Archived News 2015

12/13/15 The Heart of the PDF is up!

As per your requests, the PDF of Ken Flint's Star Wars: The Heart of the Jedi is available for your downloading needs!  Check it out here!

12/7/15 A Big Message to Lucasfilm

I've just been apprised of this and know you guys would want me to pass it along.  EU fans are gathering money to put up a billboard near Lucasfilm's headquarters that requests them to continue the Legends line.  Pretty cool, eh?  Check it out here, and if you can contribute, great!

12/1/15 The Final Part of Heart of the Jedi!

The last part of Ken Flint's The Heart of the Jedi is up!  Many of you have asked if I can put together a PDF, and I don't see a problem with that.  I'll provide a link to it at the bottom of that page.  Stay tuned!

10/1/15 Heart of the Jedi, Part 6 on its way!

Sorry for the slight delay in bringing Part 6 to you.  I handed the edits to the author much later than I intended (due to things going on at home).  I expect his final approvals any day now.  Stay tuned here and/or on Facebook for updates.

8/30/15 Heart of the Jedi Part 5 is up!

Luke and his furry companion, Captain Thatch, head into Imperial Space to reach their destination, a planet shrouded in myth, that Obi-Wan has led him to.  But can Captain Thatch even be trusted?  Han and Leia, meanwhile, have problems of their own!  And what exactly is wrong with 3PO?  Check it out here!

8/21/15 Clone Wars UK Complete

I've completed adding Titan's Clone Wars magazines stories, Volume 6: issues 1-54, which unlike prior volumes (which were reprints of U.S. stories) contained all new stories, plus the Star Wars magazine, Volume 7: issues 1-13, which continued Clone Wars stories along with new original trilogy stories (which I've also placed on the timeline).  For U.S. readers, I've indicated the issue number where any of these stories were reprinted, but note that many were NOT reprinted in the U.S. version of the magazine, which for some odd reason also skipped around.  Hopefully, Titan or Marvel will see fit to reprint the complete Clone Wars stories, as well as the excellent Han, Luke, Leia stories, of which there were six to be exact, and of which four were not reprinted in the U.S. version of the magazine, which only ran three issues before being replaced by the Star Wars Rebels magazine.

I've also correctly numbered the unproduced Clone Wars stories (whether released in comic-book or as Legacy story reels).

8/19/15 Clone Wars UK

Going through the Clone Wars Magazine from the UK to determine an appropriate chronology. I also edited another four chapters of Heart of the Jedi.  Good stuff coming your way at the end of this month!

7/29/15 Killing the Disciple

I've taken Christie Golden's Dark Disciple off the timeline.  Unfortunately, this novel based on Katy Lucas's eight unproduced scripts for the sixth season of The Clone Wars animated series, puts forth a complete rewriting of the Quinlan Vos character from the Republic and Clone Wars comic-book series, by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, that cannot be made to fit with the stories they told.  The shame of this, apart from the larger issues, is that the powers-that-be could very easily have invented a new Jedi for the role.  They didn't have to bastardize a character whose story was already told.  Quinlan has a rich and complex history in the comic-books of becoming an undercover operative in the CIS to uncover the identity of the second Sith Lord. Knowing this, Dooku toys with him, sending him on missions which bring him ever closer to the dark side, an effective strategy that results in even his friends (and the readers) not knowing until the end which side Quinlan is actually on.  His story is a rollercoaster aggregation of noir adventure, tragedy, humor, romance and dark fantasy.  Lucas and Golden's story is not bad, per se, but it takes the most basic elements of Quinlan's journey and compresses, flattens, and ultimately diminishes them.  Quinlan's story is so condensed that his romance, turn to the dark side and betrayal all take place in rapid-fire succession, losing verisimilitude in the process.  Aside from pointlessly destroying his original canonical history, by conjoining it with Asajj Ventress' final story arc, her concluding story is ruined for EU fans, who are never going to accept the steamrolling of Dark Horse's entire Republic and Clone Wars series for the sake of a single book. I've enjoyed both Katy Lucas's, Christie Golden's and Dave Filoni's stories in the past, but this represents a major fail on their part. A writer who doesn't respect the work of previous writers, or the fans, produces work that is not worthy of respect.  

