During Celebration V I was able to hang about the DEL REY books area-the home of the STAR WARS EXPANDED UNIVERSE and anything else STAR WARS related in the US territory-and managed to get a good visual look at J.W. Rinzler's upcoming, if much delayed, behind the scenes tome-THE MAKING OF THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. I wasn't able to get a chance to read any of it bar the odd caption (though the conventions lavish colour booklet had one of its excellent chapters-titled LUKE OF THE TUNDRA- within it), but I looked at every page- and I have to say that, on the strength of the visual material alone, this looks set to beat THE MAKING OF STAR WARS in terms of pure quality and information-and it helps that, from this film onwards, LUCASFILM pretty much kept all of their behind the scenes records intact. There was three times as many pictures-storyboards, photos, effects shots, pre-production art-in a well designed layout (by the author himself), and the detail was stunning. From memory, picture wise, there were lots of shots from the deleted Wampa battle in Echo Base, a look at an alien Dagobah creature that never made the finished film, and some intriguing images of the test hovercraft that were to have been be re-dressed and used in the Finse filmed snow battle which were ultimately abandoned.
The whole book looked absolutely incredible and I can't wait to read it and review it when its released worldwide (via DEL REY in the US and AURUM in the UK).
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