A Long Time Ago... #8
Hello there.
Welcome to the eighth of these posts exploring art, fiction and history. Every other Sunday I share some insights into my two major passions - Star Wars and history, or specifically, ancient art.
Art as a means of representation, observation and meaning, has survived tens of thousands of years, expressed now in a mesmerising multitude of ways. I'm fascinated by its origins, and a particular subgenre of art known as the Star Wars franchise - these two interests combined for my first Star Wars Insider article ART WARS.
At the moment, I’m expressing and sharing this fascination by taking you through my timeline-ordered shelves of Star Wars books, as well as the ancient art sites that inspire(d) my writing.
In A Galaxy Far, Far Away…
Now we’re well into the span of time between the original trilogy of films and the latest sequel trilogy under Disney. All these books bridge the gap in different and interesting ways. I must confess that I’m still missing quite a few books in this 30-year period (there are quite a few!) but not any from this earlier end. I’ve linked the newsletters of authors who’ve supported me and just generally been good reads. I’d really recommend subscribing to hear all of their exciting exploits!
Last Shot by Daniel Jose Older is a Han Solo and Lando Calrissian adventure set a couple years after the end of the Galactic Civil war, in a time when the New Republic that’s replaced the Empire is still finding its feet. Han is also very much finding his feet as a new father - this novel very deftly carries on Han and Leia’s continuing story from the Aftermath trilogy. The novel also very deftly balances both a Then and Now story, centring around the book’s antagonist Fyzen Gor.
It’s an amazingly complicated plot really, pulling in characters from all over (like Sana Solo from the comics) and set across maybe twenty years, with a younger Lando and his droid L3-37 from the film Solo, and then a young Han and Chewie in the Then part, interspersed with Han and Lando and an assembled team of great original characters in the Now, like an Ewok hacker and a love interest that really gives more depth to Lando.
Hunters: Battle for the Arena is a tie in to the latest multiplayer mobile Star Wars game (it’s free to play, and has an amazing cast of characters!). This is a book on my shelf I have yet to read - though I was happy to snag a copy signed by the author Mark Oshiro from Forbidden Planet. Based on the quality his co-authored novel with Rick Riordan that I’ve recently read, I can’t wait to read how Mark adapts the many varied characters from the game, showing this tumultuous period in the timeline from the point of view dark side assassin Rieve, but also all these other factions of bounty hunters, ex-Imperials and ex-Rebels.
Hunters, set two years after Last Shot, would be isolated in the timeline if not for The Mandalorian and related Disney+ shows that are also filling in this gap four years into the New Republic’s rule, already showing the cracks that eventually lead to the sequel trilogy. I’ve yet to read the junior novelisations of Mando season one and two, as well as its spin off Book of Boba Fett, all by Joe Schreiber. I’d of course recommend watching the TV shows first, but I like the fact that for a purely reading consumption of the Star Wars timeline, those stories are represented on a shelf in the continuity.
Poe Dameron: Free Fall by Alex Segura shoots nine years ahead, so eighteen years after Luke blew up the Death Star. We follow a young Poe (Oscar Isaac in the sequel trilogy) at the age of sixteen as he rebels, leaves his home planet and single father and joins the Spice Runners of Kijimi, backstory that was featured in the film Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. And Alex did a perfect job of fleshing out that backstory, making it a fantastic read about finding your place and your true self as a teenager.
I remember really appreciating the prose, structure and pace of this book, something common across all of Alex’s works if his Spiderverse story, Arana and Spider-Man 2099: Fark Tomorrow, is anything to go off. Poe is also a character whose been fleshed out a lot by other writers, so this book very cleverly ties in many things from Poe’s comic series and his story in Before the Awakening, a title I’ll talk a little more about later.
Shadow of the Sith by Adam Christopher looks like a big chunky read, and it is, but it flows like one big film. And it really is one big film, set pretty much right in the middle of the thirty year gap between film trilogies, this story is the bridge, cinematic in scope and execution, between stories. Like Free Fall, this novel was a way to expand on things on Episode IX, namely Luke and Lando’s failed hunt for the Sith hub of Exegol and Rey’s parentage. The novel makes her parents real incredible characters, as well as introducing new ones, ones just seen in blink and you’ll miss it moments, and characters from all over - one of my favourites being an acolyte from some Aftermath interludes, and also the continuing of Ochi of Bestoon’s story from his characterisation in the comics.
Adam Christopher not only boiled down and made sense of everything complicated about Episode IX, but he made such a propulsive Star Wars story out of it too, one that I’d class in my required reading range. There’s also things that he did within the prose, uses of dashes and bolded and capitalised text related to the dark side antagonists that I’ve emulated in my short stories (including the one in Marseille that I talked about last time!).
Bloodline by Claudia Gray continues the trend of incredible stories about characters from the original trilogy in middle age, bridging the gap. And this novel really expands and sets the precedent for this period of the timeline, now six years before Episode VII: The Force Awakens, following Leia as a senator in the divided New Republic Senate, her experiences once it’s revealed that her father is Darth Vader, and also the beginnings of the First Order - the rebranded remnants of the Empire featured in the sequel trilogy.
