Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View to Celebrate Galaxy’s 40th Anniversary!
As a part of the 40th Anniversary of the galaxy far, far away, Del Rey is preparing the anthology Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View that will shine the light on weird, heroic or villainous characters in the Star Wars galaxy that have been taking over our imaginations since that fateful day in May 1977.
Coming in October 2017, the anthology will have 40 stories by 40 authors, many of whom have already tried their hand Star Wars stories. According to the official site, the stories “will be told from the perspective of background characters of A New Hope — from X-wing pilots who helped Luke destroy the Death Star to the stormtroopers who never quite could find the droids they were looking for.”
The current author list is not complete and more authors will be announced closer to the publication, but the current list includes:
- Ben Acker & Ben Blacker
- Renee Ahdieh
- Tom Angleberger
- Meg Cabot
- Rae Carson
- Adam Christopher
- Zoraida Cordova
- Delilah S. Dawson
- Paul Dini
- Alexander Freed
- Jason Fry
- Christie Golden
- EK Johnston & Ashley Eckstein
- Paul Kemp
- Mur Lafferty
- Ken Liu
- Griffin McElroy
- John Jackson Miller
- Nnedi Okorafor
- Daniel José Older
- Mallory Ortberg
- Madeleine Roux
- Gary D. Schmidt
- Cavan Scott
- Sabaa Tahir
- Glen Weldon
- Chuck Wendig
- Gary Whitta
- And more!
All participating authors have generously forgone any compensation for their stories. Instead, their proceeds will be donated to First Book — a leading nonprofit that provides new books, learning materials, and other essentials to educators and organizations serving children in need. To further celebrate the launch of this book and both companies’ longstanding relationships with First Book, Penguin Random House has donated $100,000 to First Book, and Disney/Lucasfilm has donated 100,000 children’s books — valued at 1 million dollars — to support First Book and their mission of providing educational resources to children in need. Over the past 16 years, Disney has donated more than 57 million books to First Book.
Some of the authors already teased their involvement yesterday on twitter using the hashtag #OperationBlueMilk.
Excited to be a part of a very special new #StarWars project! Check the hashtag #OperationBlueMilk for coming details! MTFBWY pic.twitter.com/r91uu6KySC
— Gravy Whitta (@garywhitta) April 6, 2017
The carton is leaking! The carton is leaking! #OperationBlueMilk has gone public! (And I guess I have, too. Should be fun!) #StarWars https://t.co/uLZPoOzl3D
— Alexander Freed (@AlexanderMFreed) April 6, 2017
https://twitter.com/claudiagray/status/849987086556024832
Looking forward to jumping back into the GFFA!
Honored and excited to be part of #OperationBlueMilk. #StarWars https://t.co/qoZ7GHVyLH
— Paul S. Kemp (@Paulskemp) April 6, 2017
And some have given us hints about what their stories would be about.
In #40Years40Stories I return to the Jundland Wastes. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time…a long time. https://t.co/lEoHvhFbG1
— John Jackson Miller (@jjmfaraway) April 7, 2017
If this is the opening of the 40th Anniversary celebration in term of books, it seems we can certainly look forward to a great time this year in a galaxy far, far away. Considering that Star Wars Celebration is happening next week, we can also expect some similar great announcements then. The book is now available for pre-order.
Staff member, comic and book reviewer. Cheers for the Light Side, but would drink with Grand Admirals.
This looks really cool! I’m very interested to see what nucanon does with all these side characters.
I’m a little disappointed in this. I was hoping for a hard cover collected edition of all the short stories from Star Wars Insider and the paperback novels. As someone who buys all the Del Rey hard covers, I feel as if I am punished for buying the first edition. Those who wait for the much cheaper paper back end up rewarded with the associated short story from Star Wars Insider in it so why should I buy the Hard covers any longer?
Anyway, Star Wars Insider is the best place for short stories since it also has the art, which I doubt the collection would have.
Exactly. So don’t buy them anymore.
I like hardcovers so I just ignore the short stories, unless they’re posted on the Star Wars site or get collected releases. I haven’t found the couple I’ve read to be that interesting or important anyway, so I don’t feel like I’m missing that much.
I know that the anthology books are some of the popular books in the old EU so bringing this format back for the new canon sounds like a great idea to me.
Sounds good. I’ll likely check it out. Most Star Wars novels are a one-and-done sort of deal with me, so I’ll borrow this from the library instead of purchasing it. I’ve not been overly crazy about most of the new canon, but the “Tales From the…” short story collections from the old EU (which I also largely loathed) were some of the better offerings so I’m stoked to see where these authors go with the featured characters.
So Operation Blue Milk was just “Tales from A New Hope”?
Yawn; I’ll likely pass. It makes sense for them to do this, especially during the 40th anniversary year, and I give them props for the charity angle, but this OT-based anthology does nothing for me. I’ll wait for after TLJ when we’ll presumably start getting some exciting novels again, not just these time-biding filler stories.
So let’s get this straight. Are these stories going to be more opinionated based on events on the film? Will their thoughts and actions be canon too?
Everything published right now is canon.
No R.A. Salvatore?
I’m not overly interested in background characters, so I’m not exactly jumping up and down. But I’m sure there are many people who are, and this should go a long way in fleshing out character backstories that were relegated to Legends.
I am liking them using mostly authors new to the SW galaxy
I LOVE cool backstories like this! I can’t wait to pick it up, and I hope they do more of this Anthology stuff in the future.