For $0.00 you can read what Bret Devereaux (of ACOUP fame) called an "absolute banger of a Tolkien essay" and what my mom (of giving birth to me fame) called "very timely and relevant": "What Lies and Threats: Nationalist Myth-Making in The Lord of the Rings" on @speculativeinsight.bsky.social!
a wonderful story
Han Solo Adventures: introduces the Corporate Sector (totally not the Empire!) and great characters like Bollux and Blue Max the droids, Gallandro the gunman, and Spray the space otter.
Includes the line (written in 1980) "Han fired first."
#StarWarsLegends
book card showing that the library book, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, was last borrowed in 1984
Splinter of the Mind's Eye: according to the book card nobody else had borrowed this for 40 years.
Luke/Leia romance! No Han or Chewie because they didn't think they could get Han back for a second film! Luke blacks out when he uses the Force! Multiple deaths and resurrections!
#StarWarsLegends
From time to time he resorted some unsubtle pounding in place of using the appropriate tool. Neither method worked very well. Luke was sure that the lubricants used on the vaporators went out of their way to attract sand, beckoning seductively to small abra sive particles with an oily gleam.
For a while now, I've been reading through #StarWarsLegends in (roughly) publication order.
_A New Hope_: The Skywalker relationship with sand has always been... complicated.