Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina

Hey everybody,
2024 is my blog’s tenth anniversary year, and as a year-long celebration of this fact, I’m hoping to feature a lot of Star Wars, one of my all-time loves. As part of this, I’m dipping back into some of the classics of the Bantam era, starting with this little gem! Back in the mid-90s, there were a few short story collections put out, edited by Kevin J Anderson, with themes around the crowd-scenes of the original trilogy, the Mos Eisley Cantina, Jabba’s Palace, and later the Bounty Hunters. Later anthologies were a little more loosely themed, with Tales from the Empire and Tales from the New Republic collecting stories that are a little more generic.

That said, there are some great stories in these books, with most of the Bantam-era authors contributing stories for the books. In terms of the Mos Eisley Cantina, pretty much every creature who pops up in the sequence gets a story here, from the guy smoking a pipe near the entrance, the bartender, the band, and more. Not all of them appear, of course – curiously, there’s no story for Hem Dazon, the Arcona who pops up when the music first starts to play.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mark (@marrrkusss)

As with pretty much any anthology, this is very much a mixed bag. It’s also very 90s, and you can almost say it showcases the best but also the worst of the Bantam era. I think a great example of this is the Greedo short story, where the Rodian bounty hunter is given a backstory that seems totally at odds with the few moments for which he’s on the screen. It’s the longest story in the book, written by Tom Veitch (the man behind Dark Empire), and tells of a peace-loving group of Rodian refugees who are pursued by a rival clan to Nar Shaddaa, where Greedo forms a rivalry with Han Solo and so everything is set up. The universe feels tiny, where everybody knows everybody else, and it always makes me a bit bemused.

Tim Zahn’s “Tonnika Sisters” story allows him to write about Shada D’Ukal, the Mistryl shadow guard who first appeared on bodyguard duty in his original Thrawn trilogy. It’s an entertaining story that manages to give some backstory to the second Death Star, as well as give us more lore for his other novels. 

There are some nice links between the stories, particularly those of Muftak and Momaw Nadon, the Talz and the Ithorian. Of course, all of the stories hit the same beats, whether it’s Luke and the droids, Ben cutting off Ponda Baba’s arm, Han shooting Greedo… you know they’re going to touch on at least one of these instances, and they do start to get a bit repetitive after a while!

All in all, it’s a great book. I definitely prefer Tales from Jabba’s Palace, because I feel like the integration of an overall story is much better, but it’s still a book that has some very interesting stories that added a lot to the lore of Star Wars in the mid-90s. It’s not perfect of course, but it’s part of the charm, I guess!