What is the first Star Wars book ever written?

Question

I'm not curious about the timeline within the stories. I'm curious what book was written first, and by whom. And was it written before the movie?

Answer 1

The first book actually written and published is the novelization of the original Star Wars movie A New Hope (Episode IV) in 1976. The first original novel written and published was Splinter of the Mind's Eye in 1978 by Alan Dean Foster, who also contributed to the earlier novelization. Foster is also noted as a major contributor to early book in the Star Trek universe as well as other sci-fi in the 60's and 70's.

Splinter was the first original novel and was not followed up with new material (aside from movie tie-ins) until The Han Solo Adventures in 1992, which helped kick off the major production of new novels.

Below is a link to books that have been published in the Star Wars EU in their order of publication. There are a LOT of books, so I don't know exactly how comprehensive the list, but this should give you the information you wanted.

Answer 2

"swdarklighter" is right about the first book although the title was originally "Star Wars:  From The Adventures Of Luke Skywalker" It was written by Alan Dean Foster and it is what became ep IV:  A New Hope although reading it would be a waste of time as much of the stuff in it has changed radically with the addition of the prequels to the story line.  She's also right about "Splinter Of The Mind's Eye", also by Alan Dean Foster.  It was published in 1978 and, IMHO, was a great book.  It marks the first time that Luke and Vader went to blades against each other.  Yeah, the duel in ep V was the second duel between Luke and Vader.  Vader even duels his daughter in this book ... Leia.  At the time Leia wasn't Luke's sister and Darth Vader was NOT Anakin Skywalker their father.  It is mind boggling to find that the story Lucas originally started out with is lightyears different than the story we ended up with in the six movies.

After that she kind of "skipped" a few books ... some of them MAJOR events actually.  In 1983 there were 3 "The Han Solo Adventures" books put out and 3 "The Lando Calrissian" books put out.  The titles:  Han Solo adventures:  "Han Solo At Star's End"; "Han Solo's Revenge"; "Han Solo And The Lost Legacy";  these were written by Brian Daley.  Lando Calrissian adventures:  "LC and the Mindharp Of Sharu"; "LC and the Flamewind of Oseon"; "LC and the Starcave of ThonBoka";  these were written by L. Neil Smith.  These books were major flops so that may be why she omitted them.  However, with the re-awakening of the Star Wars story these books have enjoyed a come back of sorts.  They are pretty good books but have nothing to do with the movies and serve only to add background to both the characters.

The one that I can't believe she missed is the Thrawn Trilogy as it was released in 1991.  It was written by Timothy Zahn and the titles were:  "Heir To The Empire", "Dark Force Rising", "The Last Command".  These three books are pretty much the main reason why Star Wars was reborn to a new generation of fans.  They were great books and were all best sellers as SW fans ate them up as fast as they came out because they told a great story.

There was another Han Solo trilogy but it was released in 1997 and was written by AC Crispin.  Again, great books but they span the time period of the other Han Solo trilogy and it's gets pretty confusing to see where they go back and forth between the two sets but in the end it does work.

Sorry about the long rambling answer ... when I get going it's hard to stop sometimes ... lol ...

May The Force Be With You ...