9/15 Cleaning up Clones

You'll notice that I bolded the episodes of The Clone Wars animated series, not to elevate them above the stories that take place on the printed page (because I don't subscribe to any such hierarchy), but for several reasons, mainly to help give the eye a break. With all of those stories with similar prefixes, it because a chore to keep track of where you're looking.  This is a chronology site, and it shouldn't be that hard.  Highlighting the episodes also gives those who only have the time or finances to watch the series an opportunity to see a clean and correct Clone Wars timeline (unlike the very erroneous official one). But I like that it helps everyone to better follow the timeline without getting lost. 

On a separate but related note, I'm going through the Clone Wars UK magazines, most of which were reprinted in the U.S., which I'll list.  Usually, I put the U.S. version first.  In the case of the old Marvel series, the U.S. versions were original and reprinted in the U.K., and often in odd sequences and with missing issues (and some cases extra issues, which are listed separately on the timeline).  But in this case, the U.K. got these stories first and in relatively chronological order, unlike the later U.S. reprints which, for whatever reason, chose to re-publish these stories in some kind of haphazard manner that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  I'm also not certain they reprinted every story, but if that's the case I'll notate it.  For this reason, the UK issues are the ones I'm listing as the primary source, with the corresponding U.S. reprint in brackets afterwards for U.S. readers.  The current place they're in will change as I figure out where they go best.  Most are standalone stories intended to go with or after the then current season the magazine was covering.

7/2/15 Bleeding Heart

Part 3 (Chapters 9-12) of Kenneth Flint's The Heart of the Jedi is now up!! If you've read parts 1 and 2, check it out here!  For those keeping score, sorry for the delay in posting it (it should have been up yesterday), as I was finishing a Star Wars essay for Sequart Books, called "War and Peace: How the Star Wars Saga Perpetuates and Repudiates the Myth of Redemptive Violence".  I think you guys will find it an interesting one!  I'll let you when the book is ready to be released.  There are three in the series, and I've got an essay in each! 

6/28/15 Clone Time

I made a minor adjustment to the Clone Wars era of the timeline, namely to move Season 3, episode 10's "Hero on Both Sides" and everything after it to the year 20 BBY.  It's clear that there's a sudden jump in time, as indicated by Ahsoka's taller height and longer head-tails, as well as the indication of how wearied the public and Senate are by how long the war has dragged on. 

The next installment of The Heart of the Jedi is on its way!

/12/15 Editing with Heart

I've rewritten and included my editing notes on The Heart of the Jedi Page so that fans can get a better of the process and exactly how little I've asked the author to change or update for continuity.  I hope this finally clarifies the issue for those wondering how much was changed.  The answer is: very little. 

5/27/15 Good Luck

After finally finishing The Fate of the Jedi series and Crucible, I'm glad to see that Troy Denning's first EU adventure Scoundrel’s Luck: A Solo Adventure, by West End Games, has been retconned to now sit in 5 ABY.

The initial problem with Scoundrel's Luck, and why it was in the Infinities section for so long (despite the fact that characters like Alfreda Goot were part of continuity), was that the events of the story could not possibly fit into the 0 year period where it was originally set. Denning had written Scoundrel's Luck without taking into account the events of that period (it was 1990 and both the Marvel series and newspaper strips hadn't yet been reprinted and were hard to find).

Denning uses Crucible to set the events of Scoundrel's Luck (specifically Han's meeting with Columi information broker Mama) 40 years earlier, placing it at 5 ABY, which although will require some fudging on the part of the reader, is a smart move because it allows the story to have a place where the events are not contradicted by the surrounding history.

