My apologies for the long silence. I've been very busy writing and trying not to starve
That's your excuse? Lame.

Working on anything Star Wars?

let me happily announce that StarWars.com has restored the links to my
work here
Yay! (Where's a Drooling Yoda Smiley when you need one?) I've been wanting to re-read a few of these.

Mr. Pena, I have a question:

With Hyperspace closing in 2011, do you happen to know if these now-exclusive articles will become open for all, or will none have access to them ever again?

I sincerely hope it's the former.

Thank you!

"Support Hutt-on-Hutt Love."

Thanks for the explanations- that really makes a lot of sense. I love it when the Force acts all mysterious, so that as an explanation for the end of TUF just hits the right buttons for me.

And Leia's Teras Kasi staff as an electrostaff? That, sir, is one of the most ingenious uses of retcon I've EVER seen!

Next order of business.

Master Ki-Aaron-Mundi:

Seriously? You're going to tease me with that, without actually providing the name?

But okay, okay, let me guess... I'm going off of your list of Darth names that you brainstormed from your Darth Ruin blog... did you originally have her as Darth Fatalis?

No, but that's my favorite one from that list of might-have-beens. So who knows, it might crop up again.

Dewback Rancher:

In any case, has anyone ever identified that weird staff Leia wields in that game? Though she's in Boussh's outfit, that's CLEARLY not the same staff she takes with her into Jabba's Palace in ROTJ; it almost reminds me of Jarael's staff.

I had forgotten about that, and you're right, it does bare a resemblance to Jarael's weapon or even the MagnaGuards electrostaffs (which would make plenty of sense if she's dueling Luke with it). I'd say that's the most likely explanation.

For example, from what I know about Force melds, wasn't the empowering supposed to be a two-way street? If so, where's the evidence that Jacen and Jaina were getting a power boost?

....If the idea that this supposed meld explained Luke's incredible performance towards the end of TUF hadn't been repeated in the EGttF, I'd have chalked it up as an ignorable mistake, but now I have to ask: what's going on with this now that it's got an Essential Guide backing it up, even though what that guide is referencing doesn't mesh with the rest of the referenced work itself or the subject matter IE Force melds?

I felt TUF was one of the best SW books I'd ever read, and this was pretty much my ONLY complaint, and it's a pretty confusing one to boot.

Well, I agree with you that The Unifying Force was a fantastic book. As for its incongruous description of a Force Meld, you're right, I would chalk it up to an out-of-universe snafu ... though if you want be a stickler for continuity, then this is clearly a different kind of Force Meld than the one we typically see the Jedi use. As for the EG to the Force compounding the error, well, it's written from an in-universe perspective precisely for an incident such as this. In all fairness, in that section of the EG to the Force, Tionne is really just repeating what Luke told her, and for all we know, that seems to be what Luke believes. Why does he believe that? Only he and the midi-chlorians know that.

Take care,
Abel

Jacen and Jaina are our narrators for the duration of the supposed meld, because they're there to describe how they "were astounded to see their uncle in such a state"; correct me if I'm wrong, but if they were all just conduits of the Force at that point, how were Jacen and Jaina conscious of themselves enough to be "astounded", much less recognize "Luke" as "their uncle"?

If the idea that this supposed meld explained Luke's incredible performance towards the end of TUF hadn't been repeated in the EGttF, I'd have chalked it up as an ignorable mistake, but now I have to ask: what's going on with this now that it's got an Essential Guide backing it up, even though what that guide is referencing doesn't mesh with the rest of the referenced work itself or the subject matter IE Force melds?

I felt TUF was one of the best SW books I'd ever read, and this was pretty much my ONLY complaint, and it's a pretty confusing one to boot.

Sorry to DP, even if it HAS been a few months since the last post, but I finally managed to read The Unifying Force, and I now have what amounts to a much more important question.

