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The Essential Guide to Droids (Star Wars) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Daniel Wallace, Bill Hughes, Troy Vigil
Publisher: LucasBooks
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy Used: $0.68
You Save: $18.27 (96%)
New (6) Used (20) Collectible (2) from $0.68
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 504826
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 0345420675
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.4375
EAN: 9780345420671
ASIN: 0345420675
Publication Date: February 16, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Some of the coolest personalities in Star Wars--both big parts and bit players--aren't really persons at all. They're droids. From the comedic duo of R2-D2 and C-3PO to the beeping, gonking peanut gallery in the belly of the Sandcrawler, you can tell that Lucas loved his droids. In fact, as Essential Guide author Daniel Wallace wisely points out, A New Hope opens not with a princess or a Jedi, but with the bickering R2 and 3PO. Wallace shares that affection, and in The Essential Guide to Droids, he lovingly describes a hundred of the hardest working bots in the galaxy, drawing from the Star Wars movies, novels, and comics. (As Wallace puts it, "We like to think we covered all the cool ones.") Every droid you remember (or maybe just recognize) is here, from R2 and 3PO to the syringe-packing interrogator orbs on the Death Star to the eyeball-on-a-stick security drone that minds Jabba's front door. Each entry lists the unit's specs and history (and sometimes even marketing strategy), and a technical blueprint points out all the features. (How else would you find the retractable paralysis cord on the cone-headed bounty hunter IG-88?) With its droids of all callings, from medical to military and protocol to processing, this Essential Guide is a tour any SW fan will love. --Paul Hughes
Product Description
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER . . . DROID!
They can be anything from nursemaids to surgeons, diplomats to assassins. They walk, roll, and fly--and communicate in languages ranging from whistles and beeps to Standard Basic to the most obscure alien dialect. MixRMastRs make drinks in spaceport cantinas, Basilisks make war wherever they're deployed, and IT-O Interrogators make life nightmarish for prisoners of the Empire.
Droids are an integral and indispensable part of the Star Wars universe. And this comprehensive guide surveys all the myriad models and classes--from the lowliest drones to the most sophisticated humanoid automatons.
- Discover the evolution of the R-series droids, whose members include lumbering technicians and skilled X-wing navigators such as R2-D2
- Learn the curious history of the MSE-6 "mouse" droids employed exclusively in the bases and on Imperial starships of the Empire
- Explore the workings of the malevolent Shadow Droids: machines with living, organic brains
- Uncover how the Rebel's fearsome FIDO (Foreign Intruder Defense Organism) carries out its duties
Whatever its design and wherever it may be found in the ever-expanding Star Wars universe, if the subject is droid, its definitive data on development, history, and technology is included in this essential technical guide.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
Thank The Maker August 28, 2001
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the immortal words of Darth Vader..."Impressive. Most impressive." I found this book to be not only an excellent resource but also a great read. It touches on every major detail of the droids that it mentions...which is quite a bit. You can read about anything from C-3P0's internal computer to the technical details of the medical droid. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to scratch the surface of Star Wars and dig a little deeper.
 Good book, but how many more do we need? August 10, 2001
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really think they are stretching to come up with more "Essential" books for Star Wars, but nonetheless, this is still a good book full of all the information you knew, know, wanted and didn't want to know about the lovable robotic droids of the Star Wars movies and books. Star Wars fans won't be disappointed, however there is not much here for the non-Star Wars fan, as they probably won't even know what their reading about (or if they did, they wouldn't care). I recommend this to all Star Wars fans.
At last, an essential 'Essential Guide' May 27, 2000
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Essential Guide to Droids is better than the rest of the EG series thus far. It has good pictures and relatively informative schematic drawings of each of the droids, with better art than has been seen yet in a Guide. It also has the obligatory listing and brief description of all the major droid manufacturors in known. Another helpful feature is that it lists the droids according to their function, rather than in the standard alphabetical order, a la EG to Weapons. But the author goes beyond simply describing each droid and its function. He created background lore about the droids, and their developers. He doesn't make each droid individual, but rather trases entire product lines, for example, he goes from the R1 to the end of the R- series, creating the whole product line development, etc... What he doesn't do is spend the entire allotted text space for each droid simply relating the adventures it has had. This is a very helpful, informative, and readable SW book, and I'm glad I bought it.
Wanna Buy a Used R2 Unit? May 16, 2000
I have all of the Essential Guides and have been pleased with all of them to one degree or another. The Essential Guide to Droids, however, is one of the better ones. The author and artists have done their homework in researching the novels, but for all their work-there are some really silly designs in here, usually written into novels or whatever, because the author thought it would be cute, but only comes across as annoying or dumb (the C2-R4 comes to mind). Other designs have not been well thought out-the M38 Explorer droid is too tall, it seems logical that if you want an automated robot for planetary surveys, then something with a lower center of gravity would be a much better design. I would recommend that everyone ignore the fact that Anakin made C-3PO and keep his manufacturer as Cybot Galactica, since that is a little more believable. As always The Essential Guide to Droids would make an ideal addition to the Star Wars role playing table as well, and it has a good spread of robots from domestic, industrial to combat and medical droids. A solid effort with great art work and well written.
Another Life-Saver February 10, 2000
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is where I go to get information on Droids. You never seem to get really good description of the droids so this is where reccomend that you go and if you can't find out what you need to know the I would reccomend th Star Wars Encyclopedia.
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