Epinions Time Capsule: 'The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia' Book Review
Author's Note:
This is the original review of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia that I wrote for Epinions, a now-inactive review website owned by eBay, on December 30, 2008.
It was, of course, written at a time when George Lucas still ran Lucasfilm. The now-canceled Star Wars: The Clone Wars television show was barely halfway through its first season on Cartoon Network, and as far as we knew, the feature film saga was complete; Lucas was adamant that the six films - plus the aforementioned TV series on Cartoon Network - were the complete account of The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker and that he wasn't interested in making the long-rumored Sequel Trilogy.
In 2018, we know that things have changed since I wrote this review nearly a decade ago. Lucas retired and sold his company, Lucasfilm Limited, to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. Star Wars: The Clone Wars ended its five-season run in 2014 and was followed on Disney XD by Star Wars Rebels, which recently ended its four-season run. And starting with 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Disney-owned Lucasfilm has made four live-action films set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story. According to announcements by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and others in the know, there is more Star Wars content on the way.
I, unlike Sheev Palpatine, can't use the Dark Side of the Force to foresee every aspect of the future, but I was right when I predicted that this encyclopedia would need an update by 2013. Of course, I was only thinking about the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series and the Expanded Universe books, comics, video games, and other Star Wars products related to the story. Now we all know that the Star Wars universe will continue to expand as more films, TV shows, and other stories are produced.
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| (C) 2008 Del Rey Books/Lucas Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) |
Pros: Wonderful Star Wars reference, nice
packaging, three-volume approach
Cons: Other than cost? It will eventually
need a third edition...
In June of 1998, more than a year after the 20th Anniversary
theatrical release of The Star Wars Trilogy: The Special Edition and
11 months before the premiere of Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom
Menace, Ballantine/Del Rey Books published Stephen J. Sansweet's
one-volume reference work, The
Star Wars Encyclopedia.
Essentially a slicker and more lavish upgrade of Bill Slavicsek's A Guide to the Star Wars Universe - Second Revised Edition of 1994, Sansweet's lavishly illustrated and nicely designed hardcover tome is still a wonderful resource for anyone interested in the heroes, villains, organizations, creatures, weapons, spacecraft, vehicles and planets that appear not only in the films in George Lucas' original "Classic Trilogy" and the Radio Dramas, novelizations, and comic book adaptations thereof, but also in the Expanded Universe novels, TV projects (such as the Droids and Ewoks Saturday-morning cartoon series), customized card games, role-playing game guides, and video/computer games along the lines of X-Wing and TIE Fighter.
Although The Star Wars Encyclopedia was - and still is - an excellent guide to almost everything in the Star Wars mythos published at that time, a lot has happened in that galaxy far, far away since 1998. Three Prequel films and an animated Clone Wars "movie" have been released between 1999 and 2008, two 2-D and one computer-animated Clone Wars TV series have been created for the Cartoon Network, and a live action series - set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope is scheduled to be shown on TNT in 2009.
Moreover, a Death Star-sized pile of books - ranging from novelizations of the films to Expanded Universe series which include stories set within the Trilogies' time span as well as in "ancient" eras when the Sith and Jedi first struggled and "future" eras in which a fifty-something Luke Skywalker is forced to face off against one of his nephews in the Legacy of the Force series.
Add to this all sorts of games - traditional role-playing ones as well as shooter/simulation/strategy video games for both consoles and computers - which have been released since 1998, and you'll understand why Sansweet's original work needed an update - badly!
The 2008 Reference:
The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia takes the basic format of its 1998 forerunner - alphabetical listings of almost everything mentioned in the Star Wars mythology - and in some cases recycles some of the entries (mainly those on minor characters, worlds, or vehicles) from the first edition.
But because the Star Wars Universe is constantly expanding, Sansweet, along with Pablo Hidalgo, Bob Vitas, and Daniel Wallace, divided the work (now renamed The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia) into three hardcover volumes (A-G, H-O, P-Z) which now delve more deeply into areas where the first edition could only offere tantalizing glimpses of.
What's New? What's Not?
Here's a sampling of what's inside:
Character portraits of both the renowned (Luke Skywalker, Queen Amidala, Darth Vader) and the obscure (Tnun Bdu, Tycho Celchu, Bib Fortuna)
The natives and customs of planets as diverse as Tatooine and Hoth, Dagobah and Kashyyyk
The rituals and traditions of Jedi Knights and Sith Lords
A timeline of major events in Star Wars history, from the Clone Wars and the inception of the Empire to the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker and the iinvasion of the monstruous Yuuzan Vong - from the insert of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
The conceit of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia is that it was written as a scholarly reference by historians living some 20 years after the events they are chronicling. The tone is therefore reminiscent of an Earth reference work along the lines of the sadly out-of-print America at War: 1941-1945 by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, with entries arranged in alphabetical order and without the often funny and insightful "stepping out of the scenario" behind-the-scenes commentary that Michael and Denise Okuda tend to use in the two editions of The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future.
