Canon (and Star Wars)

 As a Star Wars fan and semi-frequent reader of “Wookieepedia” the Star Wars wiki, canon is something that comes up fairly often. What is it?

The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, fourth edition, defines “canon” as: 

“A body of writings recognized by authority. Those books of holy scripture which religious leaders accept as genuine are canonical, as are those works of a literary author which scholars regard as authentic. The canon of a national literature is a body of writings especially approved by critics or anthologists and deemed suitable for academic study.” (p. 51)

The first part of the definition is what we’re looking at today. Way back at the dawn of time (1977) the original Star Wars movie was released. Soon thereafter, others wanted to explore the worlds George Lucas created. What happened after Luke blew up the Death Star? Marvel Comics produced the comic adaptation of the film, and created their own tales. Science Fiction author Alan Dean Foster, writer of the paperback adaptation, brought us the first book sequel with Splinter of the Mind’s Eye the following year. 

Fast-forward to the end of last century, where there are a multitude of novels, comics, and games, all by authors other than Lucas. Where do they all fit in the Star Wars continuity? George and Lucasfilm, as the recognized authority, stepped in. “Genuine” from our definition above was the three films of the original trilogy, and the then newly-created prequel trilogy: the works that George Lucas had created. Everything else, while approved by that authority, was okay – just not exactly canon. Lucasfilm came up with six different levels of canon: one of works George had a hand in, and five others. The convolutions of that I’ll leave for the reader to delve into via this Wookieepedia link. (Suffice to say that this fan had become overwhelmed by all this silliness and took a franchise hiatus around this time.)

It is worth noting the other big SciFi franchise, Star Trek, had also dealt with their own plethora of additional material. Gene Roddenberry (Trek’s creator) simply stated that in their case, the TV series and films are canon, the rest isn’t (with a couple of exceptions).

When Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, that mess was cast aside. Canon reverted to works George Lucas had a hand in: the six films and the Clone Wars animated series. Everything else became acknowledged as “Legends”, stories by others with no ties to continuity. New books, comics, etc. would come out, of course, and anything released from 2014 onwards became canon too. Since Lucas sold Lucasfilm, he no longer had a say in development, and Disney wanted all new material to fit together. As expected with a juggernaut such as Star Wars, exceptions were made too, as well as contradictions between some of the new material.

 

If you find canon to be important to your Star Wars experience, here’s how to search the MCLS catalog for only those books:

Type “star wars” in the search box. Use the sidebar on the left to limit search results,  first by going to publication date and choose “2014-2024” and click “include”.  When those results appear, you can go to “format” and choose “books” (then click “include”).  some outliers like old reprints might come up, but this should be a good start.

If canon is “meh” to you, never fear! There’s plenty of the (now-Legends) books and audiobooks in our collection. May the Force be with you!