Elite Dangerous Canon Books?

MrBlack

M
I am looking for a list of Canon books to read for the Elite Dangerous game.

Does Frontier Development have an official list of Canon Elite Dangerous books, or is it only the ones sold on the Frontier Store?

Search results for: 'Book' - Frontier Store

The Frontier Developments Online Store is the exclusive online retailer for products made and licensed by Frontier Developments plc
www.frontierstore.net www.frontierstore.net

I assume that if Frontier is selling the books on their store, all the book content is considered 'canon' for the Elite Dangerous game.
(Perhaps this is a wrong assumption)
 

jojon

J
Frankly, until anything in them gets corroborated in new Galnet articles (EDIT: I.e. I relegate old articles about things like society girl rivalry, to the gossip column :p), I regard all books non-canon, or at best canon as in-gameworld fiction, and in that I include even the Michael Brooks' one that is directly attached to the studio and the game. :p

We'll see, though... Maybe the current community goal could bring some support to the notion from the drewniverse, about the frameshift drive having been developed using know-how obtained by reverse-engineering Thargoid wreckages... :7
 
Last edited:

MrBlack

M
That's a list of Elite Dangerous books, but how do I know they are considered canon?

Or is it as Jojon said, are only GalNet articles considered canon in Elite Dangerous and you don't need to read the books?
 

DYSEQTA

DYSEQTA
jojon said:
Frankly, until anything in them gets corroborated in new Galnet articles (EDIT: I.e. I relegate old articles about things like society girl rivalry, to the gossip column :p), I regard all books non-canon, or at best canon as in-gameworld fiction, and in that I include even the Michael Brooks' one that is directly attached to the studio and the game...
Click to expand...
Maybe I am going crazy but I could have sworn a character from one of Drew Wagar's books has been officially acknowledged in the game. There was some event that was put together by him, with FDevs support, that involved the character in question (played by him) making a run for their life across the galaxy. There was s speech prepared that would have been delivered upon success of the mission but another player betrayed him and murdered the character and now you can find recordings of that speech at some hospital station in the game.

I am not going crazy right?
 

r09u3

r09u3
DYSEQTA said:
Maybe I am going crazy but I could have sworn a character from one of Drew Wagar's books has been officially acknowledged in the game. There was some event that was put together by him, with FDevs support, that involved the character in question (played by him) making a run for their life across the galaxy. There was s speech prepared that would have been delivered upon success of the mission but another player betrayed him and murdered the character and now you can find recordings of that speech at some hospital station in the game.

I am not going crazy right?
Click to expand...
Well I can't say you are not crazy, but Salome was the character and it did happen. 😁
 

Rainbro

Rainbro
jojon said:
Frankly, until anything in them gets corroborated in new Galnet articles (EDIT: I.e. I relegate old articles about things like society girl rivalry, to the gossip column :p), I regard all books non-canon, or at best canon as in-gameworld fiction, and in that I include even the Michael Brooks' one that is directly attached to the studio and the game. :p

We'll see, though... Maybe the current community goal could bring some support to the notion from the drewniverse, about the frameshift drive having been developed using know-how obtained by reverse-engineering Thargoid wreckages... :7
Click to expand...
The frameshift drive was reverse-engineered. See the logs at the INRA base Almeda Landing.
 

Rainbro

Rainbro
Ned Flandalorian said:
What's in the game is canon. Anything else, including fan-fiction books that the authors paid to be "officially licensed" (like most of these were as part of the original kickstarter), are not.
Click to expand...
It gets a bit murkier when Frontier have said that these books are canon, and have put stuff in the games to support them, though.

I would personally say that game takes priority over the books, but that doesn't mean the books are non-canon. I see them as supporting material. You can already tell a lot of funky stuff is going on just from in-game stuff even if you don't look in Premonition for the full explanation, for example.

The Oresrians/Klaxians are the only point I can think of where this question might really matter. I don't think Frontier are ever going to implement them in-game. Is that because they're non-canon? I dunno, Frontier said they were at one point. I'm more inclined to think it was just down to development problems. Being able to land on Earth like worlds is still canon, I think, even if we won't be able to do it ;)
 
Last edited:

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
The funny thing is, as I understand, The Dark Wheel novella, created for the original game, is not canon in the ED universe. One of the big differences is that in The Dark Wheel humanity has contact with non-hostile alien civilizations.

I do miss the alien civilizations in Elite Plus (i think it was), where they had fun descriptions like "The people of this system are renowned for their hatred of sitcoms"
 

Rainbro

Rainbro
Agony_Aunt said:
The funny thing is, as I understand, The Dark Wheel novella, created for the original game, is not canon in the ED universe. One of the big differences is that in The Dark Wheel humanity has contact with non-hostile alien civilizations.
Click to expand...
I think it's fairly well established that the old non-ED novels aren't canon. Again, Dangerous can reference parts of them, but outside of that they are quite obviously written for a different universe. Stuff with the Elite Dangerous branding though was written for Elite Dangerous.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Agony_Aunt said:
The funny thing is, as I understand, The Dark Wheel novella, created for the original game, is not canon in the ED universe. One of the big differences is that in The Dark Wheel humanity has contact with non-hostile alien civilizations.

I do miss the alien civilizations in Elite Plus (i think it was), where they had fun descriptions like "The people of this system are renowned for their hatred of sitcoms"
Click to expand...

Nothing pre Elite Dangerous 2014 is canon anymore
Basically ED lives in its own universe and timeline, even tho that timeline may contain events or personae (for example the cmdr Jameson or the Duvals) more or less similar to the ones in the Classic Elite (Elite 1-3). So the Duval that created the Empire in Elite 1-3 is not the same with the Duval that created the Empire in ED nor is the cmdr Jameson
 

jojon

J
Rainbro said:
The frameshift drive was reverse-engineered. See the logs at the INRA base Almeda Landing.
Click to expand...

Cool! (...except now I spoiled it for myself, by googling instead of going there to listen on-site - oh well...)

This seems, however, to spell out in no uncertain terms that we already had frameshift by then, and that the thargoid "stable wormhole" is something different altogether.

Not what I recall (could be misremembering) engineer Bill Turner, turned Rotwang from Metropolis, said to Salome and friends.
 

aRJay

aRJay
Northpin said:
Nothing pre Elite Dangerous 2014 is canon anymore
Basically ED lives in its own universe and timeline, even tho that timeline may contain events or personae (for example the cmdr Jameson or the Duvals) more or less similar to the ones in the Classic Elite (Elite 1-3). So the Duval that created the Empire in Elite 1-3 is not the same with the Duval that created the Empire in ED nor is the cmdr Jameson
Click to expand...
Yes parallel or divergent universes, those familiar with TV SciFi will be familiar with bad and worse examples of this such as Star Trek and Sliders.
 

Rainbro

Rainbro
jojon said:
Cool! (...except now I spoiled it for myself, by googling instead of going there to listen on-site - oh well...)

This seems, however, to spell out in no uncertain terms that we already had frameshift by then, and that the thargoid "stable wormhole" is something different altogether.

Not what I recall (could be misremembering) engineer Bill Turner, turned Rotwang from Metropolis, said to Salome and friends.
Click to expand...
INRA would have been around the time of the Quirium drives. It's not exactly clear how they were supposed to work, even in-universe, but it's quite possible they already had some equivalent to Supercruise which would fit the bill for the reference to "shifting space". The timestamps in the Hesperus logs for example, compared to the Proteus, seem to suggest their travel was pretty fast. I feel like there could well be some offhand reference buried elsewhere that would confirm it one way or the other, though I can't think of it right now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom