Jedipedia:Interviews/Jason Fry (September 2014)

Gemeinsam mit der Jedi-Bibliothek haben wir ein Interview mit den Autoren Jason Fry und Daniel Wallace organisiert, für das wir auch eure Fragen über die sozialen Netzwerke gesammelt haben. Dan Wallace musste leider kurzfristig aussteigen, aber wir hoffen, das Interview mit ihm zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt durchführen zu können.

Nichtsdestotrotz präsentieren wir euch nun heute das Interview mit Jason Fry, das sich sowohl auf seine vergangene Arbeit an den Essential Guides und Star Wars in 100 Scenes sowie auch auf seine neue Star Wars Rebels-Jugendromanreihe konzentriert.

Wir präsentieren euch hier in der Jedipedia zunächst exklusiv die englische Originalversion des Interviews. Die deutsche Übersetzung findet ihr bei unseren Partnern von der Jedi-Bibliothek unter folgendem Link:

Deutsche Version des Interviews auf Jedi-Bibliothek.de

You wrote for many different media, including reference articles in the Star Wars Insider, junior novels, non-fiction books (does that term even apply in Star Wars?) and RPG stuff. Which do you enjoy writing the most? Would you like to add video games and TV episodes to that list? What are the differences of these regarding input from the publisher and Lucasfilm?

I like storytelling in any form, so all of the above are great. My favorite would be fiction -- I think the best storytelling is driven by characters and their collisions with each other, and I'm happiest when I get to address that in my writing. Plus I love writing dialogue, which there isn't much call to do in "non-fiction fiction."

I actually have done some videogame work -- I helped develop the story for Star Wars: Commander, the mobile game that came out recently. TV would be great, but Star Wars already has a lot of very talented folks in that particular line of work. I'm lucky enough to get to work with them, though.

My experience has been that projects aren't treated too differently by publishers or Lucasfilm, which I think is part of what has made Star Wars such a cohesive universe. From my early dealings with Story Group and Disney I suspect that will be even more true going forward.

We've got a few timeline questions stemming from your recently-published Star Wars in 100 Scenes book from DK Publishing, which is truly a feast for the eyes – well done! Firstly, the book mentions that Return of the Jedi starts six months after the Battle of Hoth... Is this correct? Previous material established The Empire Strikes Back in 3 ABY and Return of the Jedi in 4 ABY. Does this place Episode V in the latter half of 3 ABY and Episode VI at the beginning of 4 ABY?

Hmm. You'd have to ask Lucasfilm about that. It's possible they made a change that I didn't notice. It's also possible that I goofed up.

The same book also mentions that A New Hope starts 18 years after the fall of the Republic, while previous sources and a recent timeline tweet by Leland Chee gave the time between Episode III and IV as 19 years. Which is it?

Same answer.

For wiki authors, your Atlas Appendix is really useful when creating articles about planets, systems and sectors. Will there be a canon version of the Atlas Appendix or will the old one be updated? We already have the canon Gorse system in John Jackson Miller's A New Dawn and new planets in Star Wars Rebels.

I'll do another update shortly -- I'm waiting so it can incorporate the entirety of Dark Horse's run. I can't promise when it will appear -- the rest of my 2014 is insane projects-wise -- but I haven't forgotten.

With The Essential Atlas you tried to make a then-comprehensive guide to the GFFA which was further completed by separate installments such as the Xim Week or the Knight Errant Gazetteer online supplements and the Atlas Online Appendix. With the shift in Canon, are there plans to further add to the Atlas and its Appendix? What about the things introduced in SWTOR and the RPG material from Fantasy Flight Games?

Lucasfilm has said they're willing to continue mapping the sectors -- we still have the Inner Rim, Colonies and Core/Deep Core to go, and I'd love to see those fully mapped. But I can't tell you when I'll be able to tackle them.

If there are new star systems from SWTOR and FFG that the next appendix update doesn't catch, send them my way and I'll look into them.

Moving on to The Essential Guide to Warfare. A few days ago, the final installment of the Essential Guide to Warfare Author’s Cut was published. Those were awesome! Are there any plans for further web content? Would you like to write content for something like the StarWars.com Hyperspace?

Glad you liked them! Nope, the series is done. I will continue writing for the starwars.com blog, however.

A related question from one of our readers: Why was "A Soldier’s Story: Raid on Hast" cut from The Essential Guide of Warfare?

When I completed the Clone Wars portion of Warfare, I looked at the manuscript and it was already well over the allowable length for the entire book. So a lot of stuff needed to go -- both material that had already been written and material that was part of the outline but yet to be written. The Raid on Hast piece fell into the latter category. We really needed to pare the book back to the essentials, if you will. This is why most of the material in the Author's Cuts came before the Imperial period, chronologically speaking. I'm glad we were able to share a lot of the material that did get written.

