Product Description

Sixteen stories highlight the familiar characters from the Moss Eisley Cantina of Star Wars and feature the writings of such authors as David Bischoff, A. C. Crispin, Barbara Hambly, and Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94694 in Books
• Published on: 1995-07-01
• Released on: 1995-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780553564686
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Inside Flap
Sixteen stories from the most infamous cantina in the universe...by some of today's leading writers of science fiction.

In a far corner of the universe, on the small desert planet of Tatooine, there is a dark, nic-i-tain-filled cantina where you can down your favorite intoxicant while listening to the best jazz riffs in the universe.  But beware your fellow denizens of this pangalactic watering hole, for they are cutthroats and cutpurses, assassins and troopers, humans and aliens, gangsters and thieves....

Featuring original stories by:

Kevin J. Anderson * Doug Beason * M. Shayne Bell * David Bischoff * A.C.
Crispin * Kenneth C. Flint * Barbara Hambly * Rebecca Moesta * Daniel Keys
Moran * Jerry Oltion * Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens * Jennifer Roberson
* Kathy Tyers * Tom Veitch & Martha Veitch * Dave Wolverton * Timothy
Zahn

Customer Reviews

"Watch your step, this place can get a little rough...."
"Mos Eisley Spaceport," says Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker as they stand on a mesa overlooking the Tatooine metropolis in a transition scene in Episode IV. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be careful."

Of all the many eye-catching and memorable sequences in Star Wars (aka Episode IV: A New Hope), the fateful meeting between Luke Skywalker, Ben Kenobi, and a pair of smugglers with a starship for hire is perhaps the most intriguing. It's not only important dramatically or even as far as the change in the film's pacing goes (from this point on, there will be chases, shootouts, rescues, and battles), it's also visually intriguing. The dim lighting, the tense atmosphere, all those aliens, and, of course, that funky cantina band playing Benny Goodman-like tunes.

Of course, in the film, the focus was on Kenobi, Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca as they negotiated a charter flight to Alderaan. But there were others in the cantina that day on Tatooine...many other minor players and eyewitnesses on that fateful day. Who were they? What about their stories? What were some of them doing in Chalmun the Wookiee's Mos Eisley speakeasy?

Star Wars: Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, edited by novelist Kevin J. Anderson (The Jedi Academy Trilogy), is a collection of 16 original short stories set during and after the events depicted in Star Wars: A New Hope. Within such stories as Kathy Tyers "We Don't Do Weddings: The Band's Tale" there are little tidbits of heretofore unknown data that add depth and nuance to the scene in the film. Want to know the name of the cantina band? (It's Figrin Da'n and the Modal Nodes). What are those two women who look like twins doing in the cantina? (I'm not giving any more free info away here...read Timothy Zahn's "Hammertong" to find out.) All 16 stories are well-written and move almost as fast as the Millennium Falcon, and they all seem to fit into the Star Wars storyline without feeling, well, forced.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this anthology was discovering that authors better known for writing about the Star Trek universe also moonlight in the Star Wars Galaxy. A.C. Crispin, who has written such Trek classics as Yesterday's Son contributed "Play It Again, Figrin Da'n: The Tale of Muftak and Kabe," while Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens wrote "One Last Night in the Mos Eisley Cantina: The Tale of the Wolfman and the Lamproid." Reading these stories and marveling at how they captured the essence of George Lucas' "galaxy far, far away," I realized that they are not only good writers of Star Trek fiction, but they are good writers, period.

Some hits and misses; surprisingly reflective...
As long as you've seen the first "Star Wars" movie and can recall the wonderfully bizarre rogues' gallery of the cantina, you know all you need to know to read and enjoy this book.

Hits: "A Hunter's Fate" (Greedo's tale), "Empire Blues" (the Devaronian's tale), "Drawing the maps of peace" (the moisture farmer's tale), "Soup's On" (the pipe smoker's tale), "Sand tender" (the Hammerhead's tale), and "At the crossroads" (the spacer's tale).

I particularly want to note Greedo's tale by the Veitches here. An excellent story, everything introduced comes back around at the end in an economical and satisfying conclusion. Greedo is revealed to be indeed, as another reviewer said, truly pathetic. The authors write Han PERFECTLY too -- I could accept this story being canon without any difficulty, because the authors know WHO Han and Greedo ARE as characters from the flashes we get of their personalities in the movies. "Empire Blues" and "Soup's On" are highly intelligent and show their authors to be excellent observers of human nature, with all of its neuroses -- I can't wait to read more of Daniel Keys Moran's work in the Star Wars universe.

I didn't read "Doctor Death", the "Tonika sisters" story, or "The Jawa's Tale" (Kevin J. Anderson's reputation preceded him and so I didn't bother), but all the rest were misses. I particularly had difficulty with the story of Muftak and Kabe by A.C. Crispin. From what I hear, she's written other Star Wars stories that are good, but there was a lot I couldn't swallow in her story here. First of all, Muftak is a Talz, an obscure race, yet complete strangers including a stormtrooper and a Rebel operative, neither of whom had seen him before, know his language enough to hold detailed conversations with him. Also, Muftak and Kabe get out of a huge firefight in a most improbable (even considering this is Star Wars) fashion. "Be Still, my Heart" (about the bartender) was corny and completely misdrew Greedo. No way Greedo orders water while eloquently insulting the bartender as if he were a prejudiced aristocrat with an ax to grind!

Overall, though -- the hits make this collection VERY much worth the price you pay for it. It exceeded my expectations quite wonderfully, and each of those "hits" I listed above kept me thinking hours after I finished the story. Highly recommended.

If you like Star Wars, pick this one up.
The Mos Eisley cantina is the setting for only a single brief, if pivotal, scene in the first Star Wars film. (That's A New Hope for those of you who weren't around when it opened in theaters the first time.) It is there we first see the formidable fighting skills of Obi-Wan Kenobi, get our first glimpse of the hirsute Chewbacca and witness the cunning ruthlessness of Han Solo (at least in the original version; George Lucas applied revisionist history to the recent re-release, spoiling a good scene by making Solo play nice with the bad guy). It also provided us with a quick glimpse of the many diverse lifeforms that populate the spacefaring regions of the Empire.

Star Wars: Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina provides a peek into those lives via 16 short stories, each intertwined in some way with the characters and events of that brief movie scene. Each character has little beyond a split-second cameo in the film, a flash on the screen to demonstrate the cutting edge in alien makeup. Now, each has a story.

Each also gives readers a slightly different perspective on the droids' failed entrance into the cantina, and each has a different angle on Kenobi's fight at the bar and Greedo's demise. The stories unfold like a great Tatooine tapestry