—BM
Chapter 13
1 This line is undoubtedly out of date now, with the other books that have been written in the gap between Return of the Jedi and Heir. But it was true when I wrote it.
—TZ
2 Coincidence is, of course, a necessary part of fiction, and Star Wars is no exception. What would have happened, for instance, if Han and Chewie hadn’t dropped into that Mos Eisley cantina for a drink?
But unlike the case with most fiction, it can be argued that in Star Wars there’s an underlying purpose to seemingly random events. The Force may be subtly guiding encounters such as this.
—TZ
3 A small thing that I never would have anticipated, and never even knew before I was invited to a Star Wars convention in Munich:
The thr combination apparently doesn’t exist in German, or so I was told. German Star Wars fans therefore have terrific difficulty pronouncing Thrawn’s name.
—TZ
Chapter 14
1 Also echoes the phrase beck and call. Karrde isn’t the only one who likes puns.
—TZ
2 The Katana fleet isn’t going to become important until Dark Force Rising. But again, it’s important to start setting things up as soon as possible.
—TZ
3 The beckon call was originally nothing more than a plot device, something to get Luke to Lando’s in time for all of them to have this conversation together. The suggestion that the call had belonged to the Dark Jedi was supposed to be the complete explanation, and so I moved on to other matters and forgot about it.
But not all of the readers bought my explanation. Speculation arose that there was a plot thread lurking in there that I was planning to use somewhere down the line.
The more I thought about that, the more I liked the idea of coming up with a more interesting history for this particular piece of jetsam.
So when I was contracted for the book The Hand of Thrawn (which was subsequently split into Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future), that’s exactly what I did.
—TZ
4 The name of the Wookiee home world has always bothered me—from what I’ve heard of Wookiee speech, I’m not convinced they can actually pronounce the word.
In fact, before I knew the world had already been named, I had planned to call it Rwookrrorro.
When I learned that Kashyyyk was already on the books, I suggested that could be the name the Republic and Empire knew it by, while Rwookrrorro was the local Wookiee name.
I was turned down, probably on the grounds that a planet with two different and completely unconnected names would be confusing.
So instead, we used Rwookrrorro as the name of the specific village Leia would be traveling to.
Interestingly, the name Rwook was later used to denote the subspecies that Chewie and some of the other Wookiees belong to.
—TZ
5 I got at least one letter from a reader who took me to task for using borg, which he informed me was a Star Trek word.
I wrote back and explained that borg comes from cyborg, which is a contraction of cybernetic organism and was coined by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in 1960.
On top of that, the term borg was first used in Star Wars in 1978 in one of the Marvel Comics adventures, thus predating Star Trek’s borg concept by about eleven years.
Not that anyone’s counting. Just thought you’d like to know.
—TZ
6 When Episode IV came out, Vader was described as “Dark Lord of the Sith,” but at the time no one knew what that meant. The explanation of Sith was far in the future.
Or should that be far in the past? It’s so hard to keep track of these things sometimes.…
—TZ
Chapter 15
1 Someone at a convention once suggested to me that, instead of art, Thrawn might do better to study an alien race’s myths and legends to get insights into their cultural psyche.
In general, it’s an excellent idea. The problem, from Thrawn’s point of view, is that he would have to read those legends in translation, which might lose key nuances, or else spend years learning all the associated languages. Their artwork, in contrast, he can study directly, in either physical or holographic form.
—TZ
2 Various readers over the years have noted certain similarities between Thrawn and Sherlock Holmes. Here’s one of the spots where that kinship comes most clearly into view.
Once my current reading stack gets a little smaller, it’ll probably be time for me to pull out my complete Sherlock Holmes collection and start through it again.
—TZ
3 Early on, I decided that I was going to use only humans as point-of-view characters. Not because I have a problem with aliens or droids, but because I was afraid that giving those POV segments a truly alien flavor might distract from the flow of the story.
That meant I would never get into Thrawn’s skin and see how exactly he thought. Thus Pellaeon’s role was expanded from simply Thrawn’s second in command to the man through whom Thrawn was to be seen.
To be, in effect, the Dr. Watson to Thrawn’s Sherlock Holmes.
—TZ
4 Another mostly throwaway line, put in to remind the reader that, for all his skill and urbanity, Thrawn can be ruthless if and when necessary.
But as I read this again, I find myself intrigued by the possibilities. Somewhere in the future, I may have to tell this particular story.
—TZ
Chapter 16
1 The Interdictor Cruiser had been invented by West End Games, keying (I assume) off Admiral Piett’s line in Return of the Jedi that the Imperial forces at Endor weren’t to attack, but merely to keep the Rebel ships from escaping.
Thrawn, typically, would come up with several interesting tactical uses for the ship and its projected gravity well during his campaign against the New Republic.
—TZ
2 Two more Tuckerizations, only these two were charity auction winners. Chris Peterson won the chance to be in my next book, and Brian Colclazure won the decision of whether Peterson lived or died. Since Peterson’s death was his decision, I figured it might as well also be his fault.
At the time of the auction they had no idea (nor did I) that my “next book” would be Heir. I hope they were both surprised and pleased with their appearances.
—TZ
3 Brasck and Par’tah, mentioned here, will make important appearances in The Last Command.
—TZ
Chapter 17
1 West End Games’s source material included a splendid X-wing schematic, with all the cool tech stuff a writer could ever ask for.
—TZ
2 It’s always important that the heroes have a plan for getting out of whatever trouble the writer has thrown them into. Even if the plan is never used, or isn’t used the way the character expected, heroes need to be proactive. Luke can’t just sit around hoping that by some stroke of luck he’ll be rescued.