Del Rey Releasing ‘Star Wars’ Short Story Collection: ’40 Stories for 40 Years’

brianonthescreen
Movies Star Wars
Movies Star Wars

Del Rey and Disney/Lucasfilm have just announced a very special book project to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: A New Hope. The book event was teased heavily yesterday on social media using the hashtag #OperationBlueMilk — see our original post below for more on that. So, what is it? It’s a special anthology collection of short stories — “40 stories celebrating 40 years of Star Wars” — titled From a Certain Point of View.

Coming October 2017, From a Certain Point of View will bring together more than 40 authors for 40 stories. Each story is written from the perspective of background characters in A New Hope — “from X-wing pilots who helped Luke destroy the Death Star to the stormtroopers who never quite could find the droids they were looking for,” they say.

Here’s the full list of Star Wars authors writing for the book:

  • Ben Acker & Ben Blacker
  • Renee Ahdieh
  • Tom Angleberger
  • Meg Cabot
  • Rae Carson
  • Adam Christopher
  • Zoraida Cordova
  • Delilah S. Dawson
  • Paul Dini
  • Alexander Freed
  • Jason Fry
  • Christie Golden
  • EK Johnston & Ashley Eckstein
  • Paul Kemp
  • Mur Lafferty
  • Ken Liu
  • Griffin McElroy
  • John Jackson Miller
  • Nnedi Okorafor
  • Daniel José Older
  • Mallory Ortberg
  • Madeleine Roux
  • Gary D. Schmidt
  • Cavan Scott
  • Sabaa Tahir
  • Glen Weldon
  • Chuck Wendig
  • Gary Whitta

 

Originally Published 4/6/2017:

Del Rey, the licensed publisher of Star Wars books for Disney/Lucasfilm, are teasing the imminent announcement of a new Star Wars project, codenamed “Operation Blue Milk.”

It looks like we’ll learn exactly what the new book is tomorrow in an official announcement. In the meantime, we’re left to do detective work and speculate.

Based on the clues, it looks like Operation Blue Milk is a collaboration with numerous authors involved. That leads us to believe that it’s an anthology of some kind.

Remember the popular “Tales” series, now part of non-canon Star Wars Legends lore? Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales from Jabba’s Palace, etc.? Each book was a collection of short stories by different authors about minor characters glimpsed in whatever thing the collection was focused on. They were fun windows into the Star Wars universe, and we haven’t seen anything like them in the new canon.

Could this be a “Tales”-like collection of stories set around a key set piece in The Force Awakens? “Tales from Maz Kanata’s Castle,” or something like that? We’d support it! Or could it be something more ambitious be in the works?

Here’s what we know about the authors involved:

And there are even more authors coming out of the woodwork as we write this. Here’s an incomplete list of writers who’ve said they’re involved in Operation Blue Milk so far:

Follow the hashtag on Twitter and other social media platforms to see more chatter.

Given the number of authors who are seemingly involved in Operation Blue Milk, could we be looking at something particularly ambitious?

It’s important to note that 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: A New Hope. Could a “40 stories for 40 years” type of project be in the offing? The prospect’s pretty exciting.

We’ll know what it’s all about very soon, and so check back tomorrow to find out the scoop on Del Rey’s official announcement.

brianonthescreen
Hi! I'm the Director of Community Partnerships at Fandom. My team collaborates with gaming and entertainment partners to make Fandom a fun and exciting place for editors and other site users.