UPDATE: Today, Star Wars and Del Rey books revealed the final author line-up for the book, along with the cover! Gone is E.K. Johnston for some reason, but rounding out the group are Katie Cook and Sarwat Chadda!
We learned last week that Del Rey Books was publishing a follow-up to the very successful, 2017’s “Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View”, but were short on details including the full author list. They did allow most of the writers to reveal themselves on Twitter using the hash tag #FromACertainPOVStrikesBack, but as promised, today they’ve released nearly the entire line-up over at Star Wars dot com.
Forty years of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, 40 authors retelling its stories? Sounds good to us. The anthology series From a Certain Point of View is set to return with From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back, celebrating 40 years of Episode V and arriving November 10. Like its predecessor, From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back will feature 40 stories by 40 authors reimagining the classic sequel through the eyes of background characters — heroes, villains, droids and creatures.
You can see from the incredibly diverse list below it’s a mix of both old and new, with a about a third of the authors having contributed stories to the first book. As for the new ones, there’s no real surprises if you’re ingrained in the YA/Fantasy/Sci-Fi publishing arena at all. And authors such as Amy Ratcliffe (Women of the Galaxy) and Michael Kogge (The Rise of Skywalker Jr. Novel) seem like no-brainers since their work in Star Wars publishing has been substantive the last few years.
We don’t get any titles but with The Empire Strikes Back being fertile ground for secondary/background character mining, the skies the limit with this group. Besides the main cast, there’s many tertiary and beyond characters/beasties that these writers I’m sure will be able to create fantastic tales out of. Bounty hunters, exogorth’s, wampa’s, Echo Base rebels, the list goes on and on.
But they did give us details for six of the short stories from a select group…
- Austin Walker explores the unlikely partnership of bounty hunters Dengar and IG-88 as they pursue Han Solo.
- Hank Green chronicles the life of a naturalist caring for tauntauns on the frozen world of Hoth.
- Tracy Deonn delves into the dark heart of the Dagobah cave where Luke confronts a terrifying vision.
- Martha Wells reveals the world of the Ugnaught clans who dwell in the depths of Cloud City.Â
- Mark Oshiro recounts the wampa’s tragic tale of loss and survival.
- Seth Dickinson interrogates the cost of serving a ruthless empire aboard the bridge of a doomed Imperial starship.
So, below is the rundown for 39 of the 40 authors, with links to their websites!
Returning FACPOV authors…
First-time FACPOV authors…
“From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back” hit bookstores and online November 10th!