As I mentioned earlier, the authors use many of the older edition's entries - especially the ones about spacecraft, droids, planets, star systems, and really minor characters - pretty much without expanding on them, but that's to be expected in a work of this nature. The same can be said about some of the illustrations - if a reader has the 1998 edition and looks up, say, Guri or Solo, Han, chances are that the book's designer used the same photo or comic book illustration in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia as well.
The one major difference - other than the multi-volume approach or the new material from the Prequel films and The Clone Wars series - is that the authors decided not to continue the use of "source codes" at the end of each entry. In the previous edition, Sansweet had adopted the same technique used by both Raymond Velasco and Bill Slavisek of placing two- to three-letter codes (ESB for The Empire Strikes Back, say) after an entry so readers would know what movie, novel, or other source material the information had been drawn from.
While helpful to readers, these codes needed a multi-page section to define them, and this made the Guides and Sansweet's first Encyclopedia a bit bulkier than necessary, so the authors of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia deleted them.
What's really nice about The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, obviously, is that now it reveals more information about George Lucas's unique mythology, some of it created by him personally in the screenplays and story ideas for The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and quite a bit of it contributed by game designers and novelists. Of course, the latter is often considered as "less official" by purists, but because the games and novels are licensed by Lucasfilm, the characters, planets, weapons, life-forms, societies, institutions and spacecraft described in them are also included in the three-volume set.
Pros and Cons : Even though The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia will eventually require an update, this three-book edition is a true treasure trove for Star Wars fans of all ages. The entries vary in length depending on the importance of their subject in the Star Wars mythos - a minor world or person will often rate one sentence or two of descriptive text, while major characters or events (Darth Vader, Galactic Civil War) will get a page or two of coverage.
As a reader. I like the way The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia is presented; the three volume approach is easier to peruse, and it is lavishly illustrated with stills from the seven feature films and the various television shows set in that most fascinating of fictional galaxies, as well as hand-drawn illustrations culled from role-playing game guides, sourcebooks, Marvel and Dark Horse Comics stories, and even some of the book and video game covers.
The mix, of course, is not terribly consistent visually, especially when you look at the stylized renderings of Obi-Wan from either version of the Clone Wars animated series and compare them to stills from the live-action movies. However, it is interesting and adds diversity, so that aspect doesn't annoy me too much.
Obviously, a work of this scope isn't something you want to get on a whim. It's a very nicely packaged set, with a black-and-red slipcover into which the three volumes fit when not being perused, but it's not cheap, either. The suggested retail price is a whopping $125.00, and even though I paid "only" $75.00 at Amazon when I pre-ordered it), this is not a book to be given to a young reader under the age of 10. (It's also worth mentioning that this is not an item you want falling on your foot; the three volumes in the slipcover weigh 10 pounds!)
Of course, the fact that Cartoon Network's animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series is currently in its first season means that only events from the 2008 theatrical release of its pilot episode and a handful of early 22-minute shows are mentioned herein, and because reference books of this sort tend to become outdated as more books, games, and TV series are released, it's fair to say that in less than five years, a new edition will probably be needed.
Essentially a slicker and more lavish upgrade of Bill Slavicsek's A Guide to the Star Wars Universe - Second Revised Edition of 1994, Sansweet's lavishly illustrated and nicely designed hardcover tome is still a wonderful resource for anyone interested in the heroes, villains, organizations, creatures, weapons, spacecraft, vehicles and planets that appear not only in the films in George Lucas' original "Classic Trilogy" and the Radio Dramas, novelizations, and comic book adaptations thereof, but also in the Expanded Universe novels, TV projects (such as the Droids and Ewoks Saturday-morning cartoon series), customized card games, role-playing game guides, and video/computer games along the lines of X-Wing and TIE Fighter.
Although The Star Wars Encyclopedia was - and still is - an excellent guide to almost everything in the Star Wars mythos published at that time, a lot has happened in that galaxy far, far away since 1998. Three Prequel films and an animated Clone Wars "movie" have been released between 1999 and 2008, two 2-D and one computer-animated Clone Wars TV series have been created for the Cartoon Network, and a live action series - set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope is scheduled to be shown on TNT in 2009.
Moreover, a Death Star-sized pile of books - ranging from novelizations of the films to Expanded Universe series which include stories set within the Trilogies' time span as well as in "ancient" eras when the Sith and Jedi first struggled and "future" eras in which a fifty-something Luke Skywalker is forced to face off against one of his nephews in the Legacy of the Force series.
