Star Wars and audio have gone hand in hand for years, in audiobooks for the galaxy far, far away’s library of tie-in reads. But the world of audio dramas has always felt like it was a little out of reach...until now, as a very cool Star Wars heroine is helping bring the galaxy far, far away to an unfamiliar medium.
StarWars.com has revealed that Del Rey has tapped novelist Sarah Kuhn to write Doctor Aphra: An Audiobook Original, a new full-cast audio drama that brings the smuggler-archaeologist of Marvel Comics’ Star Wars output to life beyond the pages of her own ongoing series.
Although the cast of the drama has yet to be unveiled, the story itself is not entirely an “original” as the title may imply. Instead, Kuhn has created an expanded adaptation of the storyline from Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca’s incredible Darth Vader: Volume 1 comic series. In that (downright excellent) series, the Dark Lord of the Sith made an accomplice of Aphra—and her best friends, the killer droids Triple-0 and BT-1—as he sought to hunt down Luke Skywalker in secret after learning that the pilot responsible for destroying the Death Star wars in fact his son. Here’s a message recorded by Kuhn about her involvement to go with the reveal:
This isn’t the first recent dabbling into the world of audio fiction beyond audio books for Star Wars. The excellent prequels-prequel Dooku: Jedi Lost, by Cavan Scott was initially debuted as an audio adventure that was part audio book, part full-cast drama, with narration interwoven between groups of actors providing the dialogue sequences. But this Doctor Aphra story, even if it’s one we’ve seen before in comic book form, marks a big step forward, in that it’s a full-cast drama rather than a reading of a novel, or a mishmash of both cast and single-person audio dramas like Dooku was. It’s a cool new way to experience a great slice of Star Wars, and hopefully the sign of more things like it to come.
Doctor Aphra: An Audiobook Original is set to release on July 21.
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