Babylon 5 Novels

[Tulin]

I've been saying precisely that(B5 should continue in books)on here for years. I see NO reason that B5 has not continued, or in my ideal world gone BACKWARDS(to earlier eras and stories)and continued in novel form.

I came to the conclusion it was a vanity thing for Joe. My suspicions were confirmed earlier this year when, after not being offered enough money to emulate a feature in his DTDVD releases Joe basically packed up his bat and ball and went home.

 

[Christopher]

The first two books went for the obvious, but dull, option of 'Regular castmember gets framed, has to prove innocence.' The third (Blood Oath) just rehashes the 'Assassin after G'kar' episode from early season one. And as Christopher says, book five is near unreadable from what I remember of my one read of it at the time (it's sad that that's the one I've got autographed by Bruce Boxleitner).
But Clark's Law has a decent try at being an episode like season one's Believers - it has little or no impact on the big story, but does showcase the sort of ethical and philosophical issues that only Babylon 5 was willing to handle so directly at the time, in terms of TVSF (I was going to explain, but thought better of potential spoilers).

Actually, I felt that the events that took place on the station in Clark's Law were so chaotic and turbulent that they should by rights have had a major impact on the station and characters. It wasn't really believable as a story that the characters would just move on from and never mention again. I mean, its strength was that it did tell a big, thought-provoking story, but it was the kind of story that should've had long-term ramifications. The very thing that made it so much better than most of the other Dell novels also made it harder to accept as a "real" event within the series universe.

And although what you say about the first few books' plots is basically true, there's more to a book than plot. Books 2 and 3 have some interesting worldbuilding and character-background elements to them; for instance, book 3 lets us see the Narn homeworld pre-bombardment and introduces us to G'kar's home and family, things we never got to see on the show. And book 2 spends a lot of time exploring colonial Mars culture, politics, etc. (I recall that book 1 had some material set on Mars, at least in the first chapter, but the main thing I remember is that Vornholt somehow got the idea that Mars was a lethally hot planet rather than a lethally cold one.)

 

[diankra]

The first two books went for the obvious, but dull, option of 'Regular castmember gets framed, has to prove innocence.' The third (Blood Oath) just rehashes the 'Assassin after G'kar' episode from early season one. And as Christopher says, book five is near unreadable from what I remember of my one read of it at the time (it's sad that that's the one I've got autographed by Bruce Boxleitner).
But Clark's Law has a decent try at being an episode like season one's Believers - it has little or no impact on the big story, but does showcase the sort of ethical and philosophical issues that only Babylon 5 was willing to handle so directly at the time, in terms of TVSF (I was going to explain, but thought better of potential spoilers).

Actually, I felt that the events that took place on the station in Clark's Law were so chaotic and turbulent that they should by rights have had a major impact on the station and characters. It wasn't really believable as a story that the characters would just move on from and never mention again. I mean, its strength was that it did tell a big, thought-provoking story, but it was the kind of story that should've had long-term ramifications. The very thing that made it so much better than most of the other Dell novels also made it harder to accept as a "real" event within the series universe.

And although what you say about the first few books' plots is basically true, there's more to a book than plot. Books 2 and 3 have some interesting worldbuilding and character-background elements to them; for instance, book 3 lets us see the Narn homeworld pre-bombardment and introduces us to G'kar's home and family, things we never got to see on the show. And book 2 spends a lot of time exploring colonial Mars culture, politics, etc. (I recall that book 1 had some material set on Mars, at least in the first chapter, but the main thing I remember is that Vornholt somehow got the idea that Mars was a lethally hot planet rather than a lethally cold one.)

Yes, you've got a good point there about the wider effects of Clark's Law. And I do remember thinking at the time that Blood Oath had involved a bit of good lateral thinking around the limitations by showing us a Narn that the TV series would never confirm or deny, given what had happened to it onscreen (though the episode perhaps hadn't been run at that point, ISTR that jms told the writer he had more or less free rein, given what jms was going to do to Narn).

 

[Jan]

I came to the conclusion it was a vanity thing for Joe. My suspicions were confirmed earlier this year when, after not being offered enough money to emulate a feature in his DTDVD releases Joe basically packed up his bat and ball and went home.

Yep. That's gotta be it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that no publisher is interested in them, it's all got to be pure ego.

Regardless of how much the rare books of the trilogies make on the secondary market, the books simply didn't make enough money.

