Why is the EU so bad?

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-09-14 11:18pm

Inspired byEU Books I hate, I've been wondering why? Why is it that the EU has had such consitently awful writers. There are a lot of franchises (B5, WH40K, etc...) that have managed to run off a fair number of novels with descending into such painfully craptapular novels. So why has Star Wars, which is the name in popular sci fi, so badly written so often?

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2003-09-14 11:26pm

Bantam wanted to churn out "planet of the week" unnecessary storylines once they found themselves with the Thrawn Trilogy bestseller. They wanted this cheap, and we got what they bought for us.

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2003-09-14 11:28pm

I guess you could place blame partly on LucasBooks. Apparently, they'll let just about anybody write. And after that book's written it would seem the folks at LucasBooks are either A.) not real sure what a quality book reads like or B.) they just don't care.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2003-09-14 11:32pm

1) Sheer volume. Most other series Like B5 don't have nearly as much written about them as SW.

2) The contrast between Bantam's way of running it (write whatever, whenever) and Del Reys (everything written and released in chronological order) makes for more contraditions in storylines under the old way.

3) Number of differnt authors instead of keeping popular authors (Bantam had the hugely successful Thrawn Trilogy but didn't bring back Zahn for almost a decade, Only reason most others wrote multiple books was because their contracts stipulated as such, but when Del Rey saw how popular Luceano, Denning, Stover and Keyens were, they immediatly resigned them for more books)

Overall I'd say that last reason is the big one. If only good authors write books, logically you are going to have a bunch of good books.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-09-15 12:03am

Ender wrote:1) Sheer volume. Most other series Like B5 don't have nearly as much written about them as SW.

True. But even franchises like Warhammer40k don't have the sheer crap factor that the Star Wars EU does. I've read a lot of the books, mostly just picked at random and only a couple by the same author yet they maintain a quality far better than the EU. Sheer volume alone doesn't explain it all.

Ender wrote:3) Number of differnt authors instead of keeping popular authors (Bantam had the hugely successful Thrawn Trilogy but didn't bring back Zahn for almost a decade, Only reason most others wrote multiple books was because their contracts stipulated as such, but when Del Rey saw how popular Luceano, Denning, Stover and Keyens were, they immediatly resigned them for more books)

Overall I'd say that last reason is the big one. If only good authors write books, logically you are going to have a bunch of good books.

But why didn't they do that? It seems like natural idea, especially considering that many novelist wracked up fairly hefty stacks under Batnam. Why fuck up a proven good thing?

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-09-15 12:09am

Because Zahn would have wanted a crap-load more of a percentage than the hacks they dredged up.

The same thing is true of Star Trek novels, aside from two-three authors, its pretty much full of drek. Of course, they are up to 200+ books these days.

Edit: On second thought, I'm being more than a little harsh, a lot of the earlier OS books were actually quite good, even if they weren't all written by Peter David or Diane Duane.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-09-15 12:21am

consequences wrote:Because Zahn would have wanted a crap-load more of a percentage than the hacks they dredged up.

True, but Zahn also out sold most of those hacks by a huge margin. Not to mention why kill the brand name by hiring the cheapest author and producing shit?

CmdrWilkens · Post by **CmdrWilkens** » 2003-09-15 12:32am

Stormbringer wrote:
consequences wrote:Because Zahn would have wanted a crap-load more of a percentage than the hacks they dredged up.
True, but Zahn also out sold most of those hacks by a huge margin. Not to mention why kill the brand name by hiring the cheapest author and producing shit?

Because they know their audience too well. Do you think that die hards purists (or near-purists) like us compromise anything close to a large percentage of their audience? Nope, we're a large fringe minority that will, nonetheless, stillmostly purchase the books. In other words you don't need to worry about the writing being good SW in order to snatch us so you have to get the rest of the audience. Unfortunately the rest of the audience is 12 year old boys, thus you have a large volume of print devoted to storylines and characters that are only deep enough for a 12 year old to be impressed by.

Smiling Bandit · Post by **Smiling Bandit** » 2003-09-15 09:22am

I've noticed something: there are good books, and none of them have anythign to do with superweapons, and most of them do not focus much on the Jedi.

Which means you can probably recognize the good authoirs by the fact they stay the hell away from that, and just feed us the good stuff.

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2003-09-15 10:28am

Smiling Bandit wrote:I've noticed something: there are good books, and none of them have anythign to do with superweapons, and most of them do not focus much on the Jedi.

Which means you can probably recognize the good authoirs by the fact they stay the hell away from that, and just feed us the good stuff.

