It is always unfortunate when someone passes away young. It is with a heavy heart that I heard the news of Aaron Allston’s passing.
I have had the pleasure to meet or talk to a number of Star Wars authors, unfortunately Aaron Allston was someone I never had the pleasure to meet. From all accounts Aaron was a great person as well as being a great author.
It seems trivial now that he has passed away to focus on his work in Star Wars because to so many people he was so much more. My relationship with Allston occurred between the covers 13 Star Wars novels. The beautiful thing about creative folks like authors is that if they do their art well, they pour a little bit of themselves into each of their works. So I like to think after spending countless hours with Aaron’s prose as he took my imagination to fantastic heights and unfathomable depths that I got to know the author, at least a bit.
The thing that always struck me about Aaron was he did two extraordinary things in his Star Wars novels. He was for my money the author that captured the humor in Star Wars the best. Far to many people fail to include that in their interpretation of Lucas’ masterpiece. At the same time that he was able to capture the humor of Star Wars, he also wrote some of the most powerful and evocative death scenes.
Aaron’s characters were emotionally whole, they felt the full range of human (or alien) emotions and as a result the reader felt these emotions with the character.
I know that the Star Wars community lost a great writer today, but I am sure the world lost a better person.
Thank you Aaron, ”Yub, yub, Commander.”