Splinter of the Mind's Eye

© 1978 by Alan Dean Foster


What a phenomenon the very first Star Wars movie was when I was a kid. It revolutionized everything. The year before Logan’s Run had wowed my friends and I, and I vividly recall buying the source novel from the Bookmobile the summer of third grade. Then Star Wars happened and Logan’s Run became instantly obsolete.

I first saw it in the movies with my parents; I think I watched it again later that summer with my buddy. Somehow I had the novelization and carried that around with me wherever I went. One hot summer day my grandfather, who watched me and my brother during the day, had business at the local DMV. I brought the book with me, perched on a window ledge, and put away half the book while he went from line to line over the course of the afternoon. George Lucas’s name was splashed all over the cover, but I found out years later that it was ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster.

A year went by. Battlestar Galactica – the original series, that is – premiered on my birthday. Star Wars fever was still in the air. Christmas brought a rash of action figures and the toy spaceships. One weekend I spread newspapers on the dining room table, got out the airplane glue and paints, and built me a model of Darth Vader’s TIE fighter. And I remember seeing for the first time that semi-famous cover of –

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.

What is this? little eleven-year-old me wondered, ignorant of the ways of film marketing and sequel production. It wasn’t Star Wars, but there was Luke, Leia, and Vader there on the cover. I remember reading the synopsis on the back. I also remember holding it in my hands a long time. I wanted to buy it (or ask my parents to buy it for me) but something held me back. Something didn’t feel right.

Turns out I put it back on the shelf. I spotted the book off and on throughout the years, like an vague acquaintance, a friend of a friend whose name I couldn’t quite recall, in various used book stores and on various library shelves.

Thirty-five years would go by before I finally picked it up. By then I had seen all six Star Wars movies countless times. Bought some as video tapes and DVDs. I’d read eight, nine or ten Foster books, original stories and more movie tie-ins. (His Alien novelization was hugely influential to young Me.) And even though Star Wars doesn’t really excite me much nowadays (Phantom Menace began my disillusionment; Clone Wars cemented it), I figured Splinter of the Mind’s Eye would give me a couple of hours of reckless youthful reading enjoyment.

It did.

I read it in two long sittings this past weekend, and, I have to say, I liked it. Was it great literature? No. Was it great science fiction? No. But it did what I expect a good read to do: pull me in to the story and keep me turning the pages until it’s over.

[spoilers!]

The plot is pretty direct. Luke and Leia are piloting separate X-wings into the Circarpousian star system to convince the main planet’s government to join the rebellion. C3PO and R2D2 are with them. Suddenly, engine trouble forces Leia to crash on Mimban, a relatively unexplored and unsettled jungle world, and Luke follows. Their ships irreparable, the two set out to explore their surroundings and find a way off. Mimban, by the way, is a stand-in for what would later become Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back, and Foster had plenty of practice with such a world from writing this novel. Anyway, they stumble across a secret Imperial mining facility, infiltrate it, learn of a mythical gemstone with the power to vastly amp up one’s command of The Force, are discovered and imprisoned, escape, and race Lord Vader to the temple that houses said gem, the “splinter of the mind’s eye.” Events take them underground, which reminded me so much of this novel I was swamped with déjà vu. The story ends abruptly following the requisite and climactic light saber duel – only this time, Vader loses an arm!

Since this was written before The Empire Strikes Back, it was not canon that Luke and Leia were brother and sister. So there’s an awkward and uncomfortable sexual vibe every time Luke is described as stealing randy glances at the princess. Also, no Han Solo or Chewie. Not much grandiose special effects to envision, either; save for the first couple of pages (the crash landings on Mimban), all the action takes place either in the jungle, the mining town, or the temple. There are some monsters, and I envisioned a pre-asteroid monster type thing which later made an appearance in Empire. All-in-all, it’s a pared-down low-budget semi-sequel to the original movie.

Which is what it was supposed to be. Foster created the story to be filmable as a low-budget semi-sequel to Star Wars had the original movie bombed. Since it didn’t, Lucas’s plans for a more expansion, epic sequel were put into play. And Splinter of the Mind’s Eye became a footnote, albeit an important one: the first of a long, long list of “original” novels in the Star Wars universe.

I enjoyed it, for what it was worth. Grade: B+