Although George Lucas's name is on the cover of the original Star Wars novelization, Alan Dean Foster ghostwrote it. Splinter drew inspiration primarily from an early draft of the Star Wars script. The Expanded Universe is generally considered to have begun with Alan Dean Foster's February 1978 Star Wars spin-off novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, although technically it began in October 1977 with the story The Keeper's World, in Marvel Comics' Pizzazz magazine. The early development of the Expanded Universe was sporadic and unrefined, in large part because, at this time, there was so little canon material for the creators to use as reference. But it wasn't until 1991, when Timothy Zahn wrote the novel Heir to the Empire, the first Star Wars best-seller, which was the beginning of what we call the Star Wars renaissance, that continuity became an issue." ―Lucasfilm continuity editor Allan Kausch, 1996 Early years Technically, George Lucas has been doing continuity all along by mapping out the nine films. Since our movies have their own internal continuity, we maintain that in the spin-off works.
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" The premise of all the comic books, novels, games, and other spin-off works is that they all work chronologically, that the continuity forms one unbroken story. In in-universe chronology, the earliest works are the Dawn of the Jedi comics, which are set millennia before the films, while the latest are the Legacy comics, which are set about one hundred and thirty years after Return of the Jedi. The Expanded Universe is actually older than the films themselves, as the novelization of the original film was published six months before the film was released.
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For the most part when any discrepancies arose retcons were created to fix these contradictions. The general rule was that nothing in the Expanded Universe was allowed to contradict any other part of the Expanded Universe or the films.
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The Expanded Universe had a continuity with few wrinkles. Today, some of the only Legends products that are still being released are the video game Star Wars: The Old Republic, along with short stories published on the Star Wars blog. Though the majority of the Expanded Universe media was not brought into the new canon, it still remains a resource for future Star Wars materials to reference, thus bringing these older elements into the new continuity. announced that in preparation for the upcoming sequel trilogy, the Expanded Universe would be rebranded as Legends and no longer adhered to past tales of the Expanded Universe would be printed under the Star Wars Legends banner, and a new continuity would be established that consisted only of the original six films, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and all future material from that point onward. This material expands and continues the stories told in the films, taking place anywhere from over 36,000 years before The Phantom Menace to 136 years after Return of the Jedi. It is derived from and includes most official Star Wars books, comic books, video games, spin-off films, television series, toys, and other media created before that date. Star Wars Legends, formerly known as the Expanded Universe (abbreviated EU), encompasses every one of the licensed and background stories of the Star Wars universe, outside of the original six Star Wars films produced by George Lucas and certain other material such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars, created before April 25, 2014. Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the first Expanded Universe novel, published in 1978 Today, it is an amazing, if unexpected, legacy of Star Wars that so many gifted writers are contributing new stories to the Saga." ― George Lucas, from the introduction of Splinter of the Mind's Eye, 1996 Instead, they would spring from the imagination of other writers, inspired by the glimpse of a galaxy that Star Wars provided. But these were not stories that I was destined to tell. " After Star Wars was released, it became apparent that my story-however many films it took to tell-was only one of thousands that could be told about the characters who inhabit its galaxy.