Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker wrote a novel called "Splinter of the Mind's Eye", which was originally commissioned by George Lucas for the purpose of being filmed as a low-budget sequel, as a fallback plan in the event that "Star Wars" did not do well. It was published in 1978, a year after the movie's release. This made it the first full-length original novel to be published in the Star Wars expanded universe. The next official novelization of a "Star Wars" movie was "The Empire Strikes Back" by Donald F. Glut in 1980. Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker Star Wars: From the
Star Wars sequel trilogy of "Star Wars" novels, Zahn was interviewed about the at-the-time just-announced sequel trilogy in 2012, he confirmed the sequel trilogy was never meant to be based on his Thrawn novels nor the expanded universe but said he had been briefed years before on Lucas's plans for the sequels. (Zahn had discussions with Lucas before the first Thrawn novel was published in 1991.) As announced by Lucasfilm, the sequel trilogy also meant the end of most of the existing "Star Wars" expanded universe, so as to give "maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and