Over at Star Wars Books, Troy Denning conducted a Q&A session with fans via Facebook. Just what do fans want to know from the author that seems to have become the face of the Post-New Jedi Order EU? Why, what his dream project would be, of course.
I’ve been blessed with so many dream SW projects already that I feel guilty talking about another one . . . but I WOULD like to write the story of Yoda coming of age
Denning also dished on the creative process involved with writing Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse, his latest entry in the Expanded Universe and the conclusion of the nine-book megaseries.
One of our goals for Apocalypse was to open up a whole new boatload of story telling possibilities for the EU. I feel like we accomplished that, and there are about a hundred different SW stories I’d love to tell that are hinted at the end of Apocalypse.
While I understand the goal and what they were trying to accomplish, I couldn’t help but feel that this approach made Apocalypse too open-ended for it’s own good.
For more answers to fan questions, head on over to Club Jade for a transcript with some commentary.
My problem with this idea is that Denning seems to think he can dictate what stories the other authors should and have to tell. Which is really, really arrogant. It’s not like Zahn’s ending of the first Galactic Civil War. If authors still wanted to write Imperial bad guys, they could and did. But Denning didn’t just make an open sandbox – he deliberately set up stories that he thinks other writers should resolve.
Nanci and I talked a little bit about this on the last podcast, although I’m wishing we’d gone into a bit more depth about how Denning seems to be dictating the future stories to be told. We did talk about how his characterization and tone have permeated through the post-NJO EU, however.
I heard that! But since (I think) she’s still not read the book, you couldn’t go into specifics. I wanted to complain specifically.
Plus, I think the things he’s “left open” are not the most interesting stories to tell.
Yeah, I hit that up in my written review. I understand leaving some things open-ended to end a series, but not to the degree that Apocalypse was. With so little in the way of resolution to so many plot elements (many large plot elements at that), it was hard for the reader to get any kind of release of tension/anxiety. To not have that is a pretty big failure of standard dramatic structure, which Star Wars has always fit into.
Well, wouldn’t that require readers to, you know, care what happened? Because, try as I might, unless Allston was writing, I really didn’t care. Especially about Abeloth and Vestara.