Case in point is "Tatooine Ghost", one of the best SW novels to come out in years. No superweapons, no Jedi, and while Thrawn is in it, he's only a background character.

The Brian Daley Solo novels are excellent as well, and Crispin's aren't bad either. But poor Luke hasn't had a good stand alone novel. Luke's shining moment in the EU is "Dark Empire".

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2003-09-15 11:12am

Excuse me if I sound like an elitist, but maybe it's because SW is such a big franchise and therefore there are many people - not just a few devoted fans - who want to write stories set in the SW galaxy??

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2003-09-15 02:59pm

One of the probable reasons Zahn didn't come back was the fact he disagreed with LFL and WEG on a lot of the ways the SW universe should be.

He had to push for his Empire/NR resolution and Luke marrying Mara. He definitely had a picture himself he promoted and I think office politics kept him out of the game for awhile.

CmdrWilkens · Post by **CmdrWilkens** » 2003-09-15 03:17pm

Simon H.Johansen wrote:Excuse me if I sound like an elitist, but maybe it's because SW is such a big franchise and therefore there are many people - not just a few devoted fans - who want to write stories set in the SW galaxy??

Sure but hell I want to write novels set in the Starship Troopers universe. That doesn't mean anybody should let me because I'm not a great writer (I'm not even sure if I qualify as a good one). Furthermore size of the franchise doesn't need to dictate quality.

Lord Pounder · Post by **Lord Pounder** » 2003-09-15 03:20pm

I think the problem stems from the american corportate/Consumer relationship. A company, Delray/Bantam can produce shite and as long as it doesn't indice vomitting the consumer will pay for it. Before i ever even came here i had bought every single EU book and SW game i could lay my hands on. Hell i thought the JAT was OK first time i read it.

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-09-15 05:50pm

I'm at the point where I simply refuse to buy hardcover SW novels anymore since they're usually not worth it. I only have four, and those are TPM (that was a fluke, it had Amidala on the cover

), Tatooine Ghost and the Hand of Thrawn duology (and these last three were well worth it).

Post by **Kuja** » 2003-09-16 12:45am

Of course, the little feud between Zahn and Anderson didn't help anything.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2003-09-16 12:49am

More like Zahn vs. WEG, Marvel, Darkhorse, Vietch, Anderson, etc...

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-09-16 01:14am

Kuja wrote:Of course, the little feud between Zahn and Anderson didn't help anything.

Really? I never heard of that. All I remember is Zahn undoing every fuckup made between The Last Command and Specter of the Past

Post by **Kuja** » 2003-09-16 01:21am

Illuminatus Primus wrote:More like Zahn vs. WEG, Marvel, Darkhorse, Vietch, Anderson, etc...

Yeah, but Anderson was the visible one.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2003-09-16 03:47am

The problem is that there hasn't been any well-developed source material for a decade. Before that, there was only the abysmally bad WEG material, and we know how accurate that was.

Basically, the authors that were approached to write these books (you didn't think random authors submitted a book, did you? Nah, they were asked to write one) had only generic space opera glitz with the big STAR WARS logo to use as source material, which resulted in generic stories with generic characters.

Just goes to show how crucial it is for a company to keep control of its core franchise.

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2003-09-16 08:08am

I thought Zahn liked WEG as a source and that the authors of the Bantam Era were told to forget about Marvel from LFL.

Correct me, if i´m wrong.

Post by **Edi** » 2003-09-16 09:44am

I haven't been following the SW scene for quite a while, and never did keep track of what was happening behind the scenes. Would anybody here care to enlighten me on the Zahn/KJA feud?

I also think one reason why Zahn's books were so good is that he knew SW inside and out, I read one interview of his where he said that he used to play the audio tapes for his kids on long car trips and knew the dialogue almost verbatim without any of the visuals to distract him. That's why he had a much better feel for the characters than the other hacks who've written shit into the EU.

Edi

Post by **Kuja** » 2003-09-16 11:17am

Anderson didn't like the Thrawn trilogy. Zahn hated Dark Empire. So, Anderson had Dark Empire placed after the Thrawn trilogy chronologically, which effectively made anything Thrawn did pale in comparison to the Emperor. So, Zahn shot back with the Hand of Thrawn duology, which was set after anything else in the EU (IIRC) to try and nullify KJA.

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2003-09-16 05:20pm

I thought DarkEmpire was Veitch/Kennedy and Anderson was responsible for JAT?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2003-09-16 05:22pm

Anderson had nothing to do with Dark Empire.

He was invovled with Tales of the Jedi, however...