WARNING: CONTAINS (MILD) SPOILERS FOR AHSOKA AND KIRANIS
I'm thoroughly enjoying the latest Star Wars series, Ahsoka, on Disney+. Sure, it's heavily laden with CGI - it's Star Wars, after all - but it looks absolutely stunning. The detail in the sets, the ships, the costumes - it's a gorgeous presentation. Thankfully, the story isn't too bad, either. I've seen some criticism online, but there'll always be someone criticizing these things. It may be that I'm not too up to speed with the lore - I didn't watch Clone Wars or the Bad Batch, for example - and as such, I've missed any continuity concerns or the like; but I think it's well acted and scripted.
From episode 2, I was hooked, because whenever there's reference to anything that I'm dealing with in my Kiranis books, I pay attention. Genre fiction will always feature concepts and motifs found in other genre fiction, but I've always done my best to ensure that when I come across something elsewhere that I'm writing about, that I (at the very least) deviate from the specifics or the outcome of that other application of those concepts and motifs. Ironically, when I first came up with the name Kiranis, I spelled it 'Keranis', and had to change it because of a planet called 'Keranis IV' featured in a Star Wars novel.
So, what caught my attention in Ahsoka? Well, in episode 2, we learn that Grand Admiral Thrawn is exiled in another galaxy, and as the story progresses, we learn that the Nightsisters (or witches) have connections across galaxies. Now, in Kiranis Book 3, Secrets of The Universe, one group of protagonists travel to another galaxy and they encounter...well, you'll see. Suffice to say that my interest was piqued - what will the writers of Ahsoka do here? Will there be anything that resonates with my work?
Also, following the release of Secrets of The Universe in June '23, I've been developing the plotline - focusing on Hark Lis Fet of the Chosen House - whereby the people he works for believe in 'The Great Seeding'; that another species outside this galaxy 'seeded' this one with life that would, from an evolutionary point of view, derive from their own biological foundations. This theory grows from their observation - made explicit in Secrets of The Universe - that all the species in their galaxy are genetically related.
This is something that formulated almost in a reactionary fashion, as I considered the questions I had directed towards the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek over the decades, where a multitude of humanoid species occupied their respective literary universes. Amid the suspension of credibility, of course, how would this be 'possible' from an evolutionary point of view? Technically, in Star Wars, there are no humans - it's a different galaxy, and the 'humans' couldn't have evolved on/from Earth (at least, I don't think that's ever considered in the SW universe).
As a Sci-Fi writer - and even though I have lots of Fantasy elements in Kiranis - I try to build some measure of credibility when it comes to the science. Hark Lis Fet and the Chosen House have a theory that's grounded in their observations - all the species around them have fundamentally similar genetics (and I had to research the ways by which this would become evident). The problem from Book 3 on is that a new species has just crossed into their galaxy from another - and its DNA bears no relationship to any of theirs. What does this mean for the mandate of the Chosen House? How will Hark Lis Fet adjust his mission to learn the truth?
Cards on the table? I already know the answer to these questions - it would be weird if I didn't. But I'm waiting to see if there will be any reference to anything resembling 'The Great Seeding' as Ahsoka develops. I don't think it's part of the plot at all, but Star Wars has a habit of making off-the-cuff references to its own lore in the form of ancient history or 'the Jedi Archives'. Who knows what might be uncovered? I'll just have to keep an eye on Star Wars 'Ahsoka' and the other galaxy far, far away.