We get something a little different with 1995 short story collection Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina. Some of the stories are genuinely very good! Some of them are very bad! And all of them make up a book that's one of the prime suspects in the franchisization of Star Wars. Topics include if it's necessary for every weirdo in the cantina scene in Star Wars to be doing something of galactic importance, the Force being more mystical and unexplainable in some of these stories, and the exciting and deserved fate of the disgusting misogynist pickup artist with the big cones on his head.

Content warnings include sexual assault, misogyny, racism, references to ethnic cleansing, and general physical violence.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxpz3Lp-PCk

We return to Roger MacBride Allen's Star Race Wars with 1995's Assault at Selonia. It's fine! It's better than the previous one but Roger still has the annoying tendency to elaborate in excruciating detail about stuff that really just does not matter to the plot. Topics include the proper way to anthropomorphize mustelids, why everyone forgot that they've been working with Mara Jade for like 7 years at this point, and who takes credit for false flag terrorist attacks.

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[libsyn is not letting me upload this today. I will try again soon!]

We go long on Barbara Hambly's 1995 heater Children of the Jedi! Luke falls in love with a ghost in a machine who ends up inhabiting the body of one of his students so they can be together (it was a different time). Hambly is one of the first authors we've read on here that uses Themes and is also very good at putting sentences together, so we actually had a great time with this one. Topics include identity as a result of one's material conditions, Orientalism in Hambly's ex-husband's 1986 cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, and what all was actually involved in being an Emperor's Hand.

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(Johnny joins us about an hour in. This was recorded during Ramadan so cut him some slack)

We're joined by Jacob from socialist book podcast Workers' Lit to discuss Roger MacBride Allen's 1995 trilogy opener Ambush at Corellia. Allen's clumsy attempt to write an analogue to the Bosnian War and the collapse of Yugoslavia in the Star Wars universe doesn't work particularly well, but we appreciate his attempts to grapple with the politics of Star Wars and the toothless New Republic. Topics of this episode include Mon Mothma and the New Republic's unwillingness to get rid of the reactionary elements in their government, Lando risking it all for a sexy vampire with a castle, and how much hotter Han Solo would be with some gray hair, a beard, and a few extra kilos.

Content warnings include discussions of genocide and ethnic cleansing, fascism, and racism.

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After some recording hiccups, we return to discuss 1994's The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre. Some have called this the "worst Star Wars novel" ever published, which you should know off the bat is an insane, uninformed, likely misogynistic opinion! The book isn't the best SW novel we've read, but it's so much better than anything Kevin J. Anderson ever read into a tape recorder. Also everyone respects C-3PO in this one more than ever before. We discuss the phenomenon of quislings for fascist governments, how often Chewbacca sees his family, and Ben Kenobi using mind tricks to avoid paying for beer.

Content warnings include misogyny, slavery, suicide, racism, and genocide.

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Star Wars Chess - All Yoda Battles

We're back finally after reading the third piece of shit "written" by Kevin J. Anderson for his Jedi Academy trilogy, 1994's Champions of the Force. The previous two were bad and this one is also bad, and we discuss why! Topics include the New Republic abdicating all legitimacy by not bothering to prosecute genocide, Luke's terrible pedagogy, and, for some reason, the utility of a four-armed nanny droid with synthetic flesh.

Content warnings include racism, misogyny, slavery, references to genocide, and physical violence.

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We're unfortunately back to Kevin J. Anderson's tedious Jedi Academy trilogy with the second installment, 1994's Dark Apprentice. The gang is unifed in our hatred of Kevin's writing and we're just really tired of his shit. Topics include Luke Skywalker's substitute teacher-ass Jedi instruction, Admiral Ackbar flying a plane into a skyscraper (really), and how politically cooked the New Republic is because they want to negotiate and co-exist with what's left of the Empire.

Content warnings include misogyny, racism, intimate partner violence, slavery, sexual assault, and references to genocide.

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We talk about 1994's The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton. Dave cooked with this one, honestly. There's some outrageous stuff in here but it's combined with genuinely some of the best writing we've encountered on this podcast so far. Topics include if Han is a Space Led Zeppelin guy while he's working in the garage, the psychosexual stuff going on with Dave regarding matriarchial societies where men are only kept around for breeding and to look pretty, and the sentience of rancors.

Content warnings include fatphobia, misogyny, enslavement, suicide. Also this story is about kidnapping your partner because you're afraid they're going to leave you for someone else.

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