So, yes, I watch too much Discovery. But theming a week of content on StarWars.com as "Millennium Falcon Week" was too good an opportunity to pass.

Tomorrow sees the release of the novel, Star Wars: Millennium Falcon, by James Luceno. I'm about 100 pages into it, and really enjoying it. After the doom and gloom of some recent novels, this feels like a spirited adventure, the kind that fits really well with some of my favorite novels -- namely, the Brian Daley ones. Given Luceno's frequent collaboration with the late great Daley, this is of course no accident.

I admit, I am very heavily biased when it comes to reacting to this novel, and here's why: a few months back, while the Legacy of the Force series was drawing to a close, and the editors at LucasBooks and Del Rey were gathering together ideas and launching points for potential new novels, I was fortunate enough to be asked to contribute. The question was simple: what novels and stories would you like to see?

That's not to say all the ideas that were tossed about were guaranteed to find a home. But among my sentence-long concepts was a Millennium Falcon novel. And, later, when comparing notes, it turned out Leland Chee had also suggested a Millennium Falcon novel, even though we had never talked about it. Great minds, after all.

I had a sentence that described what it might be, but I'll leave that out for now. The inspiration came from seeing the recently released Star Wars: Death Star on the shelves at a bookstore, and thinking to myself, "You know, if I had never read a Star Wars novel before, I would pick that up, because I know what the Death Star is." It just fit so naturally, that I got to thinking what else would trigger a similar response? What subject matter could instantly transport old school fans to their mop-haired '70s youth? The Falcon, of course.

So, in celebration of the Falcon's novel debut, we're doing a number of articles -- some new, some resurrected from older content -- to celebrate all things Falcon. Hope you enjoy it!

ph