The Illustrated Star Wars Universe (Star Wars)

Using McQuarrie's production sketches and paintings for A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and other Lucasfilm projects (including the Endor-based television specials of the mid-1980s plus preliminary sketches for the 1997 Special Edition updates), Anderson takes readers on a grand tour of the most important planets seen in the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader half of the Star Wars Saga. Starting with Tatooine, the desert world that is the home world to both Anakin Skywalker and his son Luke and ending with Alderaan, the planet where Princess Leia was hidden from her father and was doomed to be destroyed by the Death Star, eight planets are described in individual chapters, each told not by one omniscient narrator but by eight different observers, each with his or her point of view and/or political agenda.

For instance, while the chapter on Tatooine is an anthropologist's dispassionate and scientific report on the desert planet's hostile environment and its hardy inhabitants (ranging from the nomadic and hostile Tusken Raiders and scavenging Jawas to the resilient human moisture farmers and their homesteads), the description of Coruscant, the massive city-planet which was once the seat of power of the Old Republic and is the capital of Emperor Palpatine's Galactic Empire, is a pro-Imperial propaganda article authored by Pollus Hax, the Emperor's chief public relations expert and "spin doctor."

Although much of the artwork featured in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe has been published elsewhere (either in the various Art of Star Wars books relating to the Classic Trilogy or in McQuarrie's Star Wars Portfolios), this combination of production paintings and Anderson's vivid and imaginative text works wonderfully and adds detail and background to both the movies and the post-Episode VI Expanded Universe novels, including Anderson's own JedI Academy trilogy and Darksaber.


A MUST FOR STAR WARS FANS   October 15, 2003
 1 out of 3 found this review helpful

Awesome Illustrations and enjoyable narratives to go along with them. Lots of fun.


My Idol   July 18, 2002
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Ralph is one of the Best Illustrators that i know.His work is very inspirating for me.If you are true fan of Star Wars you just need this book.Excellent printing on high quality paper.Don't wait and buy this piece of art.


You feel inside this Universe   April 7, 2002
This incredible book help you feel like all the Star Wars universe and its planets are real. You read the accounts of the "writers" and you think that they really exists.
It helps to understand all the story and the beutiful pictures help to get into.
A MUST book for a Star Wars fan.


The writing is fogetable but the art is amazing   October 7, 2000
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This book really showcases the beautiful artwork of Ralph McQuarrie, who helped establish the look of the Star Wars films way back at the dawn of the story as we know it. In this book we see fascinating early visual drafts of things that we would later see in the movies. Most of it was impossibly fantastic to ever get filmed at the time but maybe we'll see some of it in the next two movies.

The chapters on Alderan and Bespin are particular fascinating and beautiful.