A Long Time Ago

Growing up with and out of Star Wars

"A Long Time Ago is a wonderful look back on growing up with Star Wars...Van Ert [has] written a great little memoir about life as a boy with Star Wars and his trials as an adult with his boyhood fascination." – Wired.com

"A Long Time Ago is a thoughtful, funny, and beautifully written story of the role that Star Wars played in Van Ert's life...scathingly hilarious and bang on" – Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

Some time in the summer of 1977, sitting in the back seat of a borrowed station wagon at the only drive-in in town, Gib van Ert saw the first ninety minutes of a film that changed his world—and the world in general—forever. Then he fell asleep. So began a torrid thirty-five-year love affair with Star Wars, complete with infatuation, lust, devotion, jealousy, betrayal, despair, separation and reconciliation.

In A Long Time Ago: Growing Up With And Out Of Star Wars, van Ert describes how Star Wars captivated his imagination as a boy, broke his heart as a young man, and is foisting itself upon him again today through fatherhood. At once a personal memoir and a reflection on the shared experience of a generation, A Long Time Ago explores Star Wars fandom with equal parts humour and thoughtfulness, nostalgia and regret.