5/21/15 Going Deeper

I just came across a cool Facebook page, called Star Wars Sourcebooks, it's managed by Alban Leloup, Tim Veekhoven, Sander de Lange, Kevin Beentjes and Stefan Pfister, and "is a page with information (textual and visual) about the Star Wars universe (movies and EU), its residents, ships, vehicles, weapons, planets, creatures, species, technology" and more.  Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/StarWarsSourcebooks

5/19/15 Update and Clarifications

By now, some of you have had a chance to enjoy the first four chapters of The Heart of the Jedi!  There has been some confusion as to when the next chapters will launch.  Allow me to clarify.  Each continuing set of four chapters will debut at the start of every month.  I don't want to pin down a definite date, only because as busy as I am, I don't want to disappoint you guys if anything prevents me from meeting that date.  I can assure you it WILL come out around the the beginning of each month, and in total will take seven months for the total 31 chapters to be released, meaning it will conclude in December 2015. 

I also want to give a shout out to Alban Leloup for noticing a name discrepancy with the name Senator Valladian, who in one instance was called Vallerian.  It's been corrected.  Thanks Alban!

Finally, I wanted to touch upon the editing process a little for those of you who are curious about how that's worked.  So you understand, I'm a professional editor and run a small-press publishing company (The Royal Publisher of Oz), and I can tell you, having read dozens upon dozens of manuscripts from both established authors and new talents, every manuscript requires some kind of editing; most of it is grammar, punctuation, spelling, relatively minor things that if not caught can be an annoyance and distraction to the reader.  At times, there are more serious structural issues, narrative issues and character issues that need to be addressed.  And for an editor who deals with works that are part of a larger series (like the Oz books and Star Wars), there's an additional task that's just as important, and that—as you may know—is ensuring harmonious continuity across the spectrum of the series.  While some readers are better at reconciling contradictions internally, for many, few things are as aggravating, in part because it takes the reader out of the story, but it also spoils the necessary verisimilitude of the individual story and the larger series. 

Hypothetically, had Lucasfilm/Del Rey opted to publish The Heart of the Jedi today, they would have edited it for continuity.  Since the manuscript was given to me to publish, I've taken the responsibility very seriously, and thankfully author Ken Flint was enthusiastic about that process.  The fact is, as you're starting to see, the story deserves its place in continuity; it was approved by LFL and should have come out in 1993.  Unfortunately, as you can read in "The History of Heart of Jedi," it didn't.  Be that as it may, it's coming out now in 2015, which is fantastic!  So, as its publisher and editor, it's my job to ensure that nothing impedes readers' enjoyment of this story, and that means editing with an eye towards continuity.  In truth, very little is different from the original manuscript and every change has been approved by the author.  The majority of continuity changes had to do with its placement in time.  Originally, the story would have come out a short time after the Battle of Endor.  With Truce at Bakura and the Marvel series in that spot, it was a simple matter of just shifting it over a few weeks.  Apart from that and some minor issues related to dialogue and characterization, the story has remained exactly the same.

Anyway, I hope this helps you guys to understand the process a little better.  It's not every day we see a lost story surface again, and I feel quite privileged to host six of them!  And if I can, I'm hoping to feature a few more, but alas it's far too early to speak of that!

5/9/15 Lost Novel Lost No More!

The Star Wars Expanded Universe Timeline is proud to present Kenneth C. Flint's The Heart of the Jedi! 

Written in 1992, this previously unpublished Star Wars novel was long thought lost.  Commissioned and approved by Lucasfilm, and advertised to come out around the time of The Truce at Bakura, the novel and all mention of it seemed to just disappear without a trace... until now!  Thanks to author Kenneth C. Flint, the complete novel will be available for all EU fans to read and enjoy for free!  It will be released in four-chapter parts each month until its completion!  It will also include the story of what happened to the author and why it was never released! 

