Via Starwars.com:

In August 2009 Daniel Wallace and I cheered the publication of Star Wars: The Essential Atlas, our new Del Rey book and a labor of love.

For me, the Atlas was literally a dream come true. I’ve always been interested in the geography of imaginary places — one of the biggest influences on the Atlas was Karen Wynn Fonstad’s 1981 book The Atlas of Middle-earth, which I pored over as a kid. (Fonstad’s book was also invaluable in convincing Del Rey that our proposal was merely crazy and not utterly crazy.)

Anyway, when I was a young teen I woke up one morning and happily relived what had happened the day before: I’d been at the mall and found an awesome book called The Atlas of the Star Wars Galaxy, which I’d convinced my folks to buy and then devoured in the back of the car on the way home. Still sleepy, I inventoried the things I had to do that day — school, homework, track practice — but reminded myself that when those things were done I’d be able to go back to my cool new atlas of a galaxy far, far away.

And then I realized it had been a dream. There was no Atlas of the Star Wars Galaxy. We hadn’t even been to the mall. The amazing maps I studied and the things I read were phantoms of my sleeping brain.

I was devastated, to say the least.

But as it turns out, the book I’d imagined was real — all that was missing was my having to grow up, meet Dan Wallace, find a young mapmaker named Modi, and then write half of the book myself.

Anyway, the book we wrestled out of a dream and our stubborn, dorky love of interstellar geography now exists — and thanks to our friends at Del Rey and Lucasfilm, it’s become a living book, one that’s been expanded and updated several times through features here at StarWars.com. You can find those features here.

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