Lit "The Original Star Wars Horror" A Galaxy of Fear Read-Though

Before Red Harvest. Before Death Troopers. Before Anything Including Jar Jar Binks.

There was Galaxy of Fear. The Original Star Wars Horror Stories.

Hey everyone. Welcome to my read-though of the Galaxy of Fear books. I will be doing this thread in the style of the of the GoV reread thread and hope to post on a semi-regular basis.

I will make the post for the first chapter of the first book soon...

 

Oooo, never got to read these.

 

I remember seeing those imagery covers in stores and how cool and ominous they looked. Thinking back to the Essential Reader's Companion, yeah, it does make sense that they capitalized on Goosebumps's popularity at the time.

Now I wonder whatever happened to the Arranda kids.

 

I remember at age 9 being really, really creeped out by The Nightmare Machine. The other ones weren't too scary (to me).

 

I have the first one and have read some of the others. Need to find them..............

 

Okay... Let's begin...

Eaten Alive - Chapter One

Summary:
Tash and Zak on there way to the planet D'vouran. They are quietly sitting and playing a "video game" in which a Tie Fighter fights a X-Wing. When their droid Deevee interrupts them saying that that holo-games will turn their brains to mush.

Then Tash and Zak are forced to sit and do a lesson even though they are in hyperspace (Ungrateful little tiny womp rats. Do they know that there are thousands of orphans in the galaxy with no way to get education ). Tash's thoughts drift off and she recounts a story about a message (which sounds more like a blog post) she found about the Jedi.

This message along with all others about the infamous Jedi and their history have been wiped from the holo-net (which would that not mean wiping out the history of the galaxy if you think about it?). But no matter what she decides she wants to become a Jedi Knight one day (good luck with that).

The kids then talk about their "uncle" Hoole and Tash theorizes that he is apart of the Rebellion because of how much he travels. Tash then debunks this theory and proceeds to Hoole quarters where he is grabbed by a monstrous hand.

Commentary:
As a kid I only ever read one Goosebumps book as a kids. This is mostly because I dislike horror stories. I just don't like to be scared so I have always avoided horror. I do not mind SF horror such as the SW Zombie books, the AvP franchise or the flood from Halo as much but still I have avoid horror stories for the most part.

Even through I do not expect to get scared by these books.

On to my analysis of the chapter. I find it interesting with how restrictive the empire is how a game about blowing up TIEs is not banned. Also I thought the holo-net was mainly used for military purposes that the time. So why does this seem to be a lot like the internet of today, only with a little more restrictions?

Other than that I don't have anything else to say really. So with that may the Force be with You, God Bless and have a good day/night.

 

D'vouran is such a well named planet.

 

It really is...

 

Eaten Alive - Chapter Two

Summary:
The menacing creature in Hoole's cabin turns out to be Hoole himself (Hoole is a changeling). He tell Zak that he was keeping his shape-changing abilities from getting rusty.

Meanwhile, Tash heads up to the Lightrunners cockpit and thinks about the loss of her parents and planet.She also thinks on how she is different. She can sense things before they happen. She then daydreams of being a Jedi Knight fighting the Empire.

In Hoole's cabin Zak asks why they are going to D'vouran. Hoole show him the file and tell Zak to look at nothing else. But of course Zak looks at another file seeing it label of IMPERIAL ORDERS and also a receipt.

Commentary:
Wow this chapter was short. I think six pages in total. Half the length of the first chapter.

I like the showing of how Tash is mourning her parents and her destroyed planet of Alderaan. Its something I think needs to be shown for another Alderaan survivor (aka Leia). But they really dropped the ball on her being force-sensitive. They should have hinted at it way more slowly. Any Star Wars fan could tell she is force senitive from that paragraph.

I am also wondering where they are leading to with Hoole working for the Empire.

 

Agreed, that is odd. I mean, given the Empire's official stance, that is kind of like having a video where you play as the Taliban today.