It was easy to blame the publisher's 'stealth marketing' until the two canon Dell books were republished a few years ago with an eye towards re-issuing the trilogies if the first two were successful enough. Since there's no sign of reprints of the trilogies, it would seem that the market has spoken.

And for those interested in why some of the books of the trilogies are rare, check out the Nov. 12 entry from Peter David on http://peterdavid.net/

Jan

 

[JoeD80]

EDit: Ok, I checked wikipedia, and found something interesting (if it's to be believed), which is that whatever the credit might claim, the fifth book Touch of Your Shadow is actually written by the author of the eighth one, which gets a bit of a slating elsewhere in the thread...

Book five was written by Neal Barrett, Jr., an established SF author. He's not the same person as Al. They were born years apart. Where is the source for this anyway (besides Al's site apparently?) jms never mentioned this.

 

[TerriO]

Jan, I respect your defense of Joe, but the fact is a publisher was interested in doing more, and that's very rare in this instance. The fact that Mongoose wanted to do more novels with the show off the air makes it obvious that they were willing to take the even smaller market. They were willing to handle the lower sales.

There are writers out there who'd still kill to write B5 novels. I'm one of them. My fiance is another. I was talking with Mongoose about pitching before the blowup with Joe occurred on that deal. I was bugging the editor at Del Rey back before they chose not to re-up the license. I've spoken with Claudia Christian on what doing her novel (which was printed, but never made it out of the warehouse, from what she told me) was like.

Blaming the sales is a nice cover, but it's not the whole story. Yeah, sales weren't great, but that was pretty much an across-the-board scenario. If the sales were truly that low, why would Mongoose have even been willing to take the risk? How could they possibly have gotten someone with Claudia Christian's name recognition to launch a line that had died even with one of the most famous tie-in writers on the planet (Peter David) writing in it? Where was that money going to come from if a profit & loss projection was destined to be such complete crap?

I respect that Joe wants to control B5. In his shoes, I'd probably be the same way. However, he also wanted approval of the manuscripts, while he was doing at least one television program and had comics deadlines of his own to meet. That's going to impede anyone's ability to get through reading a 300-400 page manuscript, let alone make notes and/or give approvals. Any slowdown in approvals means a slowdown in everything else after that point in the process. Then he gets online and gripes about how long it's taking the books to come out? That's a setup for delays and inevitable failure of the line. The publishers can only do so much. When you're dealing with licensed fiction (and, granted, I've only written for two licenses so far), you're dealing with steps in the process that just don't exist when you're dealing with original fiction.

Not everything's in the publisher's hands when it comes to tie-in fiction. Sales will have a factor in whether or not a license is renewed, yeah, but I've heard more than a few horror stories of license renewals that didn't happen for reasons far beyond sales. Mind you, the show being canceled is usually #1 on that list, because the sales always go down when the show's not on the air. If you're at PhilCon this weekend, track me down and we'll talk.

 

[JoeD80]

I've spoken with Claudia Christian on what doing her novel (which was printed, but never made it out of the warehouse, from what she told me) was like.

Some of us have read Claudia's novel because she sold her own personal copies from her web-site, and it really wasn't up there with the other novels.

However, he also wanted approval of the manuscripts, while he was doing at least one television program and had comics deadlines of his own to meet.

You bet, because he has always had control of the manuscripts from the first book in 1994. Fans like us want no less. I will point out however, that jms had approved manuscripts sometimes MONTHS and even a YEAR before the release. Last book of the Psi Corps trilogy was delayed until October entirely because Del Rey chose that date. Everything was in already. The Technomage trilogy was already to go with Book 1 when the first Centauri trilogy book was published, and yet Del Rey chose to wait until the entire Centauri trilogy was published before book 1 of the Technomage trilogy was finally released. That was a publisher's decision, not a decision by jms or held back by jms in any way.

 

[TerriO]

I've spoken with Claudia Christian on what doing her novel (which was printed, but never made it out of the warehouse, from what she told me) was like.

Some of us have read Claudia's novel because she sold her own personal copies from her web-site, and it really wasn't up there with the other novels.

And that misses my point entirely. She was the author chosen to launch a new line. Her name on the cover of an Ivanova novel is like having Mira Furlan write a Delenn novel. You've got the actor who played the character writing said character. That's a Major Selling Point for the novel. And considering that they were starting from a negative position anyway, they needed everything they could get.

