History Literature / DeathStar

* CurbStompBattle: The Rebels send five hundred X-Wings after the Death Star before it's fully operational. This does not end well, with Graneet blowing away the carrier with the superlaser and the flight controllers then swarming them with TIE fighters. Which explains [[FridgeBrilliance how the Rebels knew it was designed to repel a large-scale assault]].

* CerberusRetcon: The Death Star gunner stating "Stand by... Stand by..." goes from a pacing issue to a man deliberately stalling for time [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone after having a mental breakdown.]]

* ContinuityNod: Quite a few to ''Film/ANewHope''. Perhaps the best is the explanation for why the gunner kept saying "Stand by. Stand by..."

* ContinuityNod: Quite a few to ''Film/ANewHope''. Perhaps the best is the explanation for why the gunner said "Stand by. Stand by..."

* MoralEventHorizon: InUniverse. Tenn Graneet, he main Death Star gunner, sees his involvement in the destruction of Alderaan as this, and he realizes that the rest of the Galaxy will also see it like that.

** The superlaser is retconned from a pure directed energy weapon into a partially {{technobabble}} one that also caused a sizable chunk of Alderaan's mass to transit into hyperspace. The PlanarShockwave added in the '97 Special Edition is apparently what the resulting hyperspace ripple looks like from realspace. (At time of writing this was still overridden by the ''Star Wars IV'' novelization, but Lord only knows what the correct version is now.)

* {{Technobabble}}: A thankfully short explanation of the process of the destruction of Alderaan is given by Tenn Graneet, who is more in horror of the fact that he just sent several billion innocent people to their deaths.

* CallForward: "We all know what this battle station can do. If they can build one, they can build more - maybe [[{{Film/ReturnOfTheJedi even bigger]] than this one."

** The superlaser is retconned from a pure directed energy weapon into a partially {{technobabble}} one that also caused a sizable chunk of Alderaan's mass to transit into hyperspace. The PlanarShockwave added in the '97 Special Edition is apparently what the resulting hyperspace ripple looks like from realspace.

--> There was an old proverb his grandfather had taught him when he'd been a boy: ''Take care what you wish for, Tenn- you might get it.''
--> Now he understood exactly what that meant. He had wanted to fire the big gun, and he had gotten to do just that. The only man in the galaxy who had shot it for real, at real targets, and look what it had brought him: [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone misery beyond his ugliest dreams.]]

* CurbStompBattle: The Rebels send five hundred X-Wings after the Death Star before it's fully operational. This does not end well.
** So ''[[FridgeBrilliance that's]]'' [[FridgeBrilliance how the Rebels knew it was designed to repel a large-scale assault!]]

--> [Graneet] couldn't stop thinking about it. He didn't believe he would ever be able to stop thinking about it. The dead would haunt him, forever.
--> [[DrivenToSuicide How could a man live with that?]]

--> "How was I to know your kind can't eat sweetweed?"
--> "You could have looked it up. You plan to date outside your species, it's on you to know what's poison and what's not."
--> "[[NeverLiveItDown You're never going to let me forget it, are you?]]"
--> "Not a chance, Green-Eyes."

* {{Retcon}}: Daala's head injury explains where her tactical knowledge went.

* ShoutOut: In what appears to be a reference to ''Franchise/StarTrek'', the shuttle NGC-1710 ferries Nova Stihl from Despayre to the Death Star.

