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You probably read Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and/or Tales of the Bounty Hunters if you were a Star Wars fan in the 1990s. In the universe of Star Wars spin-off novels, these collections of short stories, written by a variety of brilliant sci-fi authors, were exceptional in that they were not afraid to tell smaller stories. These were focused, generally self-contained adventures set in the gritty, murky nooks of George Lucas’s galaxy far, far away, unlike, example, the Thrawn or Jedi Academy trilogies.
What I love about these books is the variety. Each story gave me a fresh and informed perspective on the Star Wars universe. We Don’t Do Weddings by Kathy Tyers is a delightful story told from the perspective of Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes (the “Jizz” band playing the cantina at A New Hope). And the spaceport rogue. Directed by David Bischoff, Be Still My Heart follows Wooher, a grumpy, droid-hating bartender in a cantina who tries to make a special cocktail to impress Jabba the Hutt.
Some of the stories are risky, but the ones that really captured my imagination as a teenager were the stories about life’s stages of life. And today, I wish Lucasfilm would make a Disney+ series of her with a similar vibe. A history so rich and sprawling galaxy is a perfect fit for his anthology series, which spends 45 minutes on a never-before-seen part of it through the eyes of a common man. We’ve met a lot of Jedi, Sith, and Rebels in Star Wars, but what about Moist Builders, Podracers, Pazark Sharks, Hotel Owners, or Droid Mechanics?
I love Star Wars, but I have to concur that Rich Evans of Red Letter Media thinks the galaxy is narrow since the tales depicted there are, in some ways, movies. The ideal remedy for this is an anthology series on normal universe life, which greatly broadens the variety of locales. Some Star Wars movies only briefly return to certain areas, but shows like this one let us go back and learn more about those places and the people who live there.