People's New Republic

We return to Roger MacBride Allen's Star Race Wars with 1995's Assault at Selonia. It's fine! It's better than the previous one but Roger still has the annoying tendency to elaborate in excruciating detail about stuff that really just does not matter to the plot. Topics include the proper way to anthropomorphize mustelids, why everyone forgot that they've been working with Mara Jade for like 7 years at this point, and who takes credit for false flag terrorist attacks. -- MEDIA -- [libsyn is not letting me upload this today. I will try again soon!]

We go long on Barbara Hambly's 1995 heater Children of the Jedi! Luke falls in love with a ghost in a machine who ends up inhabiting the body of one of his students so they can be together (it was a different time). Hambly is one of the first authors we've read on here that uses Themes and is also very good at putting sentences together, so we actually had a great time with this one. Topics include identity as a result of one's material conditions, Orientalism in Hambly's ex-husband's 1986 cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, and what all was actually involved in being an Emperor's Hand. -- MEDIA --

(Johnny joins us about an hour in. This was recorded during Ramadan so cut him some slack) We're joined by Jacob from socialist book podcast Workers' Lit to discuss Roger MacBride Allen's 1995 trilogy opener Ambush at Corellia. Allen's clumsy attempt to write an analogue to the Bosnian War and the collapse of Yugoslavia in the Star Wars universe doesn't work particularly well, but we appreciate his attempts to grapple with the politics of Star Wars and the toothless New Republic. Topics of this episode include Mon Mothma and the New Republic's unwillingness to get rid of the reactionary elements in their government, Lando risking it all for a sexy vampire with a castle, and how much hotter Han Solo would be with some gray hair, a beard, and a few extra kilos. Content warnings include discussions of genocide and ethnic cleansing, fascism, and racism. -- MEDIA -- 

After some recording hiccups, we return to discuss 1994's The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre. Some have called this the "worst Star Wars novel" ever published, which you should know off the bat is an insane, uninformed, likely misogynistic opinion! The book isn't the best SW novel we've read, but it's so much better than anything Kevin J. Anderson ever read into a tape recorder. Also everyone respects C-3PO in this one more than ever before. We discuss the phenomenon of quislings for fascist governments, how often Chewbacca sees his family, and Ben Kenobi using mind tricks to avoid paying for beer. Content warnings include misogyny, slavery, suicide, racism, and genocide.  -- MEDIA --  Star Wars Chess - All Yoda Battles  

We're back finally after reading the third piece of shit "written" by Kevin J. Anderson for his Jedi Academy trilogy, 1994's Champions of the Force. The previous two were bad and this one is also bad, and we discuss why! Topics include the New Republic abdicating all legitimacy by not bothering to prosecute genocide, Luke's terrible pedagogy, and, for some reason, the utility of a four-armed nanny droid with synthetic flesh. Content warnings include racism, misogyny, slavery, references to genocide, and physical violence. -- MEDIA --

We're unfortunately back to Kevin J. Anderson's tedious Jedi Academy trilogy with the second installment, 1994's Dark Apprentice. The gang is unifed in our hatred of Kevin's writing and we're just really tired of his shit. Topics include Luke Skywalker's substitute teacher-ass Jedi instruction, Admiral Ackbar flying a plane into a skyscraper (really), and how politically cooked the New Republic is because they want to negotiate and co-exist with what's left of the Empire. Content warnings include misogyny, racism, intimate partner violence, slavery, sexual assault, and references to genocide. -- MEDIA --

We talk about 1994's The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton. Dave cooked with this one, honestly. There's some outrageous stuff in here but it's combined with genuinely some of the best writing we've encountered on this podcast so far. Topics include if Han is a Space Led Zeppelin guy while he's working in the garage, the psychosexual stuff going on with Dave regarding matriarchial societies where men are only kept around for breeding and to look pretty, and the sentience of rancors. Content warnings include fatphobia, misogyny, enslavement, suicide. Also this story is about kidnapping your partner because you're afraid they're going to leave you for someone else.   -- MEDIA -- 

It stinks! We cover 1994's Jedi Search, the first of Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy, and based on this one, we're in for a rough ride! Luke wants to restart the Jedi Order so he finds a couple of weirdos, Chewbacca and Han get stuck mining spice on Kessel for an evil frog man, and Lando goes off to the blob races (which include blob obstacle courses. Blobstacle courses, even). Topics include the role of dangerous red-haired women who are mean to the heroes in the Expanded Universe, how one such mean dangerous redhead girlbossed her way into an Imperial admiralship literally through posting online, and if it's a good idea to pluck your eyebrows out when you live on a lava planet. Content warnings include racism, misogyny, sexual assault, and genocide. -- MEDIA --

We discuss Kathy Tyers' very interesting 1993 novel The Truce at Bakura, our first standalone novel since Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Tyers is a fascinating figure, and she wrote a fascinating book that was fun to read! Topics include the redemption of Darth Vader as an allegory for Christian forgiveness, if Tyers' editor was pushing her to keep Gaeriel barefoot in every scene, and Luke's involuntary celibacy as a result of his Force powers. == MEDIA ==

