This book, the "Illustrated Star Wars Universe", is one of the most beautiful books I have ever had the pleasure to read. It is full of pictures of different aspects of several of the important worlds in the Star Wars universe - such as Hoth, Coruscant, Tatooine, Alderaan, Endor - that, when complemented by the text, make this an easily readable and pleasant book.

The text that accompanies the artwork is top-notch in most cases. Although Kevin J.Anderson's work is considered to be of mixed quality by many Star Wars fans, in this book he does an excellent job of writing each planet's account "in-universe", from the perspective of different indviduals (such as a former poet and political activist from Alderaan, a rebel engineer on Hoth, and so forth).

The only weakness in this book is the description of Alderaan. It is described as a world largely composed of flowing grasslands with small seas, contradicting the blue image seen in the movies. This has a relatively harmless origin, dating back to a picture of Yavin 4 misplaced as a photo of Alderaan, and expanded upon in this text.

Regardless of the above, this is an excellent purchase choice for anyone interested in the Star Wars universe, or even just in some beautiful Star Wars artwork.

Not a reference book so much as an experiment in short fiction. Reams of Ralph McQuarrie concept art are recontextualized to serve as the springboard for fictive writings in a variety of genres: the Dagobah chapter is the diary of a scientist on a doomed research expedition to that treacherously damp planet, the delightfully satirical Coruscant chapter reads like a travel brochure offering biased information with a definite pro-Imperial slant for offworld tourists, and so on.

In 1995, when this book was released, there were no new Star Wars movies on the horizon, and so Lucasfilm had to get crafty if they wanted to push out a little profit. These McQuarrie paintings were not new by any means (most of them must have been around twenty years old) but I don't chalk up their reproduction in this book as crass commercialism since the book is of such a good, large-format quality, and since they share the page with inventive new writing of a legitimately good quality.

If you must own a Star Wars book, this is a great one.

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(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

The Illustrated Star Wars Universe is written like a travel journal, with beautiful concept paintings from Ralph McQuarrie.

Eight planets are featured, namely Tatooine, Coruscant, Dagobah, Hoth, Endor, Bespin, Yavin and Alderaan.

Each journal entry is written from the perspective of a Star Wars character. It's a nice touch providing that on-the-ground feeling. They talk about the inhabitant's culture, way of life, traditions, planet's climate and creatures. There are interesting stories sometimes, for example in the paragraph below, which is supposedly written by Senior Anthropologist Hoole:

Tuskens make no distinction between males and females, and only the clan elders keep records of the sexes, so that they can arrange marriages. (As one can imagine, some rather embarrassing mistakes have been made, unfortunately.)

Much of the art work has appeared on other Star Wars books, notably the "art of" series. So there's really nothing much new here except for the writeup.

This book is for the must-know-it-all Star Wars fan, or as the book says, the true collector.

2nd time reading this, it's a little sloppy but there is so much Ralph McQuarie illustrations, it's ridiculous.For the die hard's.

The blurb nailed it; this is a must have for Star Wars fans.

I never grew up with any less than 6 Star Wars movies so reading this book as a child, I didn’t realize it was written in the interim between the trilogies. This book of Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art for the original trilogy was actually published in 1995, before Phantom Menace— significance I failed to grasp as a kid. This type of book could easily just be a vessel for McQuarrie’s gorgeous concept art, but instead it’s paired with gorgeous prose from Kevin J. Anderson, which is why this book existed so vividly in my memories all these years, and is what compelled me to order another copy.

This book covers the 6 locales visited in the original trilogy: Tatooine, Dagobah, Hoth, The Forest Moon of Endor, The Cloud City over Bespin, and Yavin 4. Additionally, it features Alderaan, which was not shown except for its destruction from afar, and Coruscant, which was probably concept art for The Phantom Menace! Every section is written as an in-universe travelogue. Tatooine is by a shapeshifting anthropologist, Coruscant by the Emperor’s propagandist. Anderson takes measures to ensure copious amounts of verisimilitude, but this sometimes got annoying. For example, the Endor section was “by” an Imperial scout with a lot of disdain for Ewoks and the RotJ foreshadowing was a little too on-the-nose.

But despite a few too many references to the movies, you don’t have to watch them to “get it”. If from previous reviews you think I hate worldbuilding, this is worldbuilding done right, different than Disney Wars because not everything is a reference to something else. This book stands on its own as an imaginative description of alien ecologies and cultures, somewhat like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It’s good worldbuilding because it’s slice of life in the strictest sense, considering matters of lesser consequence like cuisine, art and culture. There is no cohesive story, but one of my favorite anecdotes is a poetic fable in the Hoth section about two ore-mining robots dismantling each other for their ores.

Since they basically cover all the planets that are visited in the old trilogy, there’s a necessary element of familiarity, because those movies were filmed in the pre-CGI era so Lucas et al. obviously had to seek out real-life (but still very exotic!) locations to film at. The culture parts are stronger than the speculative biology which isn’t quite as believable, so the best sections were the more populated planets: Tatooine, Coruscant, Bespin, and Alderaan.

My most vivid memories of this book from childhood were the Alderaan section, which makes it sound like an eco-friendly artist commune like Santa Fe, NM. For some reason, the idea of floating aimless hotels has stuck with me over the years. Small but believable details of little consequence like this are what makes this book.

A welcome surprise 4.5 Stars

Initially I took this for just another Star Wars artbook, but I was happily surprised by this Illustrated guide. Written as an 'In Universe' guidebook it gives various accounts of explorers, chroniclers, anthropologist and diplomats as they give their account of several well-known Star Wars planets. Among them were Tatooine, Coruscant, Dagobah, Hoth, Endor, Bespin, Yavin and Alderaan. Additionally fans of the expanded universe will notice a few hints to the larger Star Wars universe.

The real kicker however is the accompanying artwork of Artist Ralph McQuarrie, made famous by his contributions on the design and visual style of the Original three Star Wars movies. His work is just absolutely gorgeous and well depicted in multiple large scale, full colour pictures.

Summarized: Ralph McQuarrie with stunning art and cool Star Wars detail not easily found anywhere else.

This book is great.

Good book!

awesome concept art by Ralph McQuarrie