The Star Wars movie didn't read ANYTHING like the original novel. He made younger and despensed with General Solo, creating Obi-wan out of whole cloth for the movie. Originally, the Millinium Falcon was to become Luke's ship after General Solo died battling Darth Vader on the Deathstar.
The ORIGINAL novel got yanked just before the movie release and a slightly diferent version was released after the movie, ghosted by Alan Dean Foster. I actually loved the dark dystopian Galactic Empire that Lucas wrote about. It was more like THX-1138 than what we saw on the screen.
As such--yeah, continuity where convenient! ROFL
