Ten years ago to this day, author R. A. Salvatore killed Chewbacca. More specifically, his book Vector Prime was published, a Star Wars novel in which Chewbacca is consigned to an ignominious death on a planet succumbing to a killer poison bug swarm. (Lest you think this absurd, be warned that this is amongst the more plausible phenomena in Star Wars fiction.)
For most people, Chewbacca’s death is news even now, and that’s to be expected. There have been hundreds of Star Wars books published, and many people, even those who liked the original Star Wars trilogy, are eager to dismiss the books as the purview of the especially deranged and obsessive. I would place myself in this camp, except that when I learned that Chewie had been killed, it bothered me.
It was in fact 2003 when I found out, four years after the fact, and by then there wasn’t really anything to be said. I was late to the party. A ten year anniversary, though, seems like as good an excuse as any to devote about two thousand words too many to the subject of Chewbacca’s demise.
