A Long Time Ago... #9
Hello there.
Welcome to the ninth 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, found in issue #226.
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…
We’re in the final stretch (shelf) now of my Star Wars canon novel collection. This batch of stories all leads into the first Disney-produced Star Wars film, 2015’s Episode VII: The Force Awakens. As you can see we’ll end with that novelisation today.
But we’ll start with Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens Volume 1. The title’s quite a mouthful but it does what it says on the tin. Landry Q. Walker delivers six great short stories in a lovely colourfully illustrated hardback, each centred around a different alien that appears in The Force Awakens.
They really add a lot to bit player or background parts from the film, characters that fans only know the name of from the visual dictionary. The book really serves to worldbuild two main locations on Jakku and Takodana. A standout for my is The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku, as it so originally and unexpectedly links prequel and sequel trilogies together. I hope we’ll get a Volume 2 one day - but it’s been over eight years!
Jason Fry’s The Weapon of a Jedi is a perfect Luke story, as he struggles with said weapon for the first time, still very much a novice in the main story set shorty after A New Hope. It also combines all three eras, with Luke being called to a Jedi temple on Devaron featured in The Clone Wars animated series. But the reason it sits here on the shelf is the frame story, in which C-3PO recounts the tale to Jessika Pava, Resistance pilot interested in the legendary Skywalker.
Now I’ll insert Rey’s Story from Grek Rucka’s Before the Awakening. I mentioned the Poe story last time, taking place a few years before The Force Awakens. Rey’s story focusses on her life as a scavenger about a year before the film, a character introduction certainly on par with the one in the film.
Phasma, by Delilah S. Dawson is an equally fantastic character introduction, a fantastic book in its own right even without the intricate ties to Star Wars canon. It’s another story with a frame story, but this one is so much more than that. Written in present tense, Resistance spy Vi Moradi - later to go on to be a main character at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney parks - is captured by Captain Cardinal, who interrogates her to find out as much as he can about his rival Captain Phasma.
Before this novel, Phasma had been a cool but surface level stormtrooper baddy in chrome armour. In Episode VIII, of course, we briefly see her face. But Dawson completely knocks it out of the park with Vi slowly telling everything she’s learnt about Phasma’s past, a story of brutal survival on a post-apocalyptic world. One of my favourite Star Wars novels, the story that unfolds reveals how Phasma joined the First Order and her relation to the Huxes (father and son featured in the Servants of the Empire series, the Aftermath trilogy, The Mandalorian Season 3 and of course the sequel trilogy) but it does so much more.
Moving Target is the third in the trilogy of junior novels in the Journey to The Force Awakens line, each one focussing on one of the main trio from the original trilogy. So, last but not least in this timeline order is a Leia story set between Episodes V and VI. Leia herself is a moving target at that time, and the story focusses on the building of the Rebel fleet to oppose the second Death Star.
The frame story for this one is directly before Episode VII, with General Leia recounting it as a start to her memoirs, before Ematt comes in with news from Jakku, obviously referencing the start of the film which sees Poe Dameron retrieving part of the map to Luke’s whereabouts. I didn’t mention Ematt before, but he’s a character similar to Sloane although actually based on someone from The Force Awakens, in that he was first seen and features quite heavily in the books from this time, in Smuggler’s Run, Bloodline and Before the Awakening.
Speaking of Before the Awakening, the third story from that collection also concludes right before the start of the film. Finn’s story follows First Order stormtrooper FN-2187 before he’s given his name. We learn about Finn’s stormtrooper training and first mission before he’d just been a cadet and on sanitation duty. The story also shows the real beginning of his fearful and hateful relationship with Phasma as she tries to weed out any humanity from him, making him like all the other brainwashed soldiers. We end with Finn sent with the others in his squad to Jakku.
Which leads straight to the novelisation of The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster. I don’t think I need to tell you the story of the film, other than that this novel includes some extra scenes focussing on Leia, some of which were filmed and then cut, to give a deeper feeling to the family drama and wider scope of the galaxy’s political situation, as well as the workings of Starkiller Base, that weren’t fully explained in the film.
I’ll also say how special it is that Alan Dean Foster authorised this novelisation, as he ghost-wrote the novelisation of the first ever film and its decidedly non-canon 1978 sequel novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, that continued very early story ideas that were completely changed due to the films success and the beginnings of The Empire Strikes Back.
I haven’t been mentioning some of the short stories at the back of novels, but I will mention The Perfect Weapon, Delilah S. Dawson’s first Star Wars work, originally an e-book that I bought this paperback copy of the novelisation for. It focusses on bounty hunter/spy Bazine Netal, featured for a few moments in The Force Awakens. It’s a great little story that may explain how Kylo Ren came into possession of his grandfather Vader’s helmet.
In Barranco de Hongares, Valencian Community, Spain…
The artwork behind the tall bars of metal showed not only a hunting scene, but a more famous image of honey-gathering, of two long-limbed people climbing a set of long lianas, thick vines, to reach a hive. At least a dozen bees were painted around the scene, little winged red blobs.
That’s the only real quote you’re going to get from this short story, but it describes what makes this site, the Cuevas de la Araña, special:
The dark red circle, the hive, is actually in an indent in the rock in person, as if the cave art figure really is reaching inside. As mentioned in my quote, the art is thankfully protected behind a large metal grate, cutting off the concave section of rock face. I think it’s about a three hour hike from any nearby settlement, into amazing forested scenery, rocky hills and river valleys. The caves were discovered by a local teacher who must’ve been out on a decent walk, sometime in the early 20th century I think.
The artwork is Epipaleolithic, the name more commonly used for the Mesolithic in that part of the world, around 8000 years old, which makes the incredible lively image above the earliest known depiction of bees and of someone actually foraging for honey, climbing vines with a container of sorts (and there’s a second figure far below on the cave wall). So we’ve been eating that sweet nectar for at least 8000 years, probably for a lot longer, but I suppose this is the earliest proof.
That fact alone, and the incredible scenery, made it a great place for a story and what I consider an incredibly important cave art site, although it doesn’t compare artistically to many more great cave art sites in Spain like Altamira. There are actually 727 protected rock art sites in Spain, 300 of which are in the Valencian community. In fact I know there are many more sites of a similar style near the Cuevas de la Araña and the certain ravine that winds close by.
The site is also special for the hunting scenes, some very close to the honey-gathering spectacle. These mainly show hunters armed with bows after some goats, but also a few deer. Both are represented in the photo above.
Without giving anything away, I went for more of a Famous Five/Stranger Things approach with this story, following a group of children exploring the surrounding landscape. I do have one more quote from my short story that I feel I can share:
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That brings us to an end of this exploration of a long time ago. I hope you enjoyed! I really appreciate the opportunity to share these two facets of my reading/writing life. There’s some exciting news about the story I quoted in #8 of these to come in my monthly roundup! Thank you for supporting me on this endeavour!
Harvey