My favorite part is when Luke plugs in his lightsaber to charge it.

I still own my paperback copy of Splinter of the Mind's Eye !!! It was an awesome book !!!

cool

Making Vader a comic relief villain was a bold move.

Read it...but you lost me when Han Solo got a throwaway mention sentence near the end.

Hey Moid. I know the video problem hits hard, but I wanted to tell you one more time: the last few months before it happened, you got me into sci-fi again. Due to your great commentary on the books, humor, and eclectic lists, you’ve been my guide, mate. Wolfe, Tchaikovsky, Scalzi, Reynolds, Library Of America PKD volumes, all of it. Looking forward to a new Top Sci Fi list video someday. Go big, we can take it.... Just like your Mum. 😉

It would have been a great Star Wars movie!

Always wished Splinter was made then Empire, then Return! Read the novel when it first came out and many other SW novels!

Awesome video. Thanks. A quick question: You really worked with Peter Kenny for this video? I'm so jealous and really wish he had read Neuromancer! 😭

Splinter in the mind's eye is one of the greatest titles ever. Not sure it was right for star wars though....

Possibly your best work so far Moid. Congrats. The classical novels of the future are already being written, but by AI. In effect, the profession of novelist is no longer viable. It is a peculiar and ironic End of the World (of Sci-Fi).

Before Disney it was considered part of the Expanded Universe canon and had a graphic novel to smooth things out. I didn't particularly think it weird....so Luke was tempted to kiss her? That's all that happened. He didn't know she was his sister and didn't even give in to it. Their squabble in town post ROTJ could just as easily be a sibling fight. I also noticed the way he wrote Vader in the book was pretty consistent with what he wrote about Anakin in Approaching Storm

Great video, loved it.

If David Lynch would have directed a sequel, Luke and Lea would have been brother and sister, and lovers as well. Maybe get Cronenberg up in there to really spice things up. We could have had Star Wars meets Game of Thrones meets Lost Highway meets Naked Lunch. That is the Star Wars we should have had, the Star Wars we deserved. 🙂

Imagine an alternate Star-Wars timeline stemming from Splinter of the Minds Eye rather than The Empire Strikes Back. The idea holds a lot of potential.

I'm on Red Team.

'Splinter', 'Han Solo at Star's End', and the Marvel comic run were all we had to feed our Star Wars fix before 'Empire' came out. They were just as essential at keeping it alive as 'Heir to the Empire' was in the 90s.

Excellent video, very well researched and put together. You're very erudite and educated about this, you must have done a lot of reading and study to have produced this so well. Your wording and presentation is excellent.

Don't for the "full retard" moment when "FOX" sold the rights to it all before it came out...

Just wanted to comment quick. I think you are one of the highest production value channels in your bracket. I am a fiend for your content and you actually have introduced me to so many cool authors. Recently read The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard and it was such an interesting look into a future that never will be. Thanks for your content. Keep it up.

Thanks for a stimulating highlights package. Did you feel you were channeling the Fast Show at any point? I’ve come to appreciate there is stuff we know and stuff we don’t and an ever-increasing army of people who now add to the ever-increasing catalogue of output on all of that. With an ever-increasing feeling I ought to specialise in a sub-sub-sub-genre [e.g. under water, non-Earth, inter-galactic wars, or arachnid-based time loop comedies] but I can never focus. Did you count how many trouser/shirt changes you did? Ooo butterfly brain sucking parasites of Deneb 3.

I read “Splinter” before “Empire Strikes Back” movie came out. Was expecting the ESB movie to have the Splinter plot, but with just a different title. So ESB confused me the first time I saw it in theaters as a kid in 1980 because it didn’t follow the Splinter plot at all as I was expecting - this was obviously before the Internet and before details about movie production were readily available. There was also speculation among my friends that Splinter was the actual Chapter 5 (not filmed) and ESB was combined Chapters 6-7 of Lucas’ original 9 Chapter plan, with Revenge of the Jedi (renamed to Return of the Jedi) being the combined Chapters 8-9 conclusion. Then, Lucas added number 4-6 to his original trilogy to create room for the unnecessary sequels that Disney ultimately made.

Shelly is the only mother Mary who keeps whispering her words of wisdom

I read "Splinter" around 1979, but I literally didn't remember anything about it. Still, it was cool to get new Star Wars material, because we had no idea what was coming.

Yes I still have nightmares after reading it

Great vid as always! 🎉

Cool concept paintings, of course. Ralph McQuarrie was a genius.

Fascinating... ☝️😎

I enjoyed the book Splinter of the minds eye but its got nothing on Empire.

I remember buying Splinter in the Mind's Eye, as soon as it came out. Great book!😊😊😊

I read it, before The Empire Strikes Back came out and replayed it with my Star Wars action figures. In fact it fitted more with the canon of the first movie than The Empire Strikes Back. It was in TESB, when George Lucas started messing with his own canon and had retroactively to change the story of the original (Vader being Luke's father instead of his murderer, changing the relationship of Leia from Luke to Han). In this novel the Star Wars universe was still pretty straight with no contradictions.

Horrible. Could not complete the first one.😮

Not one mention of Frank Herbert.....😮

I appreciate that you go out and about for your video instead of just sitting in a room with what may or not be a real background.

great video as usual

There are a couple of sections in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels which pre-date Frankenstein by 92 years, and could be described as science fiction, and also influential on future works in the genre. The most obvious chapter describes the island of Laputa, which floats in the sky and whose population are devoted to science, most of which is pointless and futile. Asimov had a similar concept in Shah Guido G, and it's hard to read it without thinking of the Cloud City of Bespin. Then Gulliver encounters a society run by intelligent horses, called Houyhnhnms, where humans are non-verbal, primitive savages. Robert Heinlein used the exact same idea in Starman Jones and Pierre Boulle did something very similar in Planet of the Apes.

Why do you fell the need to wear a gun while you talk about Sci-Fi?

Lmao the book toss

You mean the one that wrapped up the series nicely, and that all the fans enjoyed? That one?

This is a great video. Great location shots and camera work. I'm sorry to read about you having to delete so many others, and struggle to understand how that happens. I hope you recover from whatever happened.

The ever-shifting gravel banks of the Danube inland delta and the vastness of the Northern woods certainly are areas where barriers between dimensions become rather thin, if not permeable. :-)

I was about 3 minutes into this before I realized I'd already watched it, but it's so good I watched it all over again. Now I'm going to Abe Books to order some books.

I read Star Wars and Splinter of the Mind's Eye back to back. I was not properly shielded from the Star Wars Holiday Special and was forced to grow up quick. By the time Empire came out, I had lost all interest in the saga after exposure to Life Day and was off to learn about cars and what women like to do in cars even though I would not be legally able to drive a car for a few more years.

ironic to have splinter take place on mimban without han or chewbacca and then introduce the planet into canon in the han solo origin movie with chewbacca

sorry for your difficulties, but great to see this documentary all in one piece... perhaps I would have shoe-horned in Frank Herbert's Dune as a high water mark for world building, which seems to be an important litmus test for highly regarded science fiction... anyway, Moid, you are a scholar and a gentleman... you should be knighted...

Amazing content as always

John Clute’s Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction is helpful, too...

Oh, man! Moid, this video is the Chef's Kiss!

If that kitbag is from the one story I read, it is evil....