[B5JMS] Thanks for good writing

[b5jms-admin at cs.columbia.edu]

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From: "Darren Bayley" <darren at bayleyhome.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: 8 May 2001 21:05:31 -0700
Lines: 82

Reading a post a bit earlier where someone was stunned to have
received a reply from Joe on their first post reminded me of a post
I've been thinking of making for a while, a sort of thank you to Joe
and everyone else here for keeping me sane for the last year or so.

I came to B5 late, Jan 2000 to be exact.  It came from going to a
collectors fair with friends coz there was nothing better to do and
then watching one of my friends spend hundreds of pounds on rare B5
collector cards.  After I'd got over the are you insane bit I really
thought there must be something to this B5 program so on checking
the TV guide later I found the UK scifi channel were showing it
every weekday.  So I started watching, it was Confessions and
Lamentations, which I thought was OK and carried on watching of
course it wasn't long until season 3 and then that's it, youre
hooked and then blown completely away.  I'd long since given up on
good continuity Scifi TV or even TV in general and this was on hell
of a blast of fresh air.

Three months later and its Sleeping in Light which is one, if not
THE, most amazing TV episode that I've ever seen and hey guess what
the Sci-fi channel goes straight back to the start.  So you figure
well I've got nearly all of two seasons to watch so you do.  Then it
happens you see something in the first episode that has
repercussions in the FIFTH season and you slowly realise that you
going to have to watch it ALL again.
This is where the thanks to Joe comes in.   Around this time I was
informed by my Directors our Company was being taken over by a huge
Japanese conglomerate and everything would continue as normal except
for my two divisions which were to be laid off along with me and
idiot here had just signed a legal gag order that meant I couldn't
breath a word for the next 3 months.  Absolute nightmare working
with people who you get along with famously and knowing that the
clock was ticking on everyone.  Anyway to keep long story long I
swear the only thing that kept me going through those 3 months and
the subsequent dragged out lay offs was the Universe that I could go
home and immerse myself into for an hour or so and by this time I
also had the books.

September comes and its Sleeping in Light again, so now what?  Well
I'd found a web site that gave a listing of all Joe's posts from
this newsgroup (no newsgroup access yet) and one said he was writing
a new comic called Midnight Nation, so I went out to get it (after
getting over the buying a comic weirdness) and again was blown away.
More collectors fairs and Rising Stars followed, I'm now catching up
with the other comic books Joe recommended in another post Kingdom
Come, Marvels, Astro City, Watchmen, Sandman and so on all of which
I've read so far, the first four are extremely good.  I'm now on 10
regular comic series.

Oh yeah I'm completely converted, even been to a couple of Starfury
conventions the first of which was when Jason Carter was on stage
and was asked the question - how did you know how to use the Alien
healing device to save Ivonova? - to which he replied - can someone
please explain the concept of fantasy to this woman!

Then comes the newsgroup access and sitting around for a while
watching you guys and getting the idea of how to do what.  I make my
first post and Joe replied !  Dragged my dropped lower jaw around
for a couple of days of amazement and then later made the immortal
mistake of asking if anyone could recommend a good series of scifi
books with recurring characters.  After being totally buried in
replies I settled on the Lois Bujold series and wandered off to my
local bookshops to find out why I'd missed a huge series of Hugo
nominated books on my visits there to find out that they only
stocked the latest ones, well that's Leicester for you (for non UK
people it's the city that's furthest from the sea, smack bang in the
middle)

So to sum up thanks to Joe and everyone else here for reintroducing
me to some damn fine writing whether it be TV or books or comics.
Gotta go Rising Stars 14 and No Honor 3 have arrived in the mail and
I've got to watch last nights Angel.  Buffy and Angel, two more
series I've just started on, thought Buffy episode The Body was well
up there with Sleeping, no music at all, pretty amazing.

Thanx

Darren





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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: 12 May 2001 20:18:24 -0700
Lines: 12

You're welcome.

 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2001 by synthetic worlds, ltd., 
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine 
and don't send me story ideas)