"Mything in Action"

Kevin Coolidge

A long time ago, in a memory far, far away, I was in a darkened movie theater watching the birth of an epic, but I didn’t know that. I was eight years old and watching starships and Wookies and light sabers and things exploding in a fairy-tale made larger than life. It was good battling evil and a grand call to adventure in what was to be the birth of the Star Wars saga, truly a hero’s journey.

The monomyth, often referred to as the hero’s journey, is a description of a basic pattern found in many narratives from around the world. This universal pattern was described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell was a comparative mythologist. In this text Campbell discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies and religions.

In case you’ve spent the last thirty years in solitary confinement, Star Wars is an epic science fiction saga and fictional universe created by George Lucas. Lucas’s deliberate use of the monomyth is quite evident. Star Wars resonates with the best of literary classics--Beowulf, the Iliad ,Oedipus Rex, Le Morte D’Arthur, not to mention the story of Moses and the Old Testament. Star Wars has a strong mythic quality alongside its political and scientific elements, and has spawned dozens of books.

Star Wars-based fiction actually predates the release of the movie, with the novelization of A New Hope, written by Alan Dean Foster. The novel was released a couple months before the movie. In 1978, Foster wrote the first original Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, and thus began a very successful literary spin-off franchise.

The stories told through these books extend from a time long before The Phantom Menace to a time long after Return of the Jedi. Books authorized by Lucas are written by fans of the films, and are part of a collection known as the Expanded Universe. The first books considered to be part of the Expanded Universe began to appear in the late 1970s. There are several books dealing with the lives of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian just before the movies.

Many of the books that have been written also take place during the events of the film. For fans, these can be more exciting stories, as it opens up the narrative for many characters who only have a minor role, or are even just briefly seen, in the movies. Also, many elements first introduced in the Expanded Universe were later included in the films-such as Boba Fett and Coruscant. Other books include such titles as The Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide, and Inside the Worlds of Star Wars, which detail things about the Star Wars universe and the films in a "non-fiction" style and reveal many details that cannot fit into a story.

Since the release of A New Hope in 1977, the Star Wars saga has become a passion bordering on religion for millions the world over. It’s not just the adventurous plots, the likable characters, high-tech props, and dazzling visual effects that keep fans begging for more. Behind the light-saber duels and screaming dog fights, there is a mythology that reaches to the core of the human psyche that shows the need for and the power of myth. Good and bad, light and dark-a hero embarks on a journey of self-discovery…