Oh, here we go . . .

As noted previously, the EU novel Labyrinth of Evil was the attempt by Lucas Licensing's publishing department to lead in to Episode III. A similar and occasionally-contrary effort was done with the "Clone Wars" cartoon, which has been used in favor of Labyrinth.

However, the EU-philes at SD.Net are a selective lot, with selective views of history. To their mind, the ICS children's books are the highest form of EU, followed by the adult novels, and then the comics and cartoons come in somewhere after that. So, they are intent on having Labyrinth be considered the highest source, and I've been watching as the claims about the book and its validity have slowly but steadily increased.

This has culminated in a peculiar statement Poe made recently to advertise his list of Labyrinth quotes. He stated that "Lucas sat down with Luceno personallly and gave him the entire backstory for the prequels."

If you didn't know better, this would sound like a remarkable fact. "Wow!" you might think . . . "Luceno, who never even got to talk to Lucas about the NJO, was actually brought in to be trained in the Star Wars arts by Master Lucas himself, and given the backstory for the prequels in the process of writing his Labyrinth! Must be pretty valid!"

But, naturally, this is false. As Matt Stover points out, Luceno only received answers to some questions that Stover 'smuggled in' for him, which is better than most EU authors get. There is no reference to Lucas and Luceno meeting independently. Indeed, we only get a reference to a single meeting between Stover and Lucas for the official E3 novelization, so it hardly seems likely that Luceno would get one too for an EU book.

And, we have Luceno's own words, as quoted on the Random House / Del Rey site and also on StarWars.com's EU section. He says he talked to Pablo Hidalgo, Jonathan Rinzler, and Sue Rostoni. And, like much of Licensing, he was in possession of the script. Well, whoop-te-doo.

He never implies that there was any sort of pow-wow with Lucas, and indeed the only person to claim such a thing to my knowledge is Poe.

Is it a major point? Not really . . . but it's just one of those little counterfactuals which the opposition uses, in aggregate, to bolster false claims. An insidious technique, to be sure, but it is often effective against the unsuspecting.