ATTN JMS: Could the dog be too heavy for the tail?

[B5JMS Poster]

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From: babylon at nauticom.net (JB)
Date: 8 Dec 1997 12:14:58 -0700
Lines: 39


	On my B5 Forum, I recently posted an observation that I had,
and wondered how you might feel about it.
	Basically, my thought concerned the B5 novels.
	It seemed to me that the reason "To Dream in the City of
Sorrows" was the most popular of the B5 novels, is because the story
consumated a part of the Arc that was already set in place, and only
needed filling-in.
	However, the least successful of the novels, and comic books,
were attempts at creating an original story based in the B5 Universe.
Most of the comics were like "To Dream", in that they allowed the
writers to fill-in-the-blanks of the Arc which we had heard about, but
weren't completely fleshed-out.
	To use Star Trek as an example (this is not a bash or anything
like that): A writer can toss the usual crew of the Enterprise into a
situation, and pretty much know what to expect from the characters,
and follow the usual formula.
	However, with B5, the Arc itself is so stringient, that it
makes it difficult to do the same thing.  Unless the B5 Universe is
expanded further with Crusade and the B5 TNT movies, I suspect that B5
novels will only succeed if they are parts of the Arc already set in
place.  At least that is how the pattern has played out thus far.
	This certainly isn't a complaint, by any means.  I've talked
to readers of the infinite number of "Trek" and "Star Wars" books, to
name just a few franchises.  Most have STOPPED reading them because
they became too safe, or too predictable.
	As far as the B5 novels, they may be part of the dog that
cannot be wagged by the tail as easily as others.



Jeff Bauer

Keeper of Jeff's Babylon 5 Update Page
http://www.nauticom.net/www/babylon

And The Storekeeper at
"The Sci-Fi Bookstore"
http://www.nauticom.net/www/babylon/store/store.htm

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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: 9 Dec 1997 10:05:59 -0700
Lines: 39

>the least successful of the novels, and comic books,
>were attempts at creating an original story based in the B5 Universe.
>However, with B5, the Arc itself is so stringient, that it
>makes it difficult to do the same thing.  Unless the B5 Universe is
>expanded further with Crusade and the B5 TNT movies, I suspect that B5
>novels will only succeed if they are parts of the Arc already set in
>place. 

I suppose ist's a matter of perspective.  B5 is future history; the events of
that history are set (to my mind, at least), but that isn't much different from
books about real history...there are a nearly infinite number of them, covering
every possible subject.  Each passing year provides enough grist for several
hundred books about the events that took place in that year.

If -- and this is shooting pretty damned high -- IF we were able to use these
books to fully flesh out a consistent universe, with a full and detailed and
self-referential history, BUT making each of them interesting and sufficiently
self-contained for the casual reader to get into them, and could do this over a
number of years, look at the huge tapestry you'd create.

That's the theory of what we're going to try and do with the Del Rey novels. 
We may succeed, we may fail, but it's going to be an interesting experiment.

For instance:

The first of the 3 trilogies from Del Rey is a Psi Corps story that spans about
a hundred years or so, from the early days of the Corps to the aftermath of the
Telepath War, with Bester being the linchpin in the storyline bridging all
three books.

To make them absolutely canonical, or as much as conceivable, I sat down and,
based on my background notes for the series, wrote the outlines for the first
two novels, and will be finishing up #3 shortly.  These will then be assigned
and fleshed out to novel length.

So we'll see if this works.


 jms
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