One of the things that the rebirth of Star Wars has allowed is for the widening of the Star Wars universe to include stories and characters we've never known before. Now a new story is going to follow a familiar character into a very unfamiliar place. "Time of Death" is a new Star Wars short story included in the book A Certain Point of View, and apparently the story will focus on Obi-Wan Kenobi, after he has died.
While we've been more or less expecting future stories about Obi-Wan Kenobi to come out of the new Star Wars focus from Disney, we weren't really expecting this. The story would seem, based on this quote, to be a first person account of being a Force Ghost. On the one hand, it seems utterly bizarre, but on the other, why not? We know that Obi-Wan Kenobi is as sentient a person as a spirit as he was as a man, there's no reason he couldn't sit down and talk about his experience.
The story could potentially answer a lot of lingering Star Wars questions. The idea of Force Ghosts has long been a topic of conversation among Star Wars fans. We know that not every Jedi becomes one, and there's been no canonical explanation for them within the new Disney version of the franchise. Perhaps this will be the tale that will tell us not only where Force Ghosts come from, but what it means to actually be one. Is the ghost even really the same man?
From a Certain Point of View is a new book which celebrates 40 years of the Star Wars franchise with 40 stories about the universe. However, rather than any of the stories being about our primary characters, each one takes the perspective of somebody else, a side character that maybe we don't know too much about. Cavean Scott's "Time of Death" would seem to go one step further by dealing with a time period and a place we are unlikely to see in any upcoming film.
From A Certain Point Of View contains stories about everybody from Biggs Darklighter to Mon Mothma to Breha Organa, the adoptive mother of Princess Leia. Many of the stories come from authors who have previously worked on Star Wars books. Cavean Scott previously wrote the YA Adventures in Wild Space series, while other stories come from everybody from Chuck Wendig to Pablo Hidalgo. It's got some real potential to open up our understanding of Star Wars by showing us aspects of the story that we know from entirely new and different perspectives. Apparently, that even means dealing with the afterlife, from a certain point of view.
From A Certain Point of View is being released October 3.