*** There's also a clever reference to the singleplayer of StarWarsBattlefront 2 snuck in. For those who have played the game, it's [[CrowningMomentOfFunny pretty hilarious]].
**** To elaborate, there are rumors of an escape attempt by the prisoners being held on board the station. Memah Roothes overhears a conversation about it. The first guy says that he heard nine prisoners broke out, led by a Jedi. The other guy (who happens to be Tenn Graneet) says that Jedi are kind of scarce, so that's not too likely. Then he says that ''he'' heard that it was fifty prisoners, all of whom were captured rebels, and that they were led by ''five'' Jedi, and then they took over the superlaser and started blowing up Star Destroyer after Star Destroyer. Tenn knows that part is impossible, being the guy whose job it is to ''fire'' the superlaser and thus knowing firsthand that it isn't working yet, but he says [[RuleOfCool "Why let facts get in the way of a good story?"]] They go on to joke that eventually the story will [[GossipEvolution become so embellished]] that people will be saying there was a whole Rebel ''army'' on board trying to blow up the station, and that it took the 501st to stop them. (In the video game, there were ''tons'' of prisoners, all rebels and all with guns, led by one Jedi, who still had his lightsaber. The 501st ''did'' happen to be on board the station at the time and was tasked with stopping them. They didn't try to blow up the station or blast Star Destroyers, but they did try to destroy the superlaser and escape with a copy of the Death Star plans.)

* [[TestedOnHumans Tested On A Prison Planet]]: The Death Star was test-fired on Despayre. Neither the convicts nor the guards were evacuated beforehand.

* WordOfGod: Motti's OnlyOneName status was to be ended with the authors of this novel giving him the name "Zi." However, that was changed before the novel was published after Creator/GeorgeLucas jokingly said that the character's name was "Conan Antonio Motti" (in reference to Creator/ConanOBrien). A single use of "Zi" still remains in the novel, presumably as an editing mistake.

* YouShallNotPass / DelayingAction: Nova avoided the death he'd foreseen in one dream by not chasing too closely after Han Solo. But at the end of the novel he accepts another death he'd foreseen by fighting off other stormtroopers alongside a bouncer to let the other defectors get to the shuttle.

* WordOfGod: Motti's OnlyOneName status was to be ended with the authors of this novel giving him the name "Zi." However, that was changed before the novel was published after Creator/GeorgeLucas jokingly said that the character's name was "Conan Antonio Motti" (in reference to ConanOBrien). A single use of "Zi" still remains in the novel, presumably as an editing mistake.

* MindProbe: Vader does this casually to the architect, who senses him, freaks out, and closes down.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Deck 69.

*** There's also a clever (but unsubtle) reference to the singleplayer of StarWarsBattlefront 2 snuck in. For those who have played the game, it's [[CrowningMomentOfFunny pretty hilarious]].
**** To elaborate, there are rumours of an escape attempt by the prisoners being held on board the station. Memah Roothes overhears a conversation about it. The first guy says that he heard nine prisoners broke out, led by a Jedi. The other guy (who happens to be Tenn Graneet) says that Jedi are kind of scarce, so that's not too likely. Then he says that ''he'' heard that it was fifty prisoners, all of whom were captured rebels, and that they were led by ''five'' Jedi, and then they took over the superlaser and started blowing up Star Destroyer after Star Destroyer. Tenn knows that part is impossible, being the guy whose job it is to ''fire'' the superlaser and thus knowing firsthand that it isn't working yet, but he says [[RuleOfCool "Why let facts get in the way of a good story?"]] They go on to joke that eventually the story will [[GossipEvolution become so embellished]] that people will be saying there was a whole Rebel ''army'' on board trying to blow up the station, and that it took the 501st to stop them. (In the video game, there were ''tons'' of prisoners, all rebels and all with guns, led by one Jedi, who still had his lightsaber. The 501st ''did'' happen to be on board the station at the time and was tasked with stopping them. They didn't try to blow up the station or blast Star Destroyers, but they did try to destroy the superlaser and escape with a copy of the Death Star plans.)
** At one point, Tenn Graneet is walking down a corridor and sees none other than Darth Vader up ahead, walking in the other direction. The corridor is narrow enough that one or the other is going to have to move out of the way, and Tenn wonders if he should step aside or just walk toward Vader until ''he'' moves out of the way, as that's a common game in the Imperial Navy to see who backs down first. (You don't pull it on superior officers for obvious reasons, but since Vader technically isn't part of the navy Tenn doesn't see him as a superior.) Graneet decides at the last second that ''he'' had better move to let Vader pass, and thus avoids becoming a victim of TooDumbToLive. Where's the shout out here? Well, as Vader walks by Tenn his cape brushes against Tenn's arm and ''almost'' gets caught on Tenn's chrono. (Wristwatch.) Tenn belatedly realizes that if he hadn't stepped aside he would probably be dead now and, moreover, he almost became the man who [[Music/JimCroce tugged on Darth Vader's cape.]]

