Customer Reviews

Star Wars

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In late 1976, Ballantine Books published the first edition of Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, a novel by George Lucas. Adorned only with conceptual art by Ralph McQuarrie, it did not set the literary world on fire. As it turned out, however, the "major motion picture" it was heralding on its cover blurb became one of the biggest box office hits ever, and Star Wars went on to become a huge part of our culture.

Although it really wasn't George Lucas who wrote this first published tie-in to what would later be called Episode IV: A New Hope, the novel reflects the director's vision. Author Alan Dean Foster, who had adapted the scripts of the Star Trek animated series into the Star Trek Logs books, took Lucas' fourth revised draft and wrote a masterful adaptation that truly captures the spirit of the movie's characters and situations.

Star Wars begins with a short prologue that, with a few "special modifications" in the text, is really the outline for the current Prequel Trilogy. In the form of an excerpt from "the first saga -- Journal of the Whills," we are told that the once-powerful Galactic Republic, protected by the Jedi Knights, "throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match." Insidiously, like a house under attack by termites, the Republic rotted from within until "[a]ided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic....Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor...."

The novel then segues directly into the famous opening scene of Star Wars: an Imperial Star Destroyer (called here an Imperial cruiser) chases Princess Leia's Rebel Blockade Runner and captures it over the desert planet of Tatooine. After a brief battle, Imperial stormtroopers take over the ship, and Leia is taken before Lord Darth Vader, who wants to know what she did with secret data "transmitted by Rebel spies."

Leia, of course, has wisely hidden the data -- the plans of the Empire's ultimate superweapon, the Death Star -- into the memory banks of Artoo Detoo, an astromech droid. Artoo and his loyal but easily rattled counterpart, See-Threepio, have managed to flee aboard a tiny escape pod down to the hostile wastes of Tatooine. They are "found" by jawas, a race of small desert scavengers, then sold to a moisture farmer named Owen Lars and his nephew Luke Skywalker....and when Luke stumbles on a fragment of a message for someone named "Obi-Wan Kenobi," well, things really get interesting.

Foster's novelization is very faithful to its screenplay source, and even the "added" material (Luke's first appearance in the novel as he repairs a vaporator, or scenes with Biggs and his friends at Tosche Station) comes from Lucas' fourth revised draft (available in Carol Titleman's The Art of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). Most of the "deleted scenes" later appeared in Brian Daley's Star Wars: The Radio Drama), and the encounter between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt (spelled Hut in this novel) was restored and tweaked with CGI in the 1997 Special Edition re-release. Of the three Classic Trilogy novels, this is the best-written. Foster's style is crisp yet elegant, and it does not read like it's a screenplay adaptation.

The original 1976 hardcover edition (which I own thanks to the kindness of my best friend Rogers) includes 16 pages of promotional pictures and character profiles of the major roles. It's been since reissued several times, either singly or as part of omnibus collections in both paperback and hardcover, with different variants of cover art.

It is a shame that this book did not remain more readily available, and it is a shame that some of the reviews obviously have not read THIS version of Star Wars. I was lucky enough to have acquired this volume before word of the movie had hit the press. This title was later used for a re-written book that followed the move screenplay. The ORIGNAL book is a fantasic story and goes far beyond the movie in its story telling. I read a wide variety of genres, from mysteries to historical fiction, from science fiction to science fantasy, from drama to detective, from classic to techno-thriller, and THIS is one of my all-time favorite reads. If I weren't worried about keeping my volume in great shape, I would read it again more often.

The entire Star Wars saga doesn't and never will have an equal. This book picks up on the things that you might not have in the movie. If you're a dedicated fan, you may be disturbed by the fact that the dialect isn't quite the same as the movie :) If you want to know what happened in the missing moments with Biggs, this is the best way to find out. A wonderful edition to your Star Wars collection, if you can manage to get your hands on it!

