After E7, a new Incredible Cross Sections book?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Oh, hang on. No rumours, nothing yet. Just wondering.

[Mike DiCenso]

According to DK's U.S. website there is one. Best of all, no Curtis Saxton authorship, and no over-inflated power generation and weapons numbers.

Interestingly enough, DK has also published a Visual Dictionary for Star Trek!
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Howdy!
That's good. Plus with the new canon policy in place, if I get it right, whatever gets printed in that book will be of significant value.
I see that Kemp Remillard does the illustrations and at first glance there seems to be a heavy use of CGI.

As for Jason Fry, I see thta he's been writing SW stuff a lot, but that's not giving much information about how much he sticks to real science.
He's done a lot of late but pre-Disney EU. I feel many typical EU concepts will simply be pulled to the new EU there. I wonder what they'll say about the proton torps and all that.

[Moff Tarquin]

What is the new canon policy?

[Khas]

What is the new canon policy?

Basically, the new canon policy is that the movies, TCW, Rebels, and all the books released after Disney trashed the Old EU are canon (in other words, everything from "A New Dawn" onward). Every book released before "A New Dawn" is non-canon.

Oh, and tell the Empress of Blood she needs to stop eating so much. The laws of physics (even when accounting for magic) are already suffering from PTSD just from watching her fly. :P

[Moff Tarquin]

What is the new canon policy?

Basically, the new canon policy is that the movies, TCW, Rebels, and all the books released after Disney trashed the Old EU are canon (in other words, everything from "A New Dawn" onward). Every book released before "A New Dawn" is non-canon.

Huh. Anything debate-relevant from the Disney books so far?

Oh, and tell the Empress of Blood she needs to stop eating so much. The laws of physics (even when accounting for magic) are already suffering from PTSD just from watching her fly. :P

She doesn't "fly." As a matter of fact, that's precisely the problem: she just sort of rolls around through the air with no concern for issues of gravity or aerodynamics. As for getting her to reduce her caloric intake, I'm afraid that she has her heart set on becoming one of those big, powerful red dragons of old. And I simply couldn't stand to crush her dreams in such a manner, and even if I could, trying to control her like that could arouse her suspicions. She might wonder what else I was trying to control, and then she'd start poking around, and that just wouldn't do at all. No, no, best she keep her dreams and remain in the dark.

[Khas]

What is the new canon policy?

Basically, the new canon policy is that the movies, TCW, Rebels, and all the books released after Disney trashed the Old EU are canon (in other words, everything from "A New Dawn" onward). Every book released before "A New Dawn" is non-canon.

Huh. Anything debate-relevant from the Disney books so far?

Well, "A New Dawn" mentions that completely destroying a moon was thought to be impossible, and was only being considered due to the moon's unique crystalline structure, and even then, they had to use high-yield explosives placed at specific underground points in order to do that.

Which really hammers home how incredible the Death Star was in-universe. The ability to destroy a planet was something no one had thought possible before.

[Mr. Oragahn]

One has to think for a moment about the implications, in SW, to be living in a galaxy where the blueprints for such monstrosities have existed more than twice and leaked between the Empire and the Rebellion. Leaving aside the old EU, there still are major causes for concern, even if the greatest danger would "only" be a watered down version of a superlaser.
The level of galactic paranoïa must have been huge. At least, somehow, when the Empire had them, it was easy to know who would use it and who not to cross. As for the Rebels, they were trying to stop those things.

[Mike DiCenso]

While going through a bookstore just last week, I found a copy of the TFA ICS, and I can happily report that none of the vehicle entries have even the slightest bit of Saxton-like numbers, just general stats, such as length, height, width, crew size, manufacturer, etc. A refreshing return back to the ANH and early SW ICS books.
-Mike

[Pheonix]

According to DK's U.S. website there is one. Best of all, no Curtis Saxton authorship, and no over-inflated power generation and weapons numbers.

No numbers, but I'm not sure what you make of "inflation". One passage describes turbolasers powerful enough to crack planetary cores. These are the "largest" turbolasers, so perhaps reference to a components of a superlaser. In EU terms, this is pretty high end even for something like the Eclipse. It also describes "hypermatter annihlation cores" powering larger star ships. These power cores are supported by fusion reactors and other power sources.

I haven't brought the book, but was sent those snippets, so maybe it is conservative elsewhere, but Wookiepedia also EP7ICS when it describes a First Order star destroyer as having enough firepower to reduce a planetary surface molten.

[Mike DiCenso]

While it's possible I missed something when looking through it at the bookstore, but I don't recall anything in the Finalizer's entry about such firepower. But let's remember where Starkiller base, the most powerful weapon ever seen in SW gets its power by stealing energy from stars, not self-generated power. So that's a hard canon limit right there.
-Mike

[Khas]

We also know (from StarWars.com), that the Finalizer and other First Order Star Destroyers use kyber crystals to make their turbolasers more powerful than Imperial turbolasers. Given that kyber crystals are attuned to the Force, it's possible that these high-end turbolasers use the Force to become such ridiculously powerful. Not to mention that SW.com also more or less says that kyber crystals were used in the construction of the Death Star's superlaser.

[Moff Tarquin]

As to reactor technology, we know for a fact from the ROTS novelization that "fusion furnaces" powered "everything from starships to Podracers" as of the Clone Wars era. If hypermatter reactors are powering large starships as of the First Order's ascendancy, then it stands to reason that the first hypermatter reactors would have been built after the Clone Wars, but before the First Order launched its great attack on the New Republic.

Here's a hypothesis: The huge reactors powering the Death Stars were the first hypermatter reactors, and it took more than thirty years to miniaturize the technology to the point where it could be mounted in a starship.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually, assuming any of that was true, it would go towards explaining the Finalizer's larger size (2x that of the Imperial-class). However, hypermatter reactor or not, the need to steal a star's energy still puts a huge upper limit on SW reactor power.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

While going through a bookstore just last week, I found a copy of the TFA ICS, and I can happily report that none of the vehicle entries have even the slightest bit of Saxton-like numbers, just general stats, such as length, height, width, crew size, manufacturer, etc. A refreshing return back to the ANH and early SW ICS books.
-Mike

The ROTS ICS had quite a collection of non-numbered yet easy to interpret sentences that left no doubt as to what was being suggested there.