However, he also wanted approval of the manuscripts, while he was doing at least one television program and had comics deadlines of his own to meet.

You bet, because he has always had control of the manuscripts from the first book in 1994.

If memory serves, wasn't there a novel that had Talia Winters as blind that was cited as the reason Joe took tighter control over the novels? It's been a good 10+ years, I admit, so I may be misremembering, but I do remember that there was one glaring liberty an author took on an early novel that caused Joe to step in and take tighter control.

Fans like us want no less. I will point out however, that jms had approved manuscripts sometimes MONTHS and even a YEAR before the release. Last book of the Psi Corps trilogy was delayed until October entirely because Del Rey chose that date. Everything was in already. The Technomage trilogy was already to go with Book 1 when the first Centauri trilogy book was published, and yet Del Rey chose to wait until the entire Centauri trilogy was published before book 1 of the Technomage trilogy was finally released. That was a publisher's decision, not a decision by jms or held back by jms in any way.

Without getting into any he said/she said scenarios (because I have heard both sides of this story, Neroon can vouch for me on that if you need it), if the sales were that bad when they were releasing one book at a time, why on Earth would anyone think the market could support two books in the line at once? If the market could have supported two books at once, don't you think they would have had two books out at once?

It's not outside the realms of possibility that they waited to schedule the book until they actually had an approved manuscript. It's been known to happen.

So, if book 3 ends up late--for whatever reason, deadbeat author, approvals taking too long, slow copyedit, etc.--and your next book in the schedule is book 1 of another trilogy? It makes absolute editorial sense to delay the next trilogy (especially one as niche-within-a-niche as the Technomage trilogy was) when the books were already coming out as sporadically as the B5 novels were. Yes, the die-hards like us were going to be there and able to follow it, but catering to the die-hard fans isn't going to keep any project afloat, unless you're really lucky and there are enough die-hard fans to make the numbers work.

I'm saying nobody's innocent here. Joe was a very busy man at the time. Obviously the novels weren't going to be his #1 priority. He had his own deadlines to meet. And those deadlines are what puts food on the table and pays the mortgage. I often wonder what might have been of the line if he'd delegated someone he trusted to approve the manuscripts on the occasions when he was too busy, because such occasions had to have existed.

 

[Jan]

Jan, I respect your defense of Joe, but the fact is a publisher was interested in doing more, and that's very rare in this instance. The fact that Mongoose wanted to do more novels with the show off the air makes it obvious that they were willing to take the even smaller market. They were willing to handle the lower sales.

No offense to Mongoose but...they'd've had to, wouldn't they? It's not as if they can be considered a major publisher. And not offense to you TerriO, but I think you'd've done major harm to your literary reputation if you'd had a book published by them. I've *read* two of the Mongoose novels. Claudia's was somewhat readable. The other would have been an unmitigated waste of trees and pigment.

Blaming the sales is a nice cover, but it's not the whole story. Yeah, sales weren't great, but that was pretty much an across-the-board scenario. If the sales were truly that low, why would Mongoose have even been willing to take the risk?

Well, for one thing they already had a license to do B5 tie-in books so there probably wasn't much in the way of further initial investment.

How could they possibly have gotten someone with Claudia Christian's name recognition to launch a line that had died even with one of the most famous tie-in writers on the planet (Peter David) writing in it? Where was that money going to come from if a profit & loss projection was destined to be such complete crap?

Nobody said that projections were destined to be complete crap. However, there's probably a major difference in what's acceptable to a very small publisher and what's acceptable to a major publisher.

I respect that Joe wants to control B5. In his shoes, I'd probably be the same way. However, he also wanted approval of the manuscripts, while he was doing at least one television program and had comics deadlines of his own to meet. That's going to impede anyone's ability to get through reading a 300-400 page manuscript, let alone make notes and/or give approvals. Any slowdown in approvals means a slowdown in everything else after that point in the process. Then he gets online and gripes about how long it's taking the books to come out? That's a setup for delays and inevitable failure of the line.

I've read you talking about JMS complaining about the slow publishing schedule before. Can you point me to that post or posts because I've never been able to locate anything like that. The closest I recall is his saying that sometimes the manuscripts got to him fairly close to the publishing date.

The publishers can only do so much. When you're dealing with licensed fiction (and, granted, I've only written for two licenses so far), you're dealing with steps in the process that just don't exist when you're dealing with original fiction.