This is the original book by George Lucas, the creator of STAR WARS. It is amazing that he put all this in his head before making the movie, one of the greatest of all time. This book is much like the movie, who almost every one has seen; the story of how Luke Skywalker helps an organized rebellion fight against the evil empire by destroying the Death star, an enormous, evil space station capable of destroying whole planets, but this book tells it in the way George Lucas originally envisioned it. It includes many things now seen in the special edition form of the movie, such as the Jabba the Hutt scene, which was originally cut for a lack of funding and time. The description in this book is excellent, and it puts you right in the action. The style is like you are an outsider looking in on the events through the characters eyes. It gives you feeling that you experience when getting caught up in the movie, with the exception of being able to know all that is going on around you. His vivid writing lets you see and understand the story better. This is one of the best Science Fiction pieces I have ever read. I recommend it to STAR WARS fans, Science Fiction lovers, and readers of good books alike.

I was 8 years old when the original Star Wars was released, and I probably read the novelization a dozen times that summer. I read it again recently and it's still a great story, bringing back many nostalgic memories of that summer for me.

Okay let's get this straight. George Lucas of course wrote the story. But he did not write this novel. It's really a novelization. Alan Dean Foster wrote this. It's like the Battlestar Galactica books are written by Robert Thurston, and the stories are by Glen A. Larson, although both are credited and this should not be. This book is solely credited to Lucas, and there is no mention of the ghost writer Foster, and there should be. Foster's writing, at first, seems a little bit awkward, then as I keep reading, I get aligned with it and I simply love how this book "reads". It makes you absorb it and, believe it or not, you don't wish for the movie while you're inside of the book.

I have to be one of the few people to have read this book before I saw the movie. I worked with some people that had seen the movie and they were effusive in their praise of the movie and the stories began appearing about how some people had seen the movie an unreasonable number of times. Therefore, during one of my frequent stops at the bookstore I had to purchase the book.
Watching the movie after having read the book was a bit odd on occasion because I noted the subtle differences in the action and of course the dialog is much more descriptive in the book. Nevertheless, the book captures all of the splendor and operatic adventure of the movie, which of course I have now seen dozens of times. This was also the third time that I read the book; I really like the greater background understanding of the story that you get from a full-length book.

Reading this book is an interesting opportunity to get back to the roots of Star Wars before it was released to theaters. It's not strictly an adaptation of the film because, indeed, the film wasn't out yet. While it's true to the overall story, there are a number of small changes -- additions, omissions, and variations in emphasis -- that make it clear this was written before Star Wars became an international phenomenon. I found it deep in the stacks of a used book store in Minneapolis and had to pick it up.

The dust jacket, alone, provides a few examples. Ben Kenobi is described as "a shabby old desert rat", but what took me as a real flip-flop of roles was the description of "Chewbacca the Pirate and his human companion Han Solo." Honestly, if that doesn't turn the "sidekick" relationship on its head I don't know what does. The rest of the novelization appears to be the same as later versions, slightly different from what was later revealed to us in the other films. For example, the Prologue tells a mildly different account of Palpatine's rise than we're given in the prequel trilogy, and the birth of the Rebellion.

If you're a collector, you should make an effort to get a hold of a copy of this book. It's like having your original ticket stub to Ep IV.

STAR WARS by George Lucas is an awesome book! You can really picture the book in your head. The setting is "The Future" and George Lucas portrays this setting well. Luke Skywalker is the protagonist of this book. He is a "farmer" on a planet that is one big desert. He meets some interesting androids (called `droids) that have crash landed on his planet. After learning of a task that he hears of, he wants to complete this awesome task. There is some pretty sweet stuff, like a damsel in distress mission etc. To make it worse a Dark Lord (a very powerful man) who has extraterrestrial powers called the force named Darth Vader is constantly on Luke's tail! When Luke gets into a ship with the smuggler Han Solo, his life will never be the same. He goes off and completes the task in due time though. This book is about 220 pages, so it is a short and sweet book to read. I really liked this book because of the vivid verbs, and awesome adjectives used in this novel. Since there were so many cliff hangers, every chapter makes your bodies muscles just turn that page. I also really liked this book because the sub plots such as the `droids adventures, the damsel in distress mission, and the saving of the universe. Since the subplots are left on a cliff hanger, you want to read further to uncover what will happen, but you must read through another chapter before then, thus you are kept reading and glued to the book. This was a great book, and I urge you to read this book.

With those immortally rewritten words, George lucas created a phenomena like no other film event. Hundreds of action figures, over 100 novels and TBP comic books and 5 movies later, he created for millions of fans a living galaxy that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

Only recently has a revival emerged via a remake of some old books.. Lord of the Rings. But Star Wars stands above them all.