The novel follows the lives of a selection of characters who end up working on the Death Star late in its completion, and after that. They include Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, Admiral Motti, an old surgeon, a Force-Sensitive stormtrooper, a bartender, a librarian, a bouncer, a TIE pilot, a wrongly accused convict, a political prisoner who was an architect, and the Death Star's lead gunner.

-> "The Death Star was a monster, no question about that. It was conceived by monsters and controlled by them. But not everyone on board was a monster."
--> ''Teela Kaarz''

''[[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star_%28novel%29 Death Star]]'' is a novel in the StarWarsExpandedUniverse, written by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry. Perry also wrote ShadowsOfTheEmpire. Reaves wrote a few episodes of the old ''Droids'' and ''Ewoks'' television shows, as well as ''Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter'' and the Coruscant Nights Trilogy. Prior to ''Death Star'', the two authors worked together to write the Medstar Duology. They re-use characters and details from one anothers' previously-written works with some regularity.

Interestingly, there is no overall villain of the book. The Rebellion is certainly out there, weighing on people's minds, but aside from the minor role that Leia Organa plays, none of them are named or given much notoriety, much less become a viewpoint character. Some characters oppose each other - Motti does not like Vader, for instance - but until the end most of them are at least somewhat civil with each other. They're all more or less on the same side, after all.

* InterspeciesRomance: Memah Roothes(the bartender) and Celot Ratua Dil(the convict); also Villian Dance(the pilot) and Teela Kaarz(the architect). Interestingly, while Memah is a Twi'lek, Ratua is a [[HumanAliens very humanlike]] [[PlantAliens plant alien]], and Teela is from a very humanlike offshoot of humanity.

--> He(Graneet) couldn't stop thinking about it. He didn't believe he would ever be able to stop thinking about it. The dead would haunt him, forever.

* {{Retcon}}: Daala's head injury explains where her tactical knowledge went

* VillainousBreakdown: Tarkin never believed that the Death Star had a weakness. In the end, right before the Death Star explodes, he's thinking "Unthinkable. Unthinka-" *BOOM*

* WordOfGod: Motti's OnlyOneName status was to be ended with the authors of this novel giving him the name "Zi." However, that was changed before the novel was published after GeorgeLucas jokingly said that the character's name was "Conan Antonio Motti" (in reference to ConanOBrien). A single use of "Zi" still remains in the novel, presumably as an editing mistake.

* YouShallNotPass / DelayingAction: Nova avoided the death he'd foreseen in one dream by not chasing too closely after Han Solo. But at the end of the novel he accepts another death he'd foreseen by fighting off other stormtroopers alongside a bouncer to let the other defectors get to the shuttle.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin

* ForegoneConclusion: You've seen ANewHope. You know that the Death Star destroys Alderaan, Leia escapes, and the Death Star is blown up by a brave Rebel pilot.

* HeelFaithTurn: Motti, after Vader chokes him.

* HoldYourHippogriffs: To vac(hard vacuum) with this!

''[[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star_%28novel%29 Death Star]]'' is a novel in the StarWarsExpandedUniverse, written by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry. Perry also wrote ShadowsOfTheEmpire. Reaves wrote a few episodes of the old ''Droids'' and ''Ewoks'' television shows, as well as ''Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter'' and the Coruscant Nights Trilogy. Prior to ''DeathStar'', the two authors worked together to write the Medstar Duology. They re-use characters and details from one anothers' previously-written works with some regularity.

* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Tenn Graneet delays firing the superlaser at Yavin IV long enough for Luke to fire a proton torpedo.