★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: The Han Solo Adventures
• Author: Brian Daley
• Year: 1979, 1980 (mine was 2014 mass market paperback)
• Pages: 564
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Publisher: Del Rey
• ISBN 978-0-345-37980-1 (mass market paperback)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

 

Summary

This book is a trilogy of very short novels that I remember reading while in middle school (mid-1980s): Han Solo At Stars’ End, Han Solo’s Revenge, and Han Solo And The Lost Legacy, the first two published in 1979 and the last one in 1980. To my knowledge, they are the third, fourth, and fifth of the (now) many hundreds of novels set in the famous Star Wars fictional universe — the first two being (1) the novelization of the original film and (2) its lesser-known sequel by Alan Dean Foster, Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye.

In Han Solo At Stars’ End, Han Solo and his Wookiee sidekick Chewbacca are pitted against the powerful Corporate Sector Authority as they attempt to rescue a group of missing malcontents — a mission Solo only accepted in order to pay for much-needed ship repairs to the Millennium Falcon.

Han Solo’s Revenge is when Solo and Chewie were tricked and strong-armed into transporting a load of slaves, after which they work with a secret agent to track down the slavers and clear their names.

Wrapping up the short trilogy, Han Solo And The Lost Legacy tells the tale of Solo and Chewie throwing in with some treasure hunters looking for the massive and mythical treasure of Xim the Despot.

 

Commentary

The best thing about these stories, to me, is how little Daley had to work with — only the original film and its ghostwritten novelization, which gave us very little about Han Solo and Chewbacca’s backstory. Daley extrapolated from those bits and back-built an entire universe that hadn’t yet been filled out, as far as we know, by creator George Lucas. Despite decades of movies, TV shows, comic books, and hundreds of novelizations, the places, people, ships, and situations in these three Daley novels still feel solidly like Star Wars.

They also are written as if they’re movies — at least in pacing, plot style, and grand action sequences.

Years ahead of the Solo-Greedo-who-shot-first controversy, Daley has Solo say in the first of these novels: “I happen to like to shoot first... As opposed to shooting second.” This must have stuck in my mind; when the argument did eventually arise among Star Wars fans about the Greedo scene, I already knew in my bones that Solo was the kind of guy to shoot first.

The stories were fun, the action quickly-paced, and the twists enjoyable — most I could see coming, but a couple were pleasantly surprising.

 

Points Off For...

There was some weird or sloppy editing. There are scenes that seem as if they were hastily rewritten at the last minute and no one had time to go back through to make sure everything matched up. For example, in the first book there’s a scene in which Solo is running to catch up with a guy, but a few paragraphs later that guy catches up to Solo. Which would be interesting if we were talking about time travel or some kind of screw-with-your-head unreality, but we aren’t. It was an obvious mistake that no one caught. A couple of conversations didn’t make sense for similar reasons: for example, there’s a conversation during a chase scene in the second book (page 255-6), where Solo’s passenger asks “What’re you worried about anyway?”, and he answers. But then, just after his answer: “Then he found out what she’d been worried about.” As if the previous conversation had originally been written in opposite voices but then switched, and whoever switched it forgot to check the surrounding paragraphs. This kind of thing happened repeatedly throughout these books.

While the first and third titles were accurate enough (and I freely admit I’m bad at writing titles), the second one is misleading. “Revenge” is something I didn’t find in that story. If anything, Solo is upset that he got swindled out of 10,000 credits and goes around the galaxy looking for whoever is supposed to pay up. But he does’t, as far as I can tell, get revenge on anyone.

 

Environmentalism

Keeping in mind these books were written in 1979-80, I was happy to see an environmentalist viewpoint leaking through — I wonder if this had some influence on my own environmentalist tendencies, which I’ve had since I was young. An example:

“Beneath him the surface of Bonadan came fully into view for the first time — it was barren, parched, eroded, and leached of its topsoil because plant life had been destroyed by large-scale mining, pollution, and uncaring management. The surface was predominantly yellow, with angry strips of rust-red in its twisted gullies and cracked hillocks. The Corporate Sector Authority cared little about the long-range effects of its activities on the worlds it ruled. When Bonadan was depleted and unlivable, the Authority would simply move its operation to the next convenient world.”

—page 249

 

Conclusion

Some time ago, the powers that rule the Star Wars canon determined that these three novels (all the older novels, as far as I know) to be “Legends” of the Star Wars universe, and not actually gospel. I assume that when they were written, no one was really thinking about the future arguments over canon, but it is now settled that this stuff didn’t really happen to Han Solo, even if it happened in a Star Wars setting that fits the remaining canon. (I mention this as a heads-up.)

The stories were a fun diversion and that counts for a lot in my rating system. No, they’re not great literature, and yes “girl” is used to describe adult women, but Han Solo is at his core a decent guy who usually often ends up doing the right thing, and if he doesn’t, his partner Chewie will straighten him out. Roving through the galaxy on adventures and barely breaking even while nearly failing to survive is what space opera is all about and this fit the bill.

 

 

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