We conclude Big Tim's iconic trilogy with 1993's The Last Command. Topics include how you could escape an asteroid blockade of your planet, what exactly Mara Jade's duties were as the Emperor's Hand, and what Leia and Han's other picks for baby names were. Content warnings include racism, colonialism, and general physical violence. -- MEDIA --

The regret continues as we conclude Paul and Hollace Davids' horrible 1993 children's series. Somehow these books are even more insane than the first three. Topics include whether archaeologists can get ghosts from licking bones, the environmental tradeoffs often made by developing nations/planets while building their economies, and how much J.J. Abrams stole the plot of the sequel trilogy from these books. Content warnings include racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, and ableism. Check out our instagram page for the images from the books!

(There are some issues with specifically Ethan's audio in this one. We regret the error.) Regrettably, we cover a trilogy of children's Star Wars books published in 1992 by married writing team Paul & Hollace Davids. These were not fun to read, but we had fun roasting them! Topics include the incredible racism of the 1980s Transformers cartoon, whether children deserve good books to read, the unfortunate stereotypes the Prophets of the Dark Side may be treading on, and droid misogyny. Content warnings include misogyny, racism, and anti-semitism. The media for this episode will be posted on our instagram page!

We continue Big Tim's iconic trilogy with 1992's Dark Force Rising! Topics include US/Imperial debt trap neocolonialism, the white Saw Gerrera, and C'baoth wanting to preserve the purity of the Jedi race. Content warnings include misogyny, racism, white nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, and general physical violence. -- MEDIA -- https://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html  

We finally make it to (pretty) Good Star Wars with Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire (1991). This is the one that started it all! Topics include Grand Admiral Thrawn as an example of the "Clean Wehrmacht," why the New Republic here is definitely not a People's one, and how Chewbacca must feel about his boyfriend's racist wife. Content warnings include racism, colonialism, misogyny, and general physical violence. -- MEDIA -- DarthAngelus' adaptation of Heir To The Empire

We finally finish L. Neil Smith's interminable trilogy with Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka (1983). Topics include libertarianism's reliance on junk science, the inability to create new stories as a result of tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and hotboxing your starfighter. Content warnings include racism, white supremacy, misogyny, colonialism, genocide, and general physical violence. -- MEDIA --

We continue L. Neil Smith's trilogy with Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon (1983). Neil isn't playing around and includes every one of his political beliefs in this one. Topics include how many times Lando tells Vuffi Raa not to call him master, Neil's stance on drugs, and whether or not sabacc would actually be fun to play. Content warnings include fatphobia (it's bad in this one), drug use, misogyny, and violence. -- MEDIA -- The Internet Archive's page where you can play Sabacc for Windows (1995)

We eventually talk about 1983's Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu by L. Neil Smith (after talking about Smith's batshit libertarian politics and other writings for 45 minutes). Topics include hard science fiction and its relationship with Star Wars, the secrets revealed by Smith about Brian Daley, how much of this Smith had written before he got the contract to write a Star Wars novel, and Donald Glover.  Content warnings include racism, misogyny, discussions of spousal abuse/intimate partner violence, and general physical violence.  -- MEDIA -- 

We wrap up Brian Daley's 1980 conclusion to the Han Solo Adventures with what might have been the best of the trilogy, then finish up with a long discussion about Hutts and the books in the near future. Topics include libertarian monetary policy, whether or not Brian Daley is just George Lucas writing under a pen name, and a lengthy digression about Gareth Edwards, the ostensible director of Rogue One. Content warnings include racism, misogyny, colonialism, and general physical violence. -- MEDIA --

We continue with Han Solo's adventures in Han Solo's Revenge (1979) by Brian Daley. Was Daley able to keep up the momentum? Topics include Star Wars' obsession with slavery, changing the Corporate Sector Authority from the inside, and locating the seeds of bad Star Wars within old Star Wars. Content warnings include racism, slavery, misogyny, fatphobia, general physical violence. -- MEDIA --

Joined by Jeremy, we discuss the first in Brian Daley's Han Solo Adventures, Han Solo At Stars' End (1979). Topics include Daley's possible socialist sympathies, droid personhood and how Star Wars can't acknowledge it, and the nature of Han and Chewbacca's intense relationship. We were much higher on this one than the last book! Content warnings include misogyny, racism, colonialism, US crimes in Southeast Asia, fatphobia, general physical violence. -- MEDIA --

We discuss Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978) by Alan Dean Foster. This being the first episode, we spend a while discussing our general opinions and history with Star Wars as a whole, but then we get into this very bizarre and often bewildering first outing of the literary Star Wars Expanded Universe. Content warnings include misogyny, racism, fatphobia, drug use, general physical violence. -- SHOW NOTES --