This "new" Star Wars novel, which has been edited by me to fit within the existing expanded universe (taking place shortly after The Truce at Bakura and the end of the issue #107 of the Marvel series, but before the X-Wing comic-book series), deals with the return of the Imperial Senate who offer the fledgling New Republic a cease-fire agreement if they will come to the table to talk peace.  But while Princess Leia Organa and new Chief of State Mon Montha are anxious to bring an end to the war, other factions of the Imperial remnant are determined to keep up the fight, including the militaristic High Admiral Tharkus and his second-in-command Kastor, a mysterious being of strange and deadly powers!  But for Luke Skywalker, exhausted from years of fighting, the time has come to depart.  Luke embarks upon a journey of discovery that will take him back to Tatooine, to a secret long-ago hidden by Obi-Wan Kenobi!

5/2/15 Rise of the Empire

I've updated the Clone Wars era and copied it over to the Rise of the Empire section (sans Infinities, as I try to keep the individual eras as clutter-free as possible).  As I threatened earlier, I decided in the end that the month date designations had to go.  Believe me, I share your grief, but bear these two things in mind:

a) The month designations were designed for the original Clone Wars multimedia project.  With the advent of the animated Clone Wars series rendering the dates in the books and comics obsolete and inapplicable, and forcing some of those stories into different time-frames, it doesn't make sense to hold on to the month designations.  Placing either series into months at this juncture became a very arbitrary decision, and one that ceased to make sense to me.  I don't break down the other years on the timeline into months (barring the post-ANH section, which is split into two 6 month periods, due to the fact that there are SO many stories in that era); so why continue it here when it does more harm than good? 

b) I still maintain the "original," pre-Clone Wars animated series, timeline on this site (you might not have noticed it, but it's on the left hand side border towards the bottom) here.  So, for those of you who reject in its entirety the animated Clone Wars series--and that's totally understandable--you still have your original timeline designated by month as it was originally conceived and set forth.  It's also helpful even for those who accept both Clone Wars projects, but want to know, for example, where each section of Karen Traviss' Republic Commando series goes from month to month, or where the original Republic Holonet News (and the CIS Shadowfeed) news stories might go.

Is it possible to do the entire Clone Wars by month?  It might be, and that's something that Eddie Van der Heidjen (whose starwarstimeline.com link you see on the left border as well) might be able to ascertain in the future, as he chronicles the amount of days that pass within each story.  Once we know roughly how many days each story/adventure takes, we can better determine how many stories fit into a month.  But it's a big project unto itself and I'm not convinced it would best serve the new arrangement of stories.  The Star Wars Expanded Universe Timeline is not averse to such detailed designations (heck, I've broken up novels into chapters and pages for the sake of an accurate chronology), but this site's MAIN mission statement has always been to provide readers/viewers with the proper order in which to read/watch the unfolding of the saga, and for now that's best served with a chronology placed within simple year designations rather than months, which at this time would prove misleading at best and confusing at worst.

5/1/15 Conclude the Clone Wars Has

Apart from transferring it over from the "Complete Saga" to the "Rise of the Empire" section, which I'll do tomorrow, the Clone Wars era is done!  What a long haul!  Once again a BIG Thank You to Rob Mullin for doing all the heavy lifting!  Had it waited for me to find the time to read through everything, it would be another year before I had it complete, and I am very glad that it is!  Hope you guys enjoy it!

And stay tuned over this week, as I have an announcement to make about the next unpublished story The Star Wars Expanded Universe Timeline is hosting!

4/29/15 Clone Wars, Nothing but Clone Wars

I'm in the midst of revamping the Clone Wars section (yet again), this time to match up with the excellent work done by Rob Mullin in his Star Wars Expanded Universe Chronology (which, as you know, is one of the three timelines I have linked on the left-hand side of the page, the other two being Nathan's and Eddie's).  There are a few minor differences between the two timelines, but overall I think Rob's done such a fantastic job puzzling through this very difficult period that I'm very much in his debt for being able to utilize his placements.  I'm not done yet.  I start Year 2 tomorrow.  One thing I might do since everything is as it is in this era now is eliminate the month designations.  Months were introduced back when the Clone Wars was studiously overseen by Lucasfilm, Del Rey and Dark Horse.  But with many of those stories forced to be compressed into the first three months after the Battle of Geonosis, prior to Anakin's knighting, and their dates having to be ignored, that keeping month designations don't seem to make a lot of sense anymore. I rarely use months for any other time period (other than to break the year up in six-month periods).  We'll see how I feel when it's all said and done. 

