“So when I decided to write, that was naturally what I wanted to do.” Zahn studied physics in college, even pursuing a doctorate in the subject, but along the way, he started writing as a hobby, where he fused an understanding of science fact into his love of science fiction. “Science fiction has been part of my life for pretty much as long as I can remember,” Zahn told Polygon. As a kid, his parents introduced him to the pulp hero Tom Swift Jr., and in his frequent visits to the library, he discovered the genre’s major authors, like Poul Anderson ( Tau Zero), Larry Niven ( Ringworld), Theodore Sturgeon ( More Than Human), and Roger Zelazny ( Lord of Light). Zahn was a lifelong science fiction reader. The major sci-fi and fantasy books arriving this fall The 7 graphic novels to knock your cozy socks off this fall With a new license in hand, he and his senior editor, Betsy Mitchell, set out to find the right author to tell such a story.

Lou Aronica, the publisher of Bantam Spectra, had a pitch: a set of stories detailing major in-canon events that would continue the legacy of the franchise without disrupting the movie timeline. After a chance meeting with a publisher in 1987, Lucy Wilson, the financial director of Lucasfilm’s licensing department, realized that there might be interest in a new line of novels set within Star Wars ’ vast world, and began to reach out to publishers to gauge interest. Outside of a couple of TV projects, comics, and early tie-in novels, for all intents and purposes, Lucas and his company were ready to move on. Return of the Jedi, the last major installment of George Lucas’ space opera franchise, had hit theaters in 1983, and while he had floated ideas of another trilogy and completing a theoretical nine-episode saga, Lucasfilm began to quietly wind down its licensing operations. By the late 1980s, Star Wars was officially dead.

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