Star Wars is one of
the most important cultural phenomena of the Western
world. The tale of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and the
fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker has become modern
myth, an epic tragedy of the corruption of a young man in
love into darkness, the rise of evil, and the power of good
triumphing in the end.
But it didn’t start out that way.
In this thorough account of one of cinema’s most lasting
works, Michael Kaminski presents the true history of how Star Wars was written,
from its beginnings as a science fiction fairy tale to its
development over three decades into the epic we now know,
chronicling the methods, techniques, thought processes, and
struggles of its creator. For this unauthorized
account, he has pored through over four hundred sources,
from interviews to original scripts, to track how the most
powerful modern epic in the world was created, expanded, and
finalized into the tale an entire generation has grown up
with.