4/28/15 Starwarstimeline.net

At long last, the Star Wars Expanded Universe Timeline is under its own domain name: www.starwarstimeline.net.  Please get rid of the old one (under the timelineuniverse.net umbrella) and bookmark this one instead.  I hopefully re-linked all of the internal hyperlinks, but if you come across a broken one, please drop me a line!  You'll also note that there are no more "website updates," as I'll be posting all updates right here on this page.  For nostalgia buffs out there, I've placed all the old website updates under their respective dates in each of the "Archived News" years below.

4/23/15 Cloning

Made some updates to the Clone Wars era to more closely reflect the timeline revealed in Jason Fry's The Clone Wars Episode Guide.  This was done without reference to the prior Clone Wars publishing campaign, so I'm not going to say that this era currently makes sense.  Doing so is going to take a considerable amount of time and research, which I don't currently have.  Robert Mullin (of The Star Wars Expanded Universe Chronology) has been hard at work at this very thing, and so when his becomes available, I'll make it available to you as well.  In the meantime, I at least wanted to reflect the chronology of the animated series in some semblance of order.  No doubt Jason's efforts have been challenged as well (I place the "Downfall of a Droid" and "Duel of the Droids," episodes 6 and 7, respectively, PRIOR to the Malevolence trilogy (eps. 2-4) due to the necessity of incorporating the novel Wild Space in with the Droids two-parter (at least that's what I recall the reason for that is!)

4/22/15 Lostworlds Found!  The Complete Text of Adventures in Hyperspace Book 3 and Synopsis of Book 4!

The Star Wars Expanded Universe Timeline is proud to present the never-before published third book in Scholastic's Adventures in Hyperspace series, The Big Switch, by Ryder Windham!  Included are preliminary illustrations by Jeff Carlisle, the original cover illustration by Robert Rath, footnotes, an afterward by Ryder Windham, and a synopsis for what would have been Book 4: The Last Blade Master!  Click here to read it now!

4/20/15 Good Things To Those Who Wait

I promised you guys I had some good things coming to this site, and that the EU wasn't dead, and I'm seeing through on that promise!  Do you recall what Lostworlds are?  That's a name fans gave to unpublished stories that were intended to come out at some point, but for various reasons never did.  Often they were approved by Lucasfilm and some even had art commissioned for them.  Well, the first of the goodies I have for you guys is the third Adventures in Hyperspace story: The Big Switch, by Ryder Windham!!  This will be published this month on this site exclusively, along with some behind-the-scenes commentary by Ryder Windham!

4/13/15 Essential Guide to Warfare

Added the remaining bits of fiction lore from the Essential Guide to Warfare, and the stories from the Author's Cut.

4/9/15 A Bit More

Added the Fantasy Flight Games to the 0-4 ABY timeframe on the History page.  Also added more comics and the Adventure digests, Clone Wars digests and some Scholastic books from this period.

4/8/15 Getting to the Comics

Even more than the books, I think the comics of the last few years have been neglected on this site (simply by virtue of the fact that there were that many more), something I scratched the surface today in adding.  I added the two Wild Space Omnibi issues, as well as the comics that came out in 2013.  Most of them should be on the site, although their trade paperback collections may still need to be added for recent entries.  In all, we're getting there.

4/7/15 New Republic Additions

Continuing on from yesterday's additions and rearrangements based on The Essential Reader's Companion, I've managed to arrange most of the Adventure Journal stories (some of which appeared in Tales from the Empire and Tales from the New Republic anthologies, and a shame that they never managed to collect all of them) in a way that better reflects when they take place.  Most of these stories had no indication as to dating.  I've also managed to include all the missing stories (at least the main ones) indicated in The Essential Reader through to the end of the timeline.  There remain everything that came after this book, as well as as a host of shorts, RPG supplements and source material that have to be added in the course of time.  Thanks to several of you, I have several emails to go through which will aid me in this process, though I can't promise when I'll be able to do this.

