A scoundrel’s origins
This week, Lucasfilm revealed plans for a Star Wars spinoff film that will delve into the origin of charming Rebel rogue Han Solo. But if you ask me (and, I’d wager, thousands of other lifelong franchise fans), we’ve already gotten a fine version of it. When I was in middle school, I earned my one and only detention after neglecting my math homework, and was forced to come in on a Saturday and sit in a room for several hours. I was somehow allowed to bring a book—presumably, reading was deemed a suitable “punishment"– and I brought along A.C. Crispin’s The Paradise Snare, the first of her Han Solo trilogy, covering the early years of one Han Solo, the rogue who shot first. Best. Detention. Ever.
One of the defining traits of Star Wars is its lived-in universe: not just the worn technology and the grimy ships, but the fact in dumps you into the middle of the story. Characters have lives and relationships that preceded the film, something that Crispin’s trilogy takes full advantage of.
The Paradise Snare opens with an 18-year-old Solo stowing away on a robotic cargo vessel to escape from the ship that had been his lifelong home, and where he suffered constant abuse. Crispin doesn’t hold back on the drama from the get-go: Han’s mother figure, a Wookiee named Dewlanna, is killed, and he’s quickly on his way to Ylesia, a religious colony in need of a good pilot.
The colony turns out to be a front for recruiting slave labor, used to process shipments of spice. Solo falls for Pilgrims 921, Bria, and hatches a plan to escape with her. They flee to the capital world of Coruscant, where she has trouble breaking her psychological programming and addictions. She leaves Han behind, and he joins the Imperial Academy to try and make something of his life.
The second book, The Hutt Gambit, picks up several years later: Han has been booted from the military for stepping in to stop an enslaved Wookiee from being beaten: Chewbacca. The Empire has begun a crackdown on the Hutts’ organized crime networks, and Solo, now a smuggler, works as a go-between, trying to help the Hutts save their territory and livelihood. All the while, he has to avoid being captured by the bounty hunter Boba Fett, who’s after him as a result of his work on Ylesia.
Crispin jumps a couple of years forward with the final installment, Rebel Dawn. Han wins a clunky-looking cargo ship—maybe you’ve heard of it, the Millennium Falcon?—away from his friend Lando Calrissian, planning to use it to launch a lucrative career as a freelance smuggler. Crispin takes the opportunity to fold in the events of another Solo prequel trilogy—the original Han Solo Adventures, penned by Brian Daley, depicting another set of adventures from Solo’s early days, and written long before the ordered Star Wars Expanded Universe of the ’90s had been established.
Solo is pulled back into his old life when Bria returns. Now a member of the Rebel Alliance, she convinces him to lead an attack on Ylesia to get supplies and resources for the growing resistance movement. After the attack succeeds, Bria betrays the smugglers and confiscates their earnings. Thinking that he was in on it, Solo’s friends turn on him, and he’s forced to take a reckless mission for Jabba the Hutt, losing his cargo after an ill-fated trip that puts him on the outs with his slimy employer. In the meantime, Bria leads a mission to transmit the plans for the Death Star to Princess Leia Organa, dying in the process. Han eventually finds himself on Tatooine, where he meets a stranger looking for a charter for Alderaan.
What I appreciate the most about Crispin’s Han Solo trilogy is its sense of pure fun: of all the many Star Wars novels out there, few capture the look and feel of the films as well as these. Crispin doesn’t just provide neat backstory, she gives us a true an origin story for Han Solo, revealing his deeper roots and psychological motivations, while simultaneously connecting to a number of other Star Wars novels, including Steve Perry’s Shadows of the Empire and Roger MacBride Allen’s Correlian trilogy (Ambush at Corellia, Assault at Selonia, and Showdown at Centerpoint.)
There’s no chance the upcoming Solo Star Wars Anthology film helmed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (who previously showcased the smuggler, sort of, in The Lego Movie) will adapt anything from these novels, of course—the reboot of the Star Wars Expanded Universe in order to make way for the new films has demonstrated Lucasfilm’s intentions clearly enough—but I hope the directing duo gives them a read. They’re a good entry point for the wider Star Wars universe, yes, but they’re also excellent, entertaining SF that I always love revisiting.