JMS, where did it all come from?

[b5jms-owner at cs.columbia.edu]

Subject: JMS, where did it all come from?
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 No. | DATE        |  FROM
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+  1: Apr  8, 1996: jegelsta at chat.carleton.ca (Julian Egelstaff)
*  2: Apr  8, 1996: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)

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From: jegelsta at chat.carleton.ca (Julian Egelstaff)
Lines: 32

Jms at B5 (jmsatb5 at aol.com) wrote:

> It's worth mentioning that this story was initially conceived in the midst
> of the Me Generation, the decade of "I've got mine, jack, screw you all." 
> Since then the culture has gotten increasingly factionalized, groups of
> Me's pulling and tugging at the fabric not only of the country, bvut of
> the planet itself.  The idea of personal sacrifice, of personal service to
> a cause, seems to have become...passe.  Old fashioned.  Silly.

This got me thinking, especially the first two lines.  Was there one idea
or event that came to mind that you then built the story around?  I mean,
did you think, "what about alien corruption taking over the earth
government?"  Or, "what about, Earth gets nearly destroyed in a war, makes
peace, builds this huge diplomatic space station with their former
enemies, but it doesn't work out and everything does to hell in a
handbasket?"  

In all the writing I've ever done everything has started with one idea
(that usually is indiscernable in the final version) and the whole story
is built forward, backwards and sideways from that one germinating idea. 
Was there a single seed for Babylon 5?  Was it a particular event of the
mid eighties which got you thinking?


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sincerely,                |
Julian Egelstaff          | "Speech is civilization itself.  The word,
                          |  even the most contradictory word, preserves
                          |  contact -- it is silence which isolates." 
                          |
as300 at freenet.carleton.ca |                --Thomas Mann.  1875-1955.
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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Lines: 19

Where it came from was really a thought experiment...how would I design an
SF saga *specifically* for television, that could really be told no other
way (except for maybe a 5-volume series of novels).  I considered the many
quality mainstream shows that had a base of operations where the story
came to you (St Elsewhere, LA Law, others) instead of going off in search
of the new planet of the week.  That led me to the notion of a space
station.

Then I kinda got into some of my thoughts on where we've come from as a
people, where we might be going, some political, social and historical
extrapolation, and one day...bang...it just slammed into my brain like a
.44.

And now here we are....


 jms


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