4/6/15 Old Republic Additions

Just added some missing Old Republic material that I'd never gotten around to adding back in the day when they first came out; I also clarified some dates that were in error.  I've gone up as far as Episode I, interspersing the short story "Darth Maul: End Game" to the events of that period.  I did some minor shuffling of the Clone Wars era books based on The Essential Reader's Companion, but it's far from the complete overhaul that this period needs.  I figured out (I think) where to place Scoundrels, Choices of One as well as the five-book Rebel Force series, though I won't feel entirely comfortable with these placements until I've read through this busy period again.  The chronology that appears in The Essential Reader is a definite aid for stories that I didn't have an accurate date for, e.g., many of the Adventure Journal stories, but as to the sequence of events following the adventures of Luke, Han and Leia, that's something I prefer to personally tackle as I've been doing since 1992, though for the time being the current guesstimates will have to suffice.

3/28/15 Darth Plagueis the Wise

I added Darth Maul: Lockdown and expanded the chronology of Darth Plagueis to better delineate how it fits alongside other surrounding stories.  Although Luceno is excellent at referencing preexisting stories in the larger narrative, there are some obscure stories he misses, such as Tales #24: "Marked," and Scholastic's Episode I Adventures books, which featured Maul's mission against the Bartokk Assassins. 

3/20/2015 Book of Sith

I delineated the eras in which the various sections within the Book of Sith were written.

3/17/2015 Dawn of the Jedi/Before the Republic Era

At long last, I've created a new page to represent this ancient era that spans 37,000 to 25,000 BBY.  As I go through this material, I'll be updating this page (and the History page, which features all of the Star Wars eras) with more detailed information, as I did recently to represent the 10,000 year span that is found within the first issue of Dawn of the Jedi.  During this time, I'm going to try to update the site to include material that I never had time to add from the last five or so years. 

3/7/2015 New EU/Legends

The official site posted a link to a story written by fan-favorite author Abel Pena for the old Hyperspace site (which had been the official site's designation for their former repository of new stories).  Skyewalking: A Clone Wars Story tells the tale of Obi-Wan and Anakin's adventures on the planet Skye, and serves as a direct prequel to Marvel Star Wars Annual #1: The Long Hunt.  This novella also includes the Pena tale, "Lone Wolf," which dovetails into John Jackson Miller's Insider #143 story "Incognito."

No doubt there are many fans hope this olive branch from LFL will mean future stories under the "Legends" banner.  Time will tell.

1/21/15: Disney is not using Lucas' story treatment for the upcoming trilogy

Go here for the full story.  For some time, Expanded Universe fans have been getting flak from "movie-only/Lucas purists" who argue that only Lucas' vision is canon.  Well, the upcoming trilogy will, in fact, not reflect Lucas' vision, but that of other writers.  In other words, the upcoming trilogy is essentially a kind of EU.  It's not, of course, since the EU has been deemed non-canon, which makes it--by the standards of Lucas purists--a kind of Alternate Universe.  As Lucas sold his company to Disney and they legally own it, which allows them to call their AU canon.  This only goes to show you what a slippery concept all of these designations are.  Canon is an important designation for a fictional universe, but it ultimately belongs to each fan to determine what their personal canon is, particularly when it becomes hazy as it has here. 

At any rate, there's no time like the present to start reading the original expansion of Lucas' original six-film saga with Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire! 

1/4/15: Do you love Han Solo?  Can you read and write Hungarian?

Matt Wilkins and I are looking for a reliable person who can translate the text of four licensed Hungarian Han Solo novels into English, have the time and inclination to do so, and are passionate about Star Wars.  If that description sounds like you, drop me a line here.

On a separate note, Red Harvest has been moved to after the Old Republic series.