In the years between 1978 and 2014, there was a large-scale collective storytelling project with works as diverse as novels, video games, comics, blockbuster movies and kids books.
There are over 200 books, thousands of comics, at least 60 video games, and a whole series of feature films in the series. That's not including fan-written stories, alternate ideas or weird creations that people who love this series are able to create. Easily hundreds of people have contributed to this body of work, possibly thousands if you consider the full crews of big budget movies, and millions of people consider themselves fans of the body of work.
I'm talking about the Star Wars Legends series. It started with a novel called Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster, and expanded to much more than even Star Wars' creator George Lucas couldn't imagine.
"After Star Wars was released, it became apparent that my story 鈥� however many films it took to tell 鈥� was only one of thousands that could be told about the characters who inhabit its galaxy. But these were not stories that I was destined to tell. Instead, they would spring from the imagination of other writers, inspired by the glimpse of a galaxy that Star Wars provided. Today, it is an amazing, if unexpected, legacy of Star Wars that so many gifted writers are contributing new stories to the Saga," Lucas said in 1996 in an introduction to a new edition of Splinter of the Mind's Eye.
It was something that was kind of unheard of, at least in mainstream circles. Remember, for most of the time there was no internet for most of this era. Instead, it was a group of people who loved a story so much that they felt an urge to jump in and add their voice. In a way, they created a long story that covered thousands of years of in-universe history, expanding what was just three movies about a ragtag group of rebels taking down an evil empire into a world almost as well fleshed out as our own. While it is not the longest in-universe history or storytelling project (it would seem Warhammer 40,000 takes that crown in terms of years covered by the story), it's a remarkable feat of storytelling that really united millions of people around the world. One unofficial source says that Star Wars Legends is the longest in terms of word count with an alleged 129 million words. Though I'm not going to try and prove that.
One notable point in this saga was 1991, when Timothy Zahn wrote Heir to the Empire. That book would become the first best-seller in the series, and kick off a new generation of interest in the series, launching the prequel movies and the Star Wars we know today.
In 2014, a couple of years after Disney bought Lucasfilm, the then-called Expanded Universe was rebranded into "Legends" so that Disney could make its own Star Wars history, and tell its own story. It was a controversial move, particularly for people who have put their time and energy into telling this story, but over the past decade it was begrudgingly accepted. Some of the new "canon" works are fantastic. Andor is one of the best TV shows out there (not just Star Wars shows, but all TV shows), and there is a lot of good work being done in the animated space. However, all of this is now given a Mickey Mouse-shaped stamp of approval, and seems to be driven by profit rather than love for the story.
Most of this EU-turned-Legends body of work is still in print. Some of it is pretty bad, to be honest, but some of it is wonderful storytelling. I love it. I am slowly collecting the novels when I find them in used book stores or local marketplace listings. There's something ... real about these stories set in a fictional universe. It's hard to describe. The crowd-sourced storytelling, the history of it, the sheer size and the willingness for people to go really interesting places in the universe are fascinating to me. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my imagination was running wild. I'd annoy the hell out of my parents pretending to be piloting my X-Wing in the backseat of the car, and it was all because of this story.
This body of work is something special. It's created by people I can identify with, who love the same story I do, and who were willing to put their versions out there. It's different than the new stuff, which feels profit-driven and more manufactured to me. I'm not sure if it's the old paperback smell, or the amazing cover art or the fact that many of the books are older than I am, but it's special. It's worth hanging on to, especially in this day in age where everything's a bit more ephemeral.
So I'm going to try to do that. I'm slowly collecting these books so that they aren't forgotten.
