Might be old news to some (including me, but I finally found a starwars.com reference instead jedinet or tfn):

http://www.starwars.com/eu/lit/novel/news20050322.html

Tight I've always wanted more info on that. Zahn's excellent too, at least it's not being written by some moron. Stackpole probably coulda done a good job too, but his writings tend to be a little less... filled with massive forces of earthshaterring importance and such, he writes about a squadron of pilots very well anyways.

What the ****, Anakin and Obi Wan were on it? How stupid is that?

yeah, I noticed that as well... :/.

Yeah, it'll be interseting how that plays out, but they can get away with it. Both of them die before Outbound Flight is ever mentioned again, and I doubt Vader kept a diary :p

i heard about this last month, and I'm DEFINITELY reading it because it's bringing the Thrawn trilogy full circle

I HIGHLY suggest reading the duology and Survivors Quest for more stuff with Outbound Flight

it's zahn. you know he'll pull it off.

I don't doubt that he'll do a good job, but I was under the impresion that the whole project was destoyed by Thrawn. Oh well. It'll be worth reading just to see Thrawn kicking ***.

did you read survivor's quest? has a lot about the aftermath of outbound flight

I'm very curious to see what kind of characters we'll have this time around. Hopefully, heer Zahn will write the original characters a bit more into this one, instead of promoting his own in any fashion possible.

I mean, heer Zahn definately went a bit odd with Vision o' the Future... Thrawn, Mara(a mere bloody assassin) and Vader on the very same level? I always definately thought that Vader outranked them all in any fashion possible. All three were meant to replace another Zahn-created character who was the sum of all their parts and more(that Kinman Doriana bloke)? Vrouwe Mara Jade, Jedi Novice at most, lecturing heer Skywalker on what's good and wrong, with heer Skywalker only nodding his head in response? Han Solo, who saw Vader and immediately went for his blaster, quaking in his boots upon only seeing Grand Admiral Thrawn? And what's all this rubbish with Jade's past being white-washed, with her actually being some sort of an experiment instead of being a Dark Jedi? That she had actually always been a good gal all along, even when she was working for the Empire, even though she was a bloody assassin, and that she only took out 'bad men'? Crikey...

I'd definately hope that Zahn will refrain most going that route with this prelude. Very curious to see how it'll turn out tho'.

Small question, although I've never read them, is there a difference between vision of the futurea and spectre of the past? The back of both books says exactly the same thing.

It's a duology.

Mara was never a Jedi, so she couldn't be a Dark Jedi. She was an assassin who knew how to use the Force. And besides, Han was an old man by the time Vision of the Future came out. If he had run into Vader, he'd probably of needed Depends.

Roit, Dark Jedi was too big a title for her, I admit. But apparantly, she never was dark or evil to begin with, according to Zahn, and that's where I was a bit letdown. I found Mara to be a rather interesting character in TTT(and mostly around MotS where I first heard of her) with her background, but 'oi, quite a bit of it was retconned afterwards.

As for Han... well, he certainly did quite some brave things in the later books, laughing at danger and the like... frankly, to see him go all paralyzed at the mere sight of Thrawn just felt OOCish, especially considering his later exploits. And frankly, I never really felt as if Han had suddenly grown old or was afraid of things... I mean, he bloody infiltrates an Imperial Planet(wasn't it Bastion? I don't recall) with no problem, smiles his way past all the problems, and then a smurf comes along, and he's suddenly afraid to make a single move. 'oi?

Although heer Zahn does write some entertaining books, I have to admit that I simply do think that he tends to turn his characters to shine over the existing characters, something that I tend to dislike a bit. I'm all for having nice new characters and villains, but don't have all them be smarter than the existing, established characters. Mara Jade and Thrawn on the same level as a Sith Lord? And all three were meant to fill the gap that some bloke named Doriana, a bloke who was one of the grand architects of Palpatine's rise to power, had left behind? If this Doriana bloke hadn't been killed, then Palpy wouldn't have had any use with Anakin? 'oi. Thrawn being helluva lot more smarter strategic and political wise than Palpatine(the ole' "If Palpy was ahead three moves, Thrawn was ahead fives moves")? Uh-huh. And there's also that small side story where Thrawn is basically lecturing Vader on standard tactics...

And well, then there's Talon Karrde, prince of the underground. Winter, Leia's best friend, memory-extraordinare. Ghent, computer-hacker extraordinare. Und so weiter. I have no problem at all if a character would be better with something than an established character(ie. Ghent being better at hacking than, say, Lando, or Thrawn being somewhat more clever than Palpy when it comes to fleet battles possibly), but to have them completely walk over them without any thought at all? Yoink.

I've heard that he apparantly also does this a bit in Survivor's Quest. Just how is that book?

I was mislead into thinking that this was a new Star Wars flight sim game...

then you need to read more EU, my friend :p

burrie, if you want i'll PM you the basic outline of how Survivor's Quest goes, it's not like that at all

What was that one Star Wars fighting game for the PSX... you know, the one where Mara had all that red spikey hair and crazy eye shadow, and a big mechanical arm. I'm sure that was Mara Jade at least. She was weird in that :x

Masters of Teräs Käsi

That wasn't Mara. That was another Hand.

-There's, like, 12 of 'em. I don't know if Vader counts.

Most likely he doesn't count.

Vader wasn't a hand at all. He was the bloody right-hand to the Emperor, a Sith Lord, the apprentice to the master... quite a bit higher in status than your average Emperor Hand.

The Emporer always kept girls at arm's length.. Anakin, though. Now he's a keeper for old Palpy.

It was Arden Lynn.