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Showing posts with the label Ballantine Books

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

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(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

Book Review: 'The Art of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope'

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(C) 1979 Ballantine Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  In   November of 1979, Ballantine Books (then the sole licensed publisher of Star Wars novels and most of the literary tie-ins) published two versions of Carol Titleman’s The Art of Star Wars . One was a limited-edition hardcover, which I have never seen, the other was one of those "trade paperback" editions (coffee table size but in softcover). What made The Art of Star Wars a must-get for me in those days was that it contained the entire fourth revised draft of the screenplay for A New Hope (it was the first time I had seen the Episode IV subtitle, even though I bought this after seeing The Empire Strikes Back ). The screenplay included scenes that were later edited out of the final film (mainly scenes on Tatooine focusing a bit on Luke's life there and introducing Biggs Darklighter early in the film’s first act. Another deleted scene – which was restored for the Special Edition 20 years later – intro