I must admit that when Star Wars was released at the end of December 1977, I did not rush to my local cinema to see it, even though I had read lots of science fiction books and was hugely impressed by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
At that time, no one could escape the wave of publicity and its impact on popular culture has had a long-lasting effect – for good or bad! We can never escape ‘The Force.’ When I did see it sometime in 1978, the special effects looked fantastic compared to most sf films of that period and the story has echoes of the cliff-hanger serials of the 1930s and 1940s. You could say it borrows much from the history of film and SF and dresses it in new sublime technological clothes.
Star Wars has now become an indelible milestone in Hollywood film history, and is celebrated in the Star Wars Encyclopedia, a large format, hardback book, with 447 pages, an index, and hundreds of colour illustrations with the 2,200 entries. The encyclopedia is divided into four sections that cover the topics of Star Wars characters and creatures, locations, technology and vehicles.
The characters section takes up half of the book, and it details the species and affiliation in each entry. We get everything from a Tusken warrior, ‘an elite master of hand-to-hand combat’ to Oddy Muva, a Resistance flight technician. Oddly enough, the entries are not in alphabetical order, so you need the index to find a specific character, which makes the book a bit clumsy to use.
In the locations section, we get a good description of the dreaded Death Star and the secret rebel base, as well as many other planets, and their features in the rest of the Star Wars galaxy. A map for these places would help to give us a wider understanding of the Star Wars galaxy, as such they are a bit random.
In the technology section, there are descriptions of the first lightsabers, holocrons, and megadroids. Key features of the vehicles section are the Millennium Falcon flown by Han Solo, and the Empire’s Star Destroyer.
Despite my quibbles, this is an outstanding coffee table book that shows the sheer scale and imagination that peoples the wonderful world of Star Wars, and is a must have for fans to enjoy.
This truly is, as its subheading says ‘The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy’.
The first three Star Wars films are now available on ITVX.
The Star Wars Encyclopedia is out now.
