Book Review: 'A Guide to the Star Wars Universe - Third Edition'

(C) 2000 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) 

In 1984, Ballantine Books’ imprint Del Rey published Raymond Velasco’s A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, an A-Z reference book about the characters, vehicles, weapons, and locations in George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy and various tie-in media works, including the early Expanded Universe novels and Marvel comic books. Although some of the entries in Velasco’s book were one-line descriptions of aliens, planets, spacecraft, or weapons, it was the first book of its kind and – in that dark period when no one thought there would be any new films or stories set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” – it sold well and many Star Wars fans had a copy in their collection of books and magazines.

10 years later, Del Rey revisited the Guide in an expanded and revised edition by West End Games’ writer-editor Bill Slavicsek. By this time, Bantam Spectra had won the publishing rights to new Expanded Universe novels, the first of which was Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars: Heir to the Empire. In addition, West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game’s many sourcebooks had added vast amounts of information, such as various races’ names, that eventually ended up being integrated in Star Wars canon. Because of this, much of Slavicsek’s second edition relied heavily on his company’s publications, as well as the Bantam Spectra novels in existence, Lucasfilm’s TV movies set on Endor, and licensed tie-in works.

Again, to keep the book from becoming too voluminous and unwieldly, the 1994 edition adhered to the style set a decade earlier in Velasco’s first edition of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe.  Most of the entries were brief, and many of the original Lucasfilm-supplied line drawings from the First Edition were recycled in the Second, although Del Rey supplemented them with other drawings derived from the West End Games sourcebooks.

Eventually, these two sourcebooks were the point of origin for Stephen J. Sansweet’s 1998 The Star Wars Encyclopedia, a coffee table format hardcover published after the release of The Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition feature films and a year before the premiere of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

This should have put an end to Del Rey’s Guide series; the content of Sansweet’s Star Wars Encyclopedia was almost identical to that found in the Velasco and Slavicsek references, down to the use of two- or three-letter source codes at the end of each entry. Sansweet even acknowledges the close links between the Encyclopedia and A Guide to the Star Wars Universe in his foreword.

But because the Encyclopedia was a more expensive book to produce, the publisher decided to wait until the Prequel Trilogy was completed to greenlight a second edition. Instead, Del Rey gave Slavicseck the go-ahead for a third “expanded and revised” edition of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe.

How did Exar Kun nearly destroy Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy? When did Han Solo first meet Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian? Where was Mara Jade when the Emperor died? What are the secrets of the terrible super weapons – the Death Stars, the Sun Crusher, and the World Devastators? What are the Qom Qae? How powerful is the Black Sun criminal organization?

Looking for facts about the characters, starships, weaponry, droids, alien species, and historic battles in the most amazing adventure of them all? From airspeeders to N-1 starfighters, Coruscant to Tatooine, Nom Anor to Leia Organa – you'll find the whole universe of Star Wars covered here:

The original Star Wars trilogy movies

The novels – from Star Wars to Vector Prime

The animated TV series Droids and Ewoks

National Public Radio dramatizations

Young Adult novels

The Star Wars comic-books

Role-playing books

Video games and CD-ROMs

…plus sourcebooks, storybooks, sketchbooks, portfolios, and more!

Featuring new material on Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace … the latest Star Wars series: The New Jedi Order . . . and the entire thrilling saga! – Publisher’s blurb, A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Third Edition

Because the "Star Wars Universe" this guide covers is as vast and populated as George Lucas' "galaxy far, far away," it's impossible for even the most prolific researcher/writer to keep up with all the new additions as books, games, collectibles and even animated episodes appear almost on a monthly basis. For even though the Star Wars canon (read, "official version") only includes the eight filmed Episodes, the Anthology Star Wars Story films, their novelizations, and their direct off-shoots (such as the National Public Radio dramatizations and the various TV animated series), there are also tons of Lucasfilm-authorized Expanded Universe novels, comic books, and games (roleplaying and computer games) that have added planets, political entities, droids, weapons, spacecraft, alien and human characters that go beyond Lucas' filmed works.

In some ways, Bill Slavicsek's 596 page A (as in A-3DO, a droid once owned by the Jedi Knight 

Andur Sunrider) to Z (ZZ-4Z, yet another droid, this time once Han Solo's mechanical housekeeper, last seen recovering from an attack by Boba Fett) book serves as a "poor man's Star Wars Encyclopedia," since the format is very similar and essentially covers the same territory -- down to the style of the entries -- as Steven J. Sansweet's more expensive and even more outdated (circa 1998) reference book.

The Guide was at one time a must-have reference work.  Slavicsek did an excellent job at compiling all the data from not only the first four filmed Episodes (the cutoff point in this edition for the movies is Episode I: The Phantom Menace) but also every licensed media release, including young reader books (including The Glove of Darth Vader and its sequels), comic books (Tales of the Jedi Knights, the Dark Empire series), and such forgotten (and forgettable) TV offerings as the Droids animated series.

As it turned out, the 2000 edition of A Guide to the Star Wars was also the last of the series. It was supplemented by a series of other Star Wars references published not just by Del Rey, but also by DK Books. The last vestiges of the guide appear in the three-volume Star Wars Encyclopedia, albeit without the codes for sources at the end of the entries. In addition, most of DK’s references – including the popular Visual Dictionary series and The Star Wars Visual Encyclopedia – do a much better job at presenting information than the Guides ever could.