In terms of humans, how old was Vima-da-Boda? Pretty darn old, as I recall. Somewhere around 200 before Luke even discovered her, and she still hasn't canonically died yet.

Oh. My bad.

Didn't someone also say that in the LOTF round-robin interview at the back of one of the books? (Inferno, I wanna say,,,)

Just as a bit of trivia: If I recall correctly, the phrase "60 is the new 40" was actually first stated by Aaron Allston at the Legacy Of The Force panel at Celebration III (in a teasing response to the question of whether the main characters will have any more kids ). I've heard it all over since then. (Trust Allston to come up with such an enduring phrase right off the top of his head... )

The Wook has Empress Teta at 200, though I have never been able to verify that.

And I'm sure I saw an RPG supplement giving a chart over the increased lifespan of Force sensitives, possibly up to 200%.

EDIT: I knew it! WotC Revised core p. 120.

Jedi can live up to twice the normal lifespan of their species. Meaning Yoda's species prolly couldn't all live up to 900.

Consider it more as Luke's essence -- ageless.

Hopefully, even timeless.

Sue,

This year, 2009, sees the anniversary of many EU events and I was wondering whether you (LucasBooks) or the publishers (Del Rey/Dark Horse) are planning to celebrate any of the following with special editions, or other special publications:

Heir to the Empire - 18th Anniversary in June (oft referred to as the birth of the modern EU)
Dark Empire - 18th Anniversary in December
NJO - 10th Anniversary in November
and of course,
The Phantom Menace - 10th Anniversary in May

It's just that nothing's appeared on either your release schedule nor on any of the publishers and neither on major internet booksellers. Perhaps you have something up your sleeve (or maybe it's just that you don't have sleeves)?

Also, for anyone else still in limbo about why the Big Three don't look old enough on the covers...

I believe Sue answered this already when the Outcast cover was released.

Q: the representation of Luke Skywalker looks way too young for his Outcast age

*A: Probably so -- we aged him some, but with the two-color treatment it was difficult -- adding wrinkles and lines would have made his face look like a Sharpe; one of those wrinkley dogs.

Consider it more as Luke's essence -- ageless.*

Right -- we're not able to do this. We have rights only to their likenesses as the characters they played in the movies, not rights to them as their private selves.

Ay, there's the rub. Any artist tasked with aging Luke, Leia or Han would, reasonably, use his real world knowledge of what they actually look like as older people. In fact, if they didn't and aged them to something else, I think that would be even worse than not aging them at all, because I certainly picture older Hamill, Fisher and Ford when reading these novels because I know that's how they'd look. To show me something else and claim it was what they would look like wouldn't be right.

Is it impossible to get permission, at least from those 3 actors, to be allowed to use their future likenesses? Is that something that's been explored before, and been turned down, or deemed too expensive?

Now that I know the reasoning behind the young portraits, I'm fine with it. But I'm still curious if there's anything standing in the way of actually asking them "can we draw you?"

Audio books will have the same covers, correct Sue?

Yes. The only difference is that the SW logo on the audio is not foil and there's no embossing. On the hardcover, both the SW logo and the book title are embossed.