Like all great Star Wars novels this stands alone and yet continues threads of so many stories before it and spins new ones to come. Another bit of required reading, not just an important Leia story, about her identity and ideology, but an important Star Wars story, and an important story in general, about how evil regimes can emerge again when nations divided by politics rest of their laurels. This book is really the turning point for the Star Wars galaxy to slip towards full out war again, setting the stage of General Leia’s Resistance when the Republic ignores the First Order’s threat.
Ken Lui’s The Legends of Luke Skywalker is unlike any other book on this shelf. It’s about Luke as the hero he always seemed destined to be after the original trilogy, but it’s also not about Luke at all - rather, it’s the stories and people he’s inspired. By this point on the timeline, Luke’s vanished from those he loves after twenty years of rebelling, adventuring and failing to rebuild the Jedi order.
The beautifully illustrated book follows a group of deck hand children sharing myths they’ve picked up - or even stories they’ve experienced - to pass the time on a long journey. They’re a really varied bunch of stories, not just in content but in their telling, that encapsulate how myths develop and spread based on the deeds of one man that’s become a galaxy-wide legend. Some of these short stories may well be amongst some of my favourite Star Wars stories; their freshness really stuck with me. I’d really recommend reading it for yourself and discovering these brilliant tall tales.
Force Collector is the only book in this selection without ties to other stories except that it’s the story most tied to other stories. Let me explain the incredible idea and execution of this book by Kevin Shinick. As with the book above, we’re just a few years before Episode VII, yet this story weaves in threads from decades and decades in the past. Karr Nuq Sin is our protagonist, discovering his connection to the Force - a worthy and well-executed story of its own of family legacy and found family. But what makes Karr special is his power of psychometry, manifesting in visions of certain objects’ past. I won’t spoil any more of his journey for you other than this tale continued to surprise and amaze (including connecting to a Luke legend).
Last but not least we come to Smuggler’s Run by Greg Rucka. The main story of this junior novel sees Han and Chewie on a mission for the Rebellion soon after A New Hope. The story is bookended by an old man (who we know is Han) telling the story at some bar, which why I put it here, sometime before The Force Awakens.
I should also go back to Before the Awakening which I mentioned earlier. Though the book’s not pictured in my photo as it’s later on the shelf, it contains three stories, novellas I suppose, about Episode VII’s three new heroes. I’ll just say here that the Poe story probably comes next in the timeline, where we see him as an adult going from Republic to Resistance pilot. It was also the first time we learnt about his upbringing, so serves as a good companion piece to Free Fall if you don’t read it too long after.
In Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia…
The ceiling alive with colours, shapes and stories.
That’s how Margaret remembers it—Nawarla Gabarnmang, the sacred pillared cave site she walks towards over rough terrain.
It is a place of her ancestors, her people, that has survived the millennia, was still visited and added to, maintained, before it was ‘rediscovered’ when she was young by the people not originally from this wonderful land.
That’s how I start my short story about the incredible site known as Nawarla Gabarnmang. Since it was quite a long Star Wars section this time, I’m going to let my quotes speak for themselves.
The painted place has been a space with that purpose for as long as there were people in these lands, though like her memory of the meanings and beliefs, that purpose has faded. People used to pass through here, she remembers her grandmother telling her. And they would stack the stones and paint the ceiling of this cleft in the rock.
Across tens and thousands of years, her people have been within the monument. They transformed it to a large painted slab held by thirty-six pillars of stone. Everlasting beauty. Ancestral ties.
A perfect place of land and people, carved together, weathered together, existing together…
Already she can feel the spirit of the place, can picture the large, layered canvas of years and life permeating the physical, a map of the dreamtime before this nightmare the world is now in.
There are large paintings of barramundi and other fish, wallabies, lizards, snakes, even what must be a more recent one of a horse, a bird, perhaps a cockatoo, she always believes, a turtle, people wearing their traditional dresses, or nude, and even the elongated white mimi spirits, some symbols and negative hands. The hands of their ancestors will embrace them under the low ceiling.
And they’re all in different styles, different peoples, or the same peoples in different times when bursts of creativity spurred them on, some monochrome, some bichrome, some a whole mixture, white, yellow, red, mulberry, black from stick figures, to large ‘X-ray’ style to detailed specimens of the life that once roamed, from a few centimetres to a few metres, most filled in. To look at, it is a great sea of colour, swirling, dazzling in hard shapes and lines, vibrant two-dimensions, mosaics over mosaics on a canvas of space and time.
History is superimposed there, like the winding river through the layers of rock, like the tears and dust of modern and ancient tribes transmuted together—
A bit more history of this amazing display: The site’s been inhabited on and off at least for the last 44,000 years! I think it also has the oldest rock art in Australia from 28,000 years ago. And next to it are paintings of horses brought over in much more recent times. And it was still visited within living memory by the local Jawoyn community.
To try and make my writing as authentic as possible, I ended up doing more research on aboriginal beliefs, and watched some documentaries about the site, even naming my protagonist after the wonderful elder who shared her memories and wisdom with the camera. Her words were movingly perfect for my story, which is really her story, certainly better than anything I could say.
This video also has many more wonderful images of the incredible site, especially in the opening few minutes:
That brings us to an end of this exploration of a long time ago. I hope you enjoyed! I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down and write about these two facets of my reading/writing life. Thank you for supporting me on this endeavour!
Harvey