Also, come to think of it, it is kind of weird how in Star Wars you see kids constantly playing with toys of vehicles that didn't come out that long ago in universe. I mean, does every new starfighter that comes out get a free toy deal as well?

 

The Empire needs its money to come from somewhere. Those expensive TIE Defenders won't pay for themselves.

 

Well sure - but what about the toy X-Wings we see everywhere? Do the Incom developers in exile get any money from those?

 

Good idea for a thread, though I am a bit biased, as I was actually considering doing a reread thread of the Galaxy of Fear books once I finished with the Jedi Prince series. Still, I'm a bit relieved someone got to it first; considering how time consuming those things have gotten, ten more books sounds more than a little scary.

I was surprised that I ended up really enjoying these books. They're silly, absolutely, and give me constant flashbacks to the Goosebumps books I read as a kid (and that hilariously awful TV show), but I find they actually work really well as a celebration of the Bantam era. Forced as some of the cameos are, it's pretty fun seeing a YA series delve so deeply into established canon. Plus, some of the later books actually have some interesting probings into the nature of the Force.

 

No Galaxy of Fear thread is complete without this wonderful Dan Wallace quote:

 

A cliff-hanger every chapter? That would suck to have to do.
I remember reading another book a couple years ago and for 5 straight chapters or so each chapter ended on a cliff-hanger and the beginning of the next chapter would be from the POV of another character in a different situation. That ticked me off so much.

 

Pretty much every YA book goes for some form of cliffhanger after each chapter. It's very easy for kids to have a lot of fun with something and then completely forget about it five minutes later; the idea is to make it impossible for them to be content with just finishing one chapter, they have to find out what happens next.

Still, even by those standards, the Goosebumps books (and by extension all of its rip offs, Galaxy of Fear included) turned this up to 11, to the point where "fake out" cliffhangers were ridiculously common.

 

True that.
The cliff-hangers for the Hunger Games trilogy for example got pretty insane at times. Way too insane at times.

 

IIRC Zak has a line about how holo games are intentionally designed to let the Imperial ships win. I think the intention was just that Zak was a sore loser, but it was addressed in the text.

And yeah, although later books would go into a little bit more detail about Tash's difficulties in accessing the Holonet, it was pretty much a stand-in for the Internet of 1997. In those days Being Good at the Internet was portrayed as a valuable character skill, particularly for young female protagonists in sci-fi scenarios. Tash has some close conceptual cousins in Lex from Jurassic Park and Fi from the Disney Channel series So Weird.

TC

 

D'vouran needs to be linked with Zonama Sekot somehow. Maybe another splinter from Yuuzhan'tar (the bad brother to Sekot's good side?). Or they could even link it with that dropped NJO idea where Sekot would have a young seed-planet. It's eating a lot because it's a growing planet!

 

The Da Vinci Code was the worst Goosebumps book of all. It took two-page chapters with cliffhanger endings to a whole new level.

 

I don't think the physical planet Zonama was actually alive, but rather Sekot as a consciousness was an emergent property of the symbiotic ecosystem -- thus making it life (e.g. the bolas) that originated from Yuuzhan'tar prior to the Cremlevian War that somehow reached the GFFA.

 

That actually was the idea.

Properly is actually, but pirated and illegal software seems to be even more popular in the GFFA then on earth. WEG for example mentioned huge underground markets for Anti-Imperial Holovids and illegal software.

As we later discover Hoole is actually pretty cosy with the Empire, or at least used to be, so he might have scored Holonet access that way.

Actually why would they? They are wanted criminals, I fully trust some nefarious Hutt to just be making a killing here producing unlicensed toys for kids.

 

Yeah, the likes of the Hutts were probably releasing toys like these:

 

That's the joke.

Not a bad racket actually - I could see some nice profit in that, and the jedi have better things to do than take you down - and if they try, you can guilt them about how they are taking away toys from children.

-Though, I could picture some imperial raide busting some smugglers they think have real X-Wing parts, only to find out they are smuggling X-Wing model kits. The looks on their faces would be priceless.

 

Language Warning:



EDIT: Go to about 16 minutes in.