As it happens, I was in a dialogue with Matthew Sprange after the dust-up with JMS and he showed me the current approval process that licensees have to go through with WB. I don't know how it was before but these days it seems to be a pretty fast and painless process.

If you're at PhilCon this weekend, track me down and we'll talk.

Wish I were. Next con for me will be New York Comic-Con.

Jan

 

[Steve Roby]

One possible reason why Del Rey's B5 trilogies didn't sell well: they weren't Babylon 5 stories. You get three books about Bester (a supporting character), three books about Londo Mollari, and three books about Technomages. It's an interesting approach, and arguably shows some integrity for not milking the franchise. You might even be able to argue that the Dell books showed that doing novels set during the series run didn't work.

But if the right editor and the right writers -- good writers with some tie-in writing experience and a genuine interest in and knowledge of the show, writing after the series was completed -- had been given the chance to tell stories set in those five seasons, preferably standalone novels published on a regular schedule, I really think they would have sold better than the trilogies. People liked B5. They liked the setting and the characters as well as the stories, and there was plenty of room to fit new stories in and around the stories we saw onscreen.

It took a long time for the Star Trek novel line to break the standard format and do some different stories focusing on new characters and situations, or a familiar character or two in different situations. They did that when the line was established and successful. JMS and Del Rey made the mistake of starting with the risky stuff, without having established a core audience for the novels.

(For that reason, I think the Mongoose line was probably doomed to failure, even if it had happened. One of the directions they wanted to go was a series of novels about the Rangers featuring original characters, rather than focusing on the TV characters.)

 

[JoeD80]

If memory serves, wasn't there a novel that had Talia Winters as blind that was cited as the reason Joe took tighter control over the novels? It's been a good 10+ years, I admit, so I may be misremembering, but I do remember that there was one glaring liberty an author took on an early novel that caused Joe to step in and take tighter control.

Book #4 I think is the one you are remembering -- Lyta was deaf in the book. jms said he either didn't catch it while reading the manuscript, or that it was added in later.

It's not outside the realms of possibility that they waited to schedule the book until they actually had an approved manuscript. It's been known to happen.

So, if book 3 ends up late--for whatever reason, deadbeat author, approvals taking too long, slow copyedit, etc.--and your next book in the schedule is book 1 of another trilogy?

...

I'm saying nobody's innocent here. Joe was a very busy man at the time. Obviously the novels weren't going to be his #1 priority.

No, the *manuscripts were approved already*. My point was, Joe had already approved everything. There wasn't a delay coming from his end or the author's end; the delay was coming from Del Rey's end. There wasn't a problem with the authors turning in stuff late. There wasn't a problem getting it edited on time. It was entirely a publishing date decision. The books were READY AND COMPLETE.

I often wonder what might have been of the line if he'd delegated someone he trusted to approve the manuscripts on the occasions when he was too busy, because such occasions had to have existed.

When you have control over something, you can choose to delegate approval responsibilites. Obviously, Joe wanted to personally go over everything himself. Deal with it.

 

[JoeD80]

But if the right editor and the right writers -- good writers with some tie-in writing experience and a genuine interest in and knowledge of the show

I don't know Keyes work as well, but certainly Peter David and Jeanne Cavelos were fans of Babylon 5 and also had experience writing media tie-ins, so this did happen.

had been given the chance to tell stories set in those five seasons, preferably standalone novels published on a regular schedule, I really think they would have sold better than the trilogies.

While certainly figuring out which stories work better than others is subjective, I don't understand why this would have sold better. The trilogies were written directly from notes by the creator of the show, expanding on events in the show. The novels that were written earlier during the show WERE standalones that were published regularly (three books per season published about two months apart each) and the trilogies are generally considered to be of a much better caliber.

 

[Candlelight]

Well I went down there and they only had Clarks Law, Whisper of your Name, Betrayals and one other of the non-important ones.

Guess my memory was playing tricks on me...

 

[diankra]

EDit: Ok, I checked wikipedia, and found something interesting (if it's to be believed), which is that whatever the credit might claim, the fifth book Touch of Your Shadow is actually written by the author of the eighth one, which gets a bit of a slating elsewhere in the thread...

Book five was written by Neal Barrett, Jr., an established SF author. He's not the same person as Al. They were born years apart. Where is the source for this anyway (besides Al's site apparently?) jms never mentioned this.

