but do not exist to "define canon" the way the stories themselves do.

I would argue also that we've known this was never intended to be some sort of "new essential chronology"-type book, with every event precisely dated to the day. DK was pretty up-front about that from the start. It's going to be a while before we see a book like that, likely because - as we all suspect - Lucasfilm specifically doesn't want to define dates that specifically yet. And when such a book finally does arrive, it is unlikely to come from DK.

Finally, since I happen to be talking about it, I'll point out the error in the "Skywalker Saber" preview image - it places The Weapon of a Jedi after Skywalker Strikes, when it should be before. Not to rag on the book, because mistakes happen, but again, just driving home the fact that it shouldn't be approached as the definitive end-all-be-all chronology.

 

Or it's a retcon.

 

In the book Luke hasn’t heard Obi-Wan's voice since Yavin. In the comic he hears Obi-Wan's voice. I’d say Occam's razor applies here, if it is a retcon then it’s an entirely pointless one no?

 

It depends on whether a potential retcon has been made for reasons other than just preserving one line from a book.

 

Luke hearing Ben's voice again isn't the only thing that places The Weapon of a Jedi prior to the Marvel comic series. That entire story revolves around the idea that it is the first time Luke uses his saber in combat - something that happens rather frequently in the comics, starting right from the first issue. Not that it couldn't still be a retcon, but the required change to the narrative isn't trivial and it's difficult (for now) to see what would be gained. I'm inclined to buy into it being an error for now - one that could still be fixed in the final book, in fact, given that it's still months away from release - and adjust as more information becomes available.

 

I was hoping that this book would be more like a concrete timeline, instead of loose dates. I honestly feel like we need something like that.

 

That sort of thing isn't going to happen with so much content coming out, especially on screen. That was for the days when Star Wars on film was winding down, allowing the EU to take the lead. Not any more.

 

That's unfortunate.

 

It was also more useful when the EU spanned 25,000 years of in-universe history and included over thirty years of novels, comic books, RPG books, reference books, video games, children's books, movies, animated series, holiday specials, etc. Despite what feels like prolific output, canon is still a good long while away from really needing something like that yet.