Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
This month on the Tosche Station Book Club, Nanci is joined by Bria to discuss Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns.
Next month’s pick is Cobalt Squadron by Elizabeth Wein.
This podcast has been brought to you in part by your support on Patreon! If you like what you hear, you can subscribe to the Tosche Station Book Club on iTunes or you can subscribe to the Tosche Station Radio Megafeed for all of our great Star Wars and geek culture content. We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
I’m a sucker for in-universe ‘non-fiction’ books. There’s just something fun about reading historic documents from the Galaxy Far, Far Away. Pair that up with the formation of the Rebellion and its early history and you’ve got a combination that might as well have been plucked out of my brain and put into book form.
It’s Star Wars month! We’re going back in time and starting FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW, a collection of 40 stories related to A New Hope. This week, we discuss the first ten stories, “Raymus” through “The Luckless Rodian,” as we ponder: Why short stories? Whose tales did A New Hope leave behind? What would have happened if Qui-Gon had lived?!
This podcast is NOT spoiler-free!
Book Wars Pod explores the Star Wars universe through the franchise’s non-screen media: the canon novels, comics, and video games. Check out our guide to past episodes, and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and wherever else you cast your pods. You can also subscribe to the Tosche Station Radio Mega Feed on iTunes or Google Play for more great shows from our podcast network.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr for episode updates! Hosted by Kristen Sereci, Chris Sedor, and Kate Sedor. Art by Joe Butera. Music by Podington Bear.
This podcast has been brought to you in part by your support on Patreon!
When someone pitches a book to you as “lesbian pirates in space,” it’s hard not to be interested especially when you’re talking to someone who writes for Tosche Station. (We have a type here and we’re not sorry.) That’s how Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns was pitched to me: lesbian space pirates along with a side of Firefly. Who wouldn’t be intrigued? If only the book itself had caught me as fast as the premise.
Stearns’ debut novel, Barbary Station, is about two engineers who decide that their best way forward in life is to hijack a spaceship and join a pirate crew. One problem: they don’t know that the pirate crew is stuck on a space station that’s controlled completely by a rogue AI and won’t let anyone leave. That makes it a little tricky for a pirate group to successfully lead a life of crime and profit and it especially makes it hard when the Pirate Captain won’t accept you into as a part of their crew until after you beat the AI thereby freeing them from the station. What could possibly go wrong? (A lot. A lot of things are going to go wrong.) Continue reading
More news in the lead up to The Last Jedi? YOU DON”T SAY.
Let’s start with something that isn’t news but will make your life better: Kelly Marie Tran and Veronica Ngo promoted The Last Jedi in traditional Vietnamese attire and her Instagram post about it made me want to cry happy tears a little because REPRESENTATION MATTERS.
Entertainment Weekly kept having more fun with their Secrets of The Last Jedi pieces including this one on Kylo’s TIE fighter. EW also has a nice recap of the press conference from over the weekend. Hold on to your butts, folks, because it’s going to be nothing but nonstop press from here on out. Breath… just breath…
Google Home now has a Star Wars Trivia contest which is actually hosted by Andi and Anthony from the Star Wars Show. Also that linked video includes the cutest interview with Kelly Marie Tran ever and are you sensing a pattern here yet?
Finally, the Star Wars Databank added in entries related to Battlefront II and Inferno Squad. I’m going to link you to Del Meeko’s for no particular reason that definitely has nothing to do with the last line. Or the fact that he’s a perfect angel. Okay I think I better end this news post here. Until next week!
Congratulations to Charles Soule and Angel Unzueta for creating a comic page that made me audibly gasp really, really loudly.
It’s a relatively quiet issue for Black Squadron. They’re present, of course, and Poe, Snap, and Jess all have some nice moments but the real focus this month is on Leia Organa and Lor San Tekka. Poor Lor is imprisoned thanks to breaking and entering in search of knowledge and while Leia might be looking to find adequate storage and protection for her birth mother’s gowns, she definitely has an alternative agenda going on. Come on, it’s General Organa. She’s leading the Resistance. You don’t really think she’s just there to store dresses, do you?
This is actually something that I really like about this book. While Poe’s obviously the focus, Soule isn’t afraid to pull back and let other characters take and/or share the spotlight at times. It worked really well in the arc where the guys and girls split up and it works rather well in this issue too. Also, it certainly doesn’t hurt that this arc has thus far been a stellar example of how to incorporate Prequel elements in the Sequel era. After all, it’s one big galaxy.
Assorted Thoughts:
Poe Dameron #21 keeps doing a lot of things right and I can’t wait to see where this arc goes.
Poe Dameron #21: Charles Soule/Writer, Angel Unzueta/Artist, Arif Prianto/Colorist, Joe Caramagna/Letterer, Jordan White/Editor, Heather Antos/Assistant Editor
We return to the world of comics with STAR WARS: SHOWDOWN ON THE SMUGGLER’S MOON (issues 8-12) by Jason Aaron and DARTH VADER: SHADOWS AND SECRETS (issues 7-12) by Kieron Gillen. We discuss how these issues dive deeply into the histories of and relationships between characters old and new, particularly Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Doctor Aphra, and, of course, Darth Vader.
This podcast is NOT spoiler-free and discusses plot points from “The Holocron Heist” arc of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (episodes 2.1-2.3).
Book Wars Pod explores the Star Wars universe through the franchise’s non-screen media: the canon novels, comics, and video games. Check out our guide to past episodes, and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and wherever else you cast your pods. You can also subscribe to the Tosche Station Radio Mega Feed on iTunes or Google Play for more great shows from our podcast network.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr for episode updates! Hosted by Kristen Sereci, Chris Sedor, and Kate Sedor. Art by Joe Butera. Music by Podington Bear.
This podcast has been brought to you in part by your support on Patreon!
Reference books and visual guides aren’t usually the sort of Star Wars item that I consider my thing. They’re neat, of course, and fun to flip through at a friend’s but when there’s only so much money in your bank account, you can’t get everything. Not so here. Much like the Star Wars Propaganda book from last year, Stormtroopers: Beyond the Armor by Ryder Windham and Adam Bray is one of those books that caught my interest completely from the moment I started paging through it right up until I closed it. Continue reading
So, uh, there was some news last week. That tends to happen when Anthony Breznican and Entertainment Weekly grace us with pretty covers and articles.
We’re less than three weeks out from The Last Jedi and the TV spots have been airing in earnest. If you want to avoid them, be wary while watching any Disney-owned TV channel. If you, like me, are gleefully sucking up every bit of official news and footage, head over to the official YouTube channel to check out some of the spots in glorious high definition. (Be warned, one of them includes some Wookiee on porg violence.)
Entertainment Weekly continued its preview of TLJ, with an abundance of articles ranging from newcomers Kelly Marie Tran and Laura Dern, to Snoke’s evolution over the trilogy, to the relationship (or lack thereof) between Rey and Kylo, and teasing whether Luke and Leia will eventually reunite. There’s also an article about Luke’s return to the Millennium Falcon, complete with a new photo. If you want more pictures, check out the photo gallery here. EW also revealed the name of the so-called crystal fox: it’s called a vulptex.
We also got some book news, including a new excerpt from Canto Bight and the final cover for Thrawn Alliances. The cover is beautiful, the Vader-Thrawn dynamic is going to be awesome, and I can’t wait to hear more about this book.
Finally, are you excited for the new AR experience coming up at Disney Springs in Florida and Downtown Disney in California? Diego Luna teased the fun on Twitter.
That’s it for this week! Only two more blasts until The Last Jedi! Ahhhhh!