As said, it's on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Sarrantonio#Babylon_5_series); the relevant quote is "Babylon 5: The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name (Dell, 1996) (as by Neal Barrett, Jr. -- Sarrantonio took over and wrote this book after the cover had been printed)". As always with wikipedia, take with a pinch of salt, particularly as there's no footnoted reference.

 

[Steve Roby]

While certainly figuring out which stories work better than others is subjective, I don't understand why this would have sold better.

They couldn't have sold any worse, could they? I remember Steve Saffel, the editor responsible for the Del Rey books, coming online and damn near begging fans to buy the books or there wouldn't be any more. It didn't work.

The trilogies were written directly from notes by the creator of the show, expanding on events in the show. The novels that were written earlier during the show WERE standalones that were published regularly (three books per season published about two months apart each) and the trilogies are generally considered to be of a much better caliber.

And they didn't sell.

I'm not saying the Dell books were better than the Del Rey books. I am suggesting that Del Rey took the wrong approach.

The trilogies were aimed at the diehard fans, the ones who know and care about JMS, canon, etc, not the casual fans. First, they're trilogies rather than standalones, which may reduce the number of people willing to pick one up and try it. Second, they aren't reproducing the experience of watching the TV series, they're going in very different directions, which means they won't necessarily appeal to all viewers. Not everyone is necessarily fascinated by Bester's personal life or the Technomages.

 

[JoeD80]

I'm not saying the Dell books were better than the Del Rey books. I am suggesting that Del Rey took the wrong approach.

Except Dell tried the *exact approach* you suggested, and those books didn't sell as well.

EDIT: well I can't find sales figures to confirm that, but that was my impression. These days however, there is high demand for those books that did go out of print (David's 3rd Centauri book is sold for upwards of $80). I can't see that happening if they had only been standalones that were written more like episodes rather than filling in other corners of the universe.

 

[Steve Roby]

I'm not saying the Dell books were better than the Del Rey books. I am suggesting that Del Rey took the wrong approach.

Except Dell tried the *exact approach* you suggested, and those books didn't sell as well.

Here's the *exact approach* I suggested:

But if the right editor and the right writers -- good writers with some tie-in writing experience and a genuine interest in and knowledge of the show, writing after the series was completed -- had been given the chance to tell stories set in those five seasons, preferably standalone novels published on a regular schedule, I really think they would have sold better than the trilogies.

Deaf Lyta and a number of other factors suggest that Dell didn't really get the right editor and writers.

As for PAD's third book, the link Jan posted here from his blog says that it's a lot more rare than the other two books in the trilogy. Anyone who has the first two will want the third... but there aren't enough copies to go around.

 

[JoeD80]

Here's the *exact approach* I suggested:

But if the right editor and the right writers -- good writers with some tie-in writing experience and a genuine interest in and knowledge of the show, writing after the series was completed -- had been given the chance to tell stories set in those five seasons, preferably standalone novels published on a regular schedule, I really think they would have sold better than the trilogies.

Back the train up -- so I was confusing half of the approach. Still, John Vornholt had media-tie in experience, and Jeanne Cavelos was the editor at the time, which I would think qualified for right editor and right writers (well I like Vornholt's books personally anyway), and Dell was doing the standalone approach, so it still tracks with what you said. Joe was there to approve things, and one of the reasons he later changed his idea from accepting pitches to writing outlines directly was because of such things creeping in as Lyta's deafness that he wouldn't catch reading manuscripts late at night. Del Rey's approach worked better. Was it perfect? No. But it did better than Dell's run (at least, as I said, I get that impression. Don't have #s).

As for PAD's third book, the link Jan posted here from his blog says that it's a lot more rare than the other two books in the trilogy. Anyone who has the first two will want the third... but there aren't enough copies to go around.

As you'll note he states there, specifically there aren't enough copies because Del Rey's license expired so they couldn't print any new ones to keep up with demand as the series became more popular.

 

[Reverend]

I suppose now would not be a good time to mention I managed to get all three Centauri books off ebay for £10?

While I won't pretend to understand everything that transpires between publishers, authors and studios, I do recall there was also some behind the scenes palaver over the novelization of 'River of Souls', or am I misremembering?

As for further entries in the series, I'd personally prefer to see some Audiobooks produced! I do most of my reading on the commute and listening to an audiobook on my mp3 player is a much more convenient (and I admit slightly lazy) way to consume fiction. If they ever get around to it I nominate Peter Jurasik for the Centauri trilogy!