Starfleet Jedi

Aside of any (established and official) canon policy, what has more weight between the stories and the guides?

Fundamentally, most fictional universes exist because of their stories.
At least, those which were started by stories, not started by game books, game mechanics (Warhammed 40000 I think, Halo, Starcraft, etc.).

The guides are only extras added there to develop stuff, enhance the background, and make already existing things a bit clearer.

So when there is a contradiction between a guide, a technical book or so, and the stories, wouldn't the stories take precedence a still be rated higher in canon?

I'd say that depends whether the guide or technical manual was written with an in-universe perspective.

If a choice has to be made, I'd usually go with the stories being primary.

Cpl Kendall wrote:I'd say that depends whether the guide or technical manual was written with an in-universe perspective.

That's not that easy. Most guides mix both character dialogue, small stories and just pure technical stuff.

But gloablly, a guide is there to refine an universe.
In a case of contradiction, I don't see why I'd favour a guide against a story from a book. Especially if the guide was written after.

Well, a guide written with an in-universe perspective can much more easily be retconned as propaganda, misinformation, or using units defined differently than a guide written with an out-of-universe perspective.

However, that's really not the point, IMO - I would say there's really no real reason to favor guides over stories or vice versa outside of reasons particular to the guides, stories, or universe in question.

I think you need to look at the medium for which the universe is created. You also need to take authorship into consideration. Star Trek and Star Wars are film and television franchises, primarily. Their primary creators are involved in those areas, therefore you've got to take the books and guides with a grain of salt. I mean, if the creator of a series writes a guide and basically says, "This is all the stuff you don't see, it's my complete vision," then the inconsistencies become a problem, but I just don't see how some other dude writing a guide can override the actual creator of the universe just because the guide is licensed material. Maybe it's just the fact that I am a writer, but I don't really care what the folks in licensing say about the universe, I look to the creator if he or she has anything to say on the matter. One of those is there to craft the universe and the other is there to squeeze more money out of it.

These universes come in all varieties. Take White-Wolf's World of Darkness tabletop RPGs. The highest canon there is unquestionably the guides. I know that there are (I've never read them but I'm going to go ahead and say crappy) books set in that universe, and there is also the lowest but most important canon, the individual games which start with the world of the guides and go from there as the players tell their own stories.

I guess what I'm saying is that it has to be a case-by-case sort of thing. What makes Star Wars so sticky is that it has spread into a lot of different areas and a lot of people have added to the whole Star Wars experience. Although the extra Star Wars stuff I actually like is limited to Knights of the Old Republic and Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars cartoon, I'm pretty sure you've got overlapping storylines and contradictory information presented in all these extra stories, and not everyone has been exposed to all of it or even the same installments.

It's cool that Star Wars branches out in this way, and some really good things have been created as a result, but as far as canon goes, I view them all as possible timelines and just enjoy them for their own sake.