Elite Dangerous Canon Books?

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Rainbro said:
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.
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Agreed.
- Frontier had full veto rights over anything in the licensed works and made sure that they were at the very least compatible with canon content as understood by Frontier at the time
- "At the time" is quite important since except Premonition they were written and often published well in advance of the 1.0 release: there's certainly a bunch of minor details which have been written on an "assume it's like FFE" basis that don't quite match what's now in-game.
- Additionally, most of the stories don't address anything where it matters whether or not they actually happened or are some tall tale told in a station bar (or something in-between) [1]
- Anything we actually need to know to make sense of events will be revealed through in-game content: there'll certainly be no requirement to read books originally published 10 years ago (or 7 in the case of Premonition, I guess).
- Frontier have certainly changed their minds at times on what exactly was happening off-screen that we don't get to see in-game (Azimuth was almost certainly a later addition) and have left a lot of things vague enough that exactly which conspiracy turns out to have been behind it all along can be filled in later. It's not impossible that Salome's character trait of being pointlessly vague and rarely giving out actionable information was part of the same "leave flexibility for later" policy.
- There is the usual distinction to be drawn between "show" and "tell" - also worth remembering for Galnet. If something is described as happening in the present-time action of a novel, it probably happened. If a character in a novel says something, it probably happened that they said that, but whether they were mistaken or lying is a different matter.

It's also worth remembering that some players certainly take the fine details of canon and continuity far more seriously than Frontier does: even basic factual statements like which shipyard and superpower produces the Cobra III or the Fer-de-Lance haven't stayed constant from Elite to FE2/FFE to Elite Dangerous. The story is to provide some context for why we're shooting Faction A in System B this week, rather than to be the next Great British Novel.


[1] Note that this also applies to the original TDW story with Elite, and all the FE2/FFE short stories. If it didn't actually happen, or didn't actually happen precisely like that, what actually changes? (Certain in-game events in FFE, on the other hand, Frontier have had to explicitly say "didn't happen like that")
 

Jack Winter

Jack Winter
AFAIK, it was stated by a dev at lavecon that the only canon is what's in the codex, galnet, and the game itself. Seems a reasonable approach to allow the freedom to develop what they want.

FWIW, personally I thought Michael Brookes's Elite: Legacy was the best of the bunch, and IMO worth a read especially as an elite player.
 
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Jack Winter

Jack Winter
MrBlack said:
So Frontiers official stance is that the books are not canon unless the information is directly in the Elite Dangerous game?
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I don't think there is an official stance, that was probably more of an informal statement...

Still I don't think there is any point to us players to count on any of the previous games or fanfiction to really be canon either.. If it's not in the game, then...
 

Rainbro

Rainbro
I've heard of this statement too, my impression was that it may not have been clarified which novels were being mentioned. It makes little sense that Premonition's GalNets and in-game material would be canon but Premonition itself would be not-canon, for example - sure, there are ways to make it work, but why keep those remnants canon if you don't want them?

Instead I could imagine the answer being directed towards the "old" novels, those without Elite Dangerous branding. But we can't know for sure unless Frontier were to grace this thread with their presence (and I suspect they have more to gain by not getting in the way of our speculation, like Raxxla)
 

MrBlack

M
I guess if a Frontier Dev is saying it, then it must be true and people should just skip the Elite Dangerous books and only focus on the in-game content.
 

jojon

J
MrBlack said:
I guess if a Frontier Dev is saying it, then it must be true and people should just skip the Elite Dangerous books and only focus on the in-game content.
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Well, canon or not, they can be quite entertaining, as long as one go into it expecting exactly what it is: Fan fiction in a ridiculous game universe, and not something more weighty.

As for in-game manifestations, I believe if not all, then at least most of them have locations in the game, which are named by the authors, for use in their stories. -To this day, Lave 2 remains permit-locked (not that I have checked recently), over its apperance in one book, and possibly reserved for a sequel option (...although I don't believe that writer is hanging around the game anymore).

The largest number of fingerprints (several Galnet articles, riddles, and locations with structures, descriptive text, and voice audio) were imprinted for Drew Wagar's second book, which was commissioned by FDev themselves, and fulfills its goal of including bits of player interaction over a period of real time -- a good bit more than the previously-mentioned-in-this-thread decisive large open play event (only loosely sanctioned by FDev), that capped it all off; Drew would chat with roleplay-minded individual players and groups, and weave their input into his narrative.

The bits of that that are in the game, are in the game; The actual events I am inclined to consider the personal "headcanon" of various roleplayers; And there is a lot of assuming a level of ownership over FDev's characters, powers, etc, which I choose to think of as the the author's headcanon, or the author's in-game alter-ego's fanfic... for all that nobody at FDev, as the publisher, saw fit to stop him. :7
 
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Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
MrBlack said:
I guess if a Frontier Dev is saying it, then it must be true and people should just skip the Elite Dangerous books and only focus on the in-game content.
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The books written for the Kickstarter are as canon as Star Wars episode 4, 5 and 6 are, before George Lucas decided to retcon some events for 1, 2 and 3.

They had to be vetted and approved by Frontier to fit into the universe, and whatever may have adapted in game (as early Galnet articles already have been), it's doesn't diminish their validity.
 

MrBlack

M
Ozric said:
The books written for the Kickstarter are as canon as Star Wars episode 4, 5 and 6 are, before George Lucas decided to retcon some events for 1, 2 and 3.

They had to be vetted and approved by Frontier to fit into the universe, and whatever may have adapted in game (as early Galnet articles already have been), it's doesn't diminish their validity.
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Oh, I see.

So I guess I can assume the content from the "Elite Dangerous" books would be canon, UNLESS a GalNet or in-game lore drops say differently.

That is reassuring to know at least. It is confusing that someone would say otherwise at a Elite Dangerous event though.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
MrBlack said:
Oh, I see.

So I guess I can assume the content from the "Elite Dangerous" books would be canon, UNLESS a GalNet or in-game lore drops say differently.
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I would say yes. They are canonical to the universe, just not necessarily directly linked to the game. (Premonition is the only exception as was previously mentioned because it's set in game.

That is reassuring to know at least. It is confusing that someone would say otherwise at a Elite Dangerous event though.
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Depends on who it was and what was said. But as the information is an unknown dev told an unknown person something, that was then told to someone else, and possibly through that someone else... then someone else... :)

As Ian noted, enough things have changed ingame during the game's life that my personal standpoint is that if it's not been mentioned in Galnet since Jan 2021 then it is not canon to the current narrative arc. I'll use my usual example of President Halsey where her initial storyline was abruptly ended, and then years later dismissed in Galnet as just a dream. There's no way that Azimuth were in from the start, but they appear to have been implemented as a way to continue INRA without having to directly resurrect them which seemed to me to be the initial intention.

That doesn't mean that the things that came before the great reboot are not canon, just that they're potentially not applicable to the current narrative arc. The only real statement of what is and isn't canon in Elite Dangerous lore came from Michael Brookes when he did the interview with DJ Truthsayer but that was back in 2016, before Mike left for JWE, before the Thargoids, before the reboot. But it's still a great watch, any time getting to listen to Michael is.
 

Steph

Steph
Canon, semi-canon or not canon - I thoroughly recommend them all. I've read each of them more than once. At least two, that I can recall, of the Kickstarter author packs didn't make it to the finish line. I remain hopeful for them but it is very much more hope than expecation now, given the length of time.
 
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