The Maverick Moon

The Maverick Moon

Author: Eleanor Ehrhardt

Illustrator: Walter Wright

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: March 1979

Timeline Placement: c. 4 ABY?

 

In another time, in a faraway galaxy, there lived a young man named Luke Skywalker. He was a student at the New Academy for Space Pilots, and already he was one of the best young pilots in the solar system. Luke and his classmates, the Planetary Pioneers, were training for a special mission. They were going to fly young men and women—the smartest and strongest and most talented—to uninhabited planets. There they would help build new colonies, founded on peace, justice, and good will toward their fellow members of the galaxy.

 

I've known The Maverick Moon longer than I've known what Star Wars is. I can remember my mom bringing it home from the local library and reading it to me when I was a small child. It has Luke and Leia and the droids and the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi and that's it. There is no Empire or Rebel Alliance; there is the Planetary Pioneers. 

 

A small moon from a nearby system has been blasted out of its orbit and is on a collision course with the Planetary Pioneers' New Academy for Space Pilots. It is traveling at "well beyond light-speed" and will reach the planet in a matter of hours. Luke and Artoo must intercept it with their X-wing and blast the moon with Zukonium rays. "The Force is with you!" says the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

 

Ben had trained Luke to use a special power called the Force. Luke had almost forgotten that.

Luke fires the Zukonium rays and destroys the maverick moon, saving the New Academy for Space Pilots. He returns to the academy and is awarded with a medal of honor by his friend, Princess Leia. "I'm glad that you and the Planetary Pioneers will be able to continue your work," says Leia. "But I'm even happier that you are alive and safe."

And that's the end.

For some reason, The Maverick Moon has baffled Expanded Universe chronologists for decades. Even Daniel Wallace and Jason Fry, two of the EU's top continuity gurus, wrote about their difficulty trying to make it fit the timeline. When the book is mentioned at all in fan discussions, it's usually about how weird and out-of-place it is. 

I don't see what all the fuss is about, really. There are almost 40 years worth of Expanded Universe stories set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Luke, Han, and Leia have had more adventures during those three years (especially the first year (especially the first six months)) than is realistically or believably possible: the original Marvel comics, the UK Marvel comics, the 3D Blackthorne comics, the Russ Manning newspaper strips and the Archie Goodwin newspaper strips, Dark Horse's Star Wars comic, the Empire and the Rebellion comics, the Star Wars Kids comics, the Holiday Special, the Scoundrel's Luck and Jedi's Honor RPGs, Vader's Quest, Galaxy of Fear, Rebel Force, Science Adventures, Star Wars Missions, not to mention at least seven full-length novels, one of which takes place entirely between two panels of a single issue of Marvel Star Wars. But Spider-Man has canonically had 60 years worth of adventures in no more than a quarter of that time. The Heroes of Yavin just had a really busy couple of years, what's a quick stop at the New Academy for Space Pilots? Just because the Galactic Civil War isn't mentioned, doesn't mean it isn't still going on.

But for whatever reason, the events of The Maverick Moon were never officially contextualized in the broader EU canon. Unofficially, however, the book was finally dated to shortly after the Battle of Endor in Supernatural Encounters, a canceled novella written for StarWars.com's Hyperspace fan club:

 

"What you missed is that Luke, Han, and Leia got roped into doing an orthodontic public service announcement in which they had to 'fight' the Tooth Demons! This was around the time Luke joined the New Academy for Space Pilots on Valahari."
 

"I dread to ask, but it's always puzzled me that the galaxy's only known Jedi would join the Planetary Pioneers of all things?"

"Luke had always wanted to join the Imperial Academy, not realizing what that entailed. The Planetary Pioneers represented the kinder equivalent to that. Funded by benefactors in the Alliance of Free Planets, they built colonies, hospitals, and schools for refugees and any who wanted to flee Imperial Space. Luke was asked to become an honorary member, which was a great promotional tool for them—particularly when his first mission resulted in him saving the academy from a rogue moon."

"Tooth Demons and Planetary Pioneers! We should have studied them instead of ancient cults and monsters."

"It all leads to the same thing."
 

"The punch line?"

"That moon didn't just coincidentally blast out of orbit on a collision course with the academy on the very same day Luke showed up."

Cuenyne pondered this. "I have no doubt there's merit to that, but I recommend you don't start a new series of controversies until you've concluded the current one."

It should be noted that this passage appears only in the extended version of the story that was unofficially released on the author's Web site. The version that would have appeared on Hyperspace doesn't reference The Maverick Moon, so the post-Endor date cannot be considered confirmed canon. It also doesn't make much sense to me, as the book shows Luke and Leia still wearing their ANH-era outfits, and Luke is such a neophyte in the ways of the Force that he's almost forgotten the training he got from Obi-Wan. It feels like it would fit much better one or two years after the Battle of Yavin, but since 4 ABY is the closest thing we have to any kind of official date, we'll leave it there for now.

As for the book itself rather than the needlessly complex discussions around it, it's completely charming and fun. Reading it as an adult, what I especially like about it is how it keeps the trappings of the original Star Wars, the starfighters and robots and Luke the Farmboy and Leia the Princess, but reuses them in a setting that might as well be a different universe. The pre-Empire Strikes Back EU stories, the Marvel comics and Eleanor Ehrhardt picture books and Splinter of the Mind's Eye (the classic Alan Dean Foster novel where Luke slaps Leia across the face and fantasizes about making out with her while she's unconscious), are uniquely fun because they're time capsules from an era when Star Wars hadn't yet become STAR WARS™. When it was still just the story of a boy, a girl, a universe, and a maverick moon.

And that's all there is—there isn't any more.

Oh.