The gap between Return of the Jedi and this year’s Episode VII will be filled in via a new set of stories

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, an awful lot happened between the end of 1983’s Return of the Jedi and the beginning of much-hyped Star Wars sequel The Force Awakens. Disney is to release at least 20 books this autumn with the aim of filling the gap between the two films ahead of the release of JJ Abrams’s much-hyped big screen revival of the long-running space opera.

Crucially, all the new books will be considered canonical, unlike the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels that Disney-owned Lucasfilm recently downgraded in status after decades of deliberate ambiguity. According to Entertainment Weekly, some will centre on the continuing adventures of characters from the original Star Wars trilogy (such as Princess Leia and C-3PO), while others will retell the events of the triptych of movies that hit cinemas between 1977 and 1983 from the point of view of supporting figures (here’s hoping for the story of Admiral Ackbar and the moment he realised it was all a trap).

The books, which will be released by a number of publishers including Disney-owned Marvel Comics and sci-fi publisher Del Rey, have been put together with the full cooperation of the studio. Screenwriters and novelists have reportedly been working closely together to plan which secrets will be revealed and which will remain locked away for the novel series, which is titled Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

“The Force Awakens is an extraordinarily heavily guarded storyline. To track it, a lot of top-secret meetings were happening up in San Francisco as we worked through this program,” Disney Publishing Worldwide’s Andrew Sugerman told Entertainment Weekly. “The partnership with the story group and the editorial team always had to be true to the sanctity of the film while making sure that we find these moments to introduce hints, clues, and puzzle pieces. Without revealing what those pieces are, it will just allow readers to speculate about the new film: what could a location mean, or what could a character mean?”

Titles will include Star Wars: Aftermath, Star Wars: Journey to the Force Awakens and Star Wars: Ships of the Galaxy, the latter appearing to be a vehicle guidebook. Then there’s Moving Target, which features Leia; The Weapon of a Jedi, about Luke Skywalker; and Smuggler’s Run, a Han Solo tale. Given the furious speculation over Abrams’s film, bloggers are likely to spend much of the autumn poring over the new books in the hope of unearthing so-called “Easter eggs”.

Disney plans to release a new trilogy of Star Wars films between now and 2019, with beloved characters such as Yoda, Han Solo and Boba Fett also rumoured to be receiving their own standalone spin-off movies. The Force Awakens, which is released in December, has been voted 2015’s most highly-anticipated movie and bookmakers’ runaway favourite to be the year’s highest-grossing film.