Death Star (Star Wars)
Action sf (and Star Wars) veterans join forces to tell the story of the first Death Star from the point of view of its imperial builders. We see Grand Moff Tarkin, when he's not making love to Admiral Dalaa, sweating blood to assemble the materials and manpower necessary for the empire's superweapon. We see a seasoned gunnery officer slightly daunted by the power of the weapon he controls and eventually horrified by the results of its first full-power test on Alderaan. We see a firm friendship emerging between a civilian cantina bouncer and a martial-arts adept who probably is Force sensitive. We see a young architect imprisoned for her political dissidence arguing about the exhaust port that provided the fatal weakness of the Death Star against the Alliance attack. A fighter pilot defends the imperial construction site and ends up piloting a getaway ship for likeminded fellows for whom the empire has finally gone over the line. And Darth Vader kibitzes, believing his study of the Force outweighs any number of Death Stars in potential value. Dedicated SW readers, on the other hand, won't kibitz much, if at all, but revel in this splendid job of jacking up the tip of George Lucas' universe and shoving a well-wrought iceberg under it. Green, Roland