Written by Alan Dean Foster

Published November 12, 1976

A classic in book form. I'm a Star Wars fan through and through so to see this on a shelf in a thrift store I knew I needed to read this to experience what a movie that I've seen quite a lot of in my lifetime. It felt refreshing that to read something that wasn't part of the expanded universe or part of a bigger series. This is the beginning and everything is just new and explained weirdly because there's nothing to go on but the script and footage from the movie. This book includes scenes that would later get cut from the movie like an entire scene where Luke hangs out with his friends at Anchorhead and even has a talk with Biggs. There's another where Han Solo and Jabba have a confrontation and Jabba is described more as a fat human than the ugly slug we'd see him as in later movies. There's a lot of little small details that are different like Luke being on Blue Squadron instead of being on Red Squadron. Luke making two attacks on the Death Star trench. The biggest one that really should've been in the movie is that Chewbacca gets a medal at the ceremony at the end. First printing of this book was December 1976 while my copy that I read was the sixteenth printing in November 1977 which blew my mind that this book had been reprinted so many times just months after the movie came out. My copy was and I quote "Featuring 16 Pages of fabulous Full-Color photos from this spectacular Space-Fantasy Motion Picture." which to get something in full color probably was a big deal back then seems meaningless to people in the present it was clearly worth the cost to print in some color pictures because of how much Star Wars was making . This was fun to experience something I love in another media format. Definitely worth the pickup if you come across it.