During the final assault on Shimrra's Citadel, I know there was that one sentence that states that Luke, Jaina, and Jacen were in a Force meld at the time- a sentence that was repeated basically word-for-word in the EGttF, by the way- but that sentence just doesn't seem to fit the rest of the description of the battle in the same book or what we know about Force melds, for that matter.

For example, from what I know about Force melds, wasn't the empowering supposed to be a two-way street? If so, where's the evidence that Jacen and Jaina were getting a power boost?
(continued below... stupid character limit...)

Wow! Thanks for the in-depth response! Very interesting.

Incidentally, Chris was at once both remarkably faithful to my descriptions and surprisingly creative in his depictions
You're absolutely right--that guy's an incredible artist, and it's really cool to see the notes he was working off of.

That name was changed in editing to Darth Cognus, possibly because the alternative was deemed either too silly or too sexually suggestive
Seriously? You're going to tease me with that, without actually providing the name?

But okay, okay, let me guess... I'm going off of your list of Darth names that you brainstormed from your Darth Ruin blog... did you originally have her as Darth Fatalis?

Hi Aaron,

Well, nothing gets by you. When I submitted the finished manuscript of Evil Never Dies for approval, I had a different name for Darth Millennial's master. That name was changed in editing to Darth Cognus, possibly because the alternative was deemed either too silly or too sexually suggestive.

Nothing was officially known about Cognus prior to her brief namedrop in Evil Never Dies, and while I tend not to go too deep into background development for such minor characters, I did have some ideas. Below I've posted the descriptions I sent to artist Chris Trevas for his illustrations of Millennial and Cognus in the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, which include some personality details.

(Incidentally, Chris was at once both remarkably faithful to my descriptions and surprisingly creative in his depictions.)

Best,
Abel

Oh yeah, Skippy. :^O

aalagar tassl:

I would like to ask a question about a droid being Sentient, is I-5 sentient? jax could feel it in the force. Is vuffi ra sentient as well as his species? Im sorry if these questions have already been posted but you are very popular. Im not interested in sentient programming just pure sentient from a pure droid, not a cyborg.

Hi aalagar. You're asking for a straight answer to what amounts to a tricky philosophical question. As you may or may not know, the official Star Wars analogue to our "artificial intelligence" is referred to in-universe as "artificial sentience." That suggests that droids with this programming are self-aware or at least perhaps capable of becoming so, which has been made explicit in the case of bounty hunter 4-LOM.

But the question of what constitutes self-awareness is trickier. In the New Jedi Order subseries, Agents of Chaos, C-3PO grapples with issues of his own consciousness, which seems like a very sentient thing to do, while elsewhere the purely-robotic N-K Necrosis contemplates whether he himself is a reincarnation of the part-man General Grievous and therefore, by extension, "alive." Is it enough for an organism, cybernetic or otherwise, to merely have the capacity to believe itself sentient or must there be a confirmation from an outside source? In our own reality, there really isn't any possibility of a non-subjective confirmation, while in Star Wars there seems to be the potential for "the Force" to act as an objective arbiter.

The problem is that the Force has been demonstrated to be sensible even in inanimate objects, such as rocks and caves, according to Yoda in the Empire Strikes Back. The Expanded Universe takes this even further, with Force-endowed relics and paraphernalia, and even an experimental device specifically crafted to facilitate the manipulation of droid "brains" known as a subelectronic converter. In the Tales of the Jedi series, a Jedi Master uses a special Force technique to disable battle droids, and I doubt they necessarily had to be sentient for the trick to work.

This is perhaps really not so surprising, given that much of the material universe is made up of the same material stuff. The way we are accustomed to classifying "life" is a superficial taxonomy that is more useful to our default way of thinking than it is fundamentally accurate.

In short, I don't know the definitive answer to your question. Some time ago, I wrote a source article for StarWars.com called Droids, Technology, and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena which addressed the issue in much more detail, but left the answer open-ended. StarWars.com may again publish the essay one day.

Take care,
Abel