Add to this all sorts of games - traditional role-playing ones as well as shooter/simulation/strategy video games for both consoles and computers - which have been released since 1998, and you'll understand why Sansweet's original work needed an update - badly!
The 2008 Reference:
The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia takes the basic format of its 1998 forerunner - alphabetical listings of almost everything mentioned in the Star Wars mythology - and in some cases recycles some of the entries (mainly those on minor characters, worlds, or vehicles) from the first edition.
But because the Star Wars Universe is constantly expanding, Sansweet, along with Pablo Hidalgo, Bob Vitas, and Daniel Wallace, divided the work (now renamed The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia) into three hardcover volumes (A-G, H-O, P-Z) which now delve more deeply into areas where the first edition could only offere tantalizing glimpses of.
What's New? What's Not?
Here's a sampling of what's inside:
Character portraits of both the renowned (Luke Skywalker, Queen Amidala, Darth Vader) and the obscure (Tnun Bdu, Tycho Celchu, Bib Fortuna)
The natives and customs of planets as diverse as Tatooine and Hoth, Dagobah and Kashyyyk
The rituals and traditions of Jedi Knights and Sith Lords
A timeline of major events in Star Wars history, from the Clone Wars and the inception of the Empire to the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker and the iinvasion of the monstruous Yuuzan Vong - from the insert of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
The conceit of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia is that it was written as a scholarly reference by historians living some 20 years after the events they are chronicling. The tone is therefore reminiscent of an Earth reference work along the lines of the sadly out-of-print America at War: 1941-1945 by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, with entries arranged in alphabetical order and without the often funny and insightful "stepping out of the scenario" behind-the-scenes commentary that Michael and Denise Okuda tend to use in the two editions of The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future.
As I mentioned earlier, the authors use many of the older edition's entries - especially the ones about spacecraft, droids, planets, star systems, and really minor characters - pretty much without expanding on them, but that's to be expected in a work of this nature. The same can be said about some of the illustrations - if a reader has the 1998 edition and looks up, say, Guri or Solo, Han, chances are that the book's designer used the same photo or comic book illustration in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia as well.
The one major difference - other than the multi-volume approach or the new material from the Prequel films and The Clone Wars series - is that the authors decided not to continue the use of "source codes" at the end of each entry. In the previous edition, Sansweet had adopted the same technique used by both Raymond Velasco and Bill Slavisek of placing two- to three-letter codes (ESB for The Empire Strikes Back, say) after an entry so readers would know what movie, novel, or other source material the information had been drawn from.
While helpful to readers, these codes needed a multi-page section to define them, and this made the Guides and Sansweet's first Encyclopedia a bit bulkier than necessary, so the authors of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia deleted them.
What's really nice about The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, obviously, is that now it reveals more information about George Lucas's unique mythology, some of it created by him personally in the screenplays and story ideas for The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and quite a bit of it contributed by game designers and novelists. Of course, the latter is often considered as "less official" by purists, but because the games and novels are licensed by Lucasfilm, the characters, planets, weapons, life-forms, societies, institutions and spacecraft described in them are also included in the three-volume set.
Pros and Cons : Even though The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia will eventually require an update, this three-book edition is a true treasure trove for Star Wars fans of all ages. The entries vary in length depending on the importance of their subject in the Star Wars mythos - a minor world or person will often rate one sentence or two of descriptive text, while major characters or events (Darth Vader, Galactic Civil War) will get a page or two of coverage.
As a reader. I like the way The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia is presented; the three volume approach is easier to peruse, and it is lavishly illustrated with stills from the seven feature films and the various television shows set in that most fascinating of fictional galaxies, as well as hand-drawn illustrations culled from role-playing game guides, sourcebooks, Marvel and Dark Horse Comics stories, and even some of the book and video game covers.
The mix, of course, is not terribly consistent visually, especially when you look at the stylized renderings of Obi-Wan from either version of the Clone Wars animated series and compare them to stills from the live-action movies. However, it is interesting and adds diversity, so that aspect doesn't annoy me too much.
Obviously, a work of this scope isn't something you want to get on a whim. It's a very nicely packaged set, with a black-and-red slipcover into which the three volumes fit when not being perused, but it's not cheap, either. The suggested retail price is a whopping $125.00, and even though I paid "only" $75.00 at Amazon when I pre-ordered it), this is not a book to be given to a young reader under the age of 10. (It's also worth mentioning that this is not an item you want falling on your foot; the three volumes in the slipcover weigh 10 pounds!)
Of course, the fact that Cartoon Network's animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series is currently in its first season means that only events from the 2008 theatrical release of its pilot episode and a handful of early 22-minute shows are mentioned herein, and because reference books of this sort tend to become outdated as more books, games, and TV series are released, it's fair to say that in less than five years, a new edition will probably be needed.
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