"Crush The Rebel Scum" Topic

All the Star Wars novels seem to be from the softie, misguided rebel scum point of view.

Can anyone recommend any novels from the Imperial viewpoint? Or is the general public so desperate for cutsie wutsie feel-good stories that none have made it to print?

Thanks

Timothy Zahn did a book with Mara Jade and the 501st I think. It was from their point of view.

There is also several books about the Sith. I forget their names. It's where the Rule of Two comes from. Darth Bane?

There is also a book about civilians on the Death Star and is a parallel story to the attack on Yavin. Not really bad guys but they work for the Imps and have a hand in the destruction of the station. It also explains the reason for the vent. Of course the vent being in the plans is illogical because no one updates plans for stuff like that :) Maybe the wookie slaves did it.

While it's not exactly from the 'Imperial' POV, I highly recommend Karen Traviss' 'Republic Commando' and 'Imperial Commando' novels. Yes, they were originally game tie-in novels, but they transcended that rather quickly. They look unflinchingly at the disturbing background of the Clone Wars era, and the Jedi are NOT unalloyed good guys.

So, not 'Imperial', but a soldier's POV.

The Republic Commando series is my favourite Star Wars series. Such a pity Traviss had a falling out with Lucas Arts due to the changes made in the Clone Wars show and discontinued the Imperial Commando series after one novel.

Even in the books where our heroes (though perhaps not your heroes, eh?) win, Zahn does an unusually good job at showing things from the other perspective – he really convinces you that perfectly ordinary people might genuinely prefer the Empire to the Rebellion/New Republic.

Zahn is great for portraying Imperials with strong and genuine motivation for bringing law and order to the Galaxy!

Also of note in 2 of his books, Allegiance and Choices Of One, are a band of Storm Trooper deserters known as the Hand Of Judgement. These idealists conduct vigilante operations to bring Imperial justice where the Imperial bureaucracy is failing to do so. They are not rebels, they remain true to the ideals of the Empire!

'StarWars' is about goodies vs baddies. (or it was, before Lucas turned it into an emo-kid political soap-opera), not 'moral dillemas' or real-world comparisons/analysis.

I like the idea that the movies are 'rebel propoganda movies' however, and from this perspective, maybe the Imperials ARE the good guys? I tend to favour the rebels, but the whole cutesy thing has certainly hurt their credibility with audience members over the age of 12…

the cutesy stuff wasn't the rebels. The prequel stuff was more akin to the current state of the US. Political bickering over stupid stuff and a general state of decay that leads to cracks in what once was a very solid and unified government.

Think of it like the Roman republic during Caesar early life. The corruption and sheer size of the republic was it's own downfall. This opens the door for a dynamic war hero (enter Palpy) to step in and fix the problem.

Fast forward 40 years in a world where oppression and heavy taxes/regulation are causing people in the outer rim to get shafted and loss their freedom. This is the birth of the Rebellion. We will see this in the new TV show. There will be people who believe in the system like Tarkin but your average stormtrooper is just like a german solider in WWII. I doubt many of them knew that Hitler was burning Jews by the train load or any of the other oppressive things that happened behind closed doors. They were fired up and fighting to bring glory to German who got shafted in WWI.

All that to say… The cutesy crap in the prequels has nothing to do with the rebels. The only connection is Obi-Wan and he is by far the only reason the entire situation wasn't worse. He also could have paddled Ani a bit more… Luke and Leia are integral parts but the only cutesy part that involved them was the weird mid-wife robot thing.

I still have not figured out how an entire universe can decide to follow whoever is in charge on one big city planet. It's like the US being run by the mayor of New York. If someone shoots him and replaces him then everyone else just kinda goes along with it.

All good points, CorSecEng. Very much how I always figured it. The prequel explanation of events seems to fast and tidy to me… missed opportunity here, IMHO, but it could still easily get 'too political' and veer away from the pulp-adventure spirit that defined 'StarWars' (note past tense) and made it a hit (a big short-coming of the prequelverse according to most critics).

More on topic, I think one reason we don't see the Imperials as protagonists more (in any setting) is that this really puts a damper on the situational tension (since the conflict is supposed to be highly asymmetrical, the 'rebels' do not pose a constant existential threat to our imperial heroes… fly swatting makes a poor drama).

I was watching Breaking Bad and almost cried when I realized that Walt's journey was exactly how Ani should have fallen to the dark side. Not the whiney rage quit that we saw. More of a steady decline where the war forced him to make harder and harder decisions as he slowly slips into darkness. You could even use the same tag line. "I'm in the empire building business" :)

The idea of a political leader running both sides of a war involving robots and clones is pure genius. Of course we didn't get terminators facing off against elite clones in a battle royal where the losses don't matter and it's all about money and property instead of lives lost. What we got was a bunch of "Roger Roger" and guys in white uniforms charging into combat with little or no mechanized support.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone. I'll check out some of your recommendations.

I don't agree with the suggestion that only David vs Goliath makes for a good storyline. I think it is lazy and says more about the wider public than about what makes a good story.

The parallel with the Roman Republic is obvious, but fiction books from the Roman point of view are two are penny despite the overwhelming military and economic advantage they had over the "barbarians".

I've always found the Imperial characters far more interesting in the original trilogy and the rebel ones very anodyne. I'm sure I'm not the only one (at least I hope not). Anyway your Jedi mind tricks won't work on me !

There were short not really even novellas that came with the Larry Holland/X-wing game and Tie Fighter. The X-Wing one was called "The Farlander papers" and it was about a Rebel who is falling from the Cutesy path as the war drags on.

The Tie Fighter game story was called "The Stele chronicles" and told the story of a promising up and coming Imperial ace caught up in the Byzantine power struggles with in the Imperial war machine.

I think they might have been reprinted in a paperpack anthology at some point but I really don't remember. Timothy Zahn has some good moments but as others have said Karen Traviss books were the best to come out of the Star Wars publishers to date.