Some of us have always wondered how much of The Essential Guide to Warfare came from Paul Urquhart. What would the percentage of his work be if you had do give any? How was the "division of labour", so to speak?

I don't want to put a percentage on that because it would undervalue Paul's contributions. His role went far beyond writing certain sections while I wrote others – he also caught errors in my work, suggested clarifications and additions and subtractions, served as a sounding board when I was struggling with something, and helped in many other ways. He was an invaluable partner in creating a book of which I'm proud.

If you were to write another Essential Guide and could choose any topic in the Star Wars universe, which would it be?

Oh, goodness. That's hard to answer -- and up to the folks at Del Rey and Lucasfilm. I will say that I think I'm better suited to big, broad themes than encyclopedias of categories. Let me dig into history, culture, economics and the like -- as the Atlas and Warfare do.

Moving on to Star Wars Rebels. We read that your Servants of the Empire series shares some narrative links with Star Wars Rebels itself. What exactly is the timeline of SOTE and how do your books intersect or overlap with what we will see on TV?

The books are concurrent with the show. The second book in the series includes the events of one episode of the show, but told from different points of view than what we see in the episode. That means some scenes in the episode aren't in the book and vice versa, while other scenes begin earlier or end later. Beyond that we'll see how things go as both the show and the books progress. But I'm working closely with Story Group to make sure things line up chronologically.

How much room did you have for your own ideas when writing these novels and how much was already dictated by the show? What was the cooperation with the Rebels producers like?

I've had a lot of room for my own ideas, which has been great. The first book is a prequel to anything we'll see on the show involving Zare Leonis, and I had a lot of freedom to fill in his family's backstory and describe how he becomes the character we'll meet on TV. The same has been true so far for the books as we move into the period where the novels and the show overlap and intersect. The producers have been terrific -- Greg Weisman had some terrific feedback about Edge of the Galaxy, which made it a stronger story and a better book. And Story Group has been great about keeping things in sync and making my work better. It's been a lot of fun and an easy working process so far.

Book 1 Edge of the Galaxy will be out in October and Book 2 Rebel in the Ranks will follow in March. Do you know when Book 3 and Book 4 will come out, respectively?

I don't have official word of release dates, but I believe the four books' releases will be evenly spaced out.

What would you say to fans of the TV series to get them interested in reading your Zare Leonis books?

Zare's an interesting character -- he thinks he knows what he believes and what he wants for his future, but is forced to question everything. He's smart and capable, but doesn't have the extraordinary abilities of someone who can feel the Force. I think he's an interesting character whom readers will sympathize with and root for. Plus you learn more about Lothal and how the Empire's arrival changes it, for better and for worse.

Can you talk about how Lucasfilm's new unified canon effort is working behind the scenes and how it differs from how things worked in the last few decades?

So far it isn't particularly different from my perspective. If you hadn't told me that there was now a Story Group, I doubt I'd have noticed a difference in how things got approved and edited between Servants of the Empire and, say, a Clone Wars project. The only thing I can really point to so far is that for the second Servants of the Empire book I was able to watch the relevant episode of Rebels. That was a huge help to me, and something that never happened with my Clone Wars work. (Which isn't to say that folks weren't helpful with Clone Wars projects. They were. But that level of access was new, and much appreciated.)

Are you working on reading material related to upcoming movie projects?

Sorry, but I've had a policy for some time that such announcements are best left to the folks at Lucasfilm and Disney.

Lastly, which other books by you should Star Wars fans check out and why?

Check out The Jupiter Pirates series! (http://www.jupiterpirates.com) It's not Star Wars, but Star Wars was definitely an inspiration -- Jupiter Pirates has space battles and derring-do and family revelations. It's set in the 29th century, when Earth is the dominant power of the solar system and colonists on the outer planets are struggling for their independence. The protagonist, Tycho Hashoone, is a 12-year-old midshipman on his family's pirate ship. His mother Diocletia is the captain, his father Mavry is the first mate, and his twin sister Yana and his older brother Carlo are fellow midshipmen. Here's the thing, though -- the captaincy of the family ship is handed down from one generation to the next, and only one child is chosen. So Tycho and his siblings have to cooperate, but they're also competitors.

The first book, Hunt for the Hydra, came out late last year from HarperCollins. The next one, Curse of the Iris, will be out in mid-December. It's got a lost treasure that turns out to be in a surprising hiding place, a space battle among the rings of Saturn, and of course lots of space pirates saying "Arrrr." I guarantee these are fun books no matter what your age might be.

Thank you for the interview, Mr Fry!