B5 Canon Books/Comics - Worth a damn?

[dreamer]

Managed to find a mint copy of the first technomage book finally.

It was pretty ok, a bit of a disapointent maybe. I suppose I would've liked it more if I didn't already know the truth about technomages (or at least parts of it). I don't think I will bother to look for the other books since I felt that this didn't exactly expand or contribute anything mentionable to B5.

 

[KoshN]

Managed to find a mint copy of the first technomage book finally.

Technomage Books #1 and #3 are easy to find. It's #2 that's hard to find.

It was pretty ok, a bit of a disapointent maybe. I suppose I would've liked it more if I didn't already know the truth about technomages (or at least parts of it).

You know the truth about technomages (or at least parts of it). from what, JMS's two unfilmed Crusade scripts? That's the tip of the iceberg.

I don't think I will bother to look for the other books....

You probably wouldn't be able to find Book #2 "Summoning Light" anyway.

since I felt that this didn't exactly expand or contribute anything mentionable to B5.

You haven't even gotten to 2259 yet. Yeah, nothing much happpened in the next three years in the books. <S>

 

[Republibot 3.0]

The Trilogies are ok. The Psi Corps trilogy - particularly the first book - is far and away the best writing of all the B5 tie ins. Of the initial standalones, I would strongly suggest that people who come across copies of that John Vornhort turd should back away slowly and call their local law enforcement agencies in order to report an unexploded bomb in their presence. Terrible.

"To Dream in the City of Shadows" was good, and...uhm about half of "The Shadow Within" is good, though the Sheridan stuff mostly doesn't work. That one book where Sheridan is wanting to be James Bond is best avoided. The rest of them - none of 'em quite work because of myriad internal conflicts with what we know of the B5 universe.

I've never read the novelizations.

ON the Trilogies: something that annoys me about them is the internal continuity of the "Legions of Fire" book, which doesn't fit at all with what we see in Season 5. Also, the trilogies all - to greater or lesser extent - take place *after* B5 and/or Crusade - but they give us practically no information that we hadn't already surmised from elsewhere. It's as if JMS was partitioning out his information to the authors with a VERY small ladel, so we find out next to nothing about the larger picture, which, for me, personally, was rather frustrating. I'm not sure if I should take the conclusion of the Technomage Trilogy as cannon, either. It seemed a bit superhero-ey to me.

The comics, on the other hand, are fun, light, and occasionally clever despite the terrible art. Several plot threads introduced in them crossed over in to the show itself, and it's interesting that several plot threads and characters that were introduced with the obvious intention of crossing over in to the show *didn't.* For instance, at one point, I believe we meet an early iteration of "Control," before Control became Talia.

 

[KoshN]

The Trilogies are ok. The Psi Corps trilogy - particularly the first book - is far and away the best writing of all the B5 tie ins.

I prefer the Centauri and Technomage trilogies to the Psi Corps trilogy.

Of the initial standalones, I would strongly suggest that people who come across copies of that John Vornhort turd should back away slowly and call their local law enforcement agencies in order to report an unexploded bomb in their presence. Terrible.

And yet, Dell #1 "Voices" (John Vornholt) and Dell #3 "Blood Oath" (John Vornholt) are not nearly as bad as #4 "Clark's Law" (Jim Mortimore) or #5 "The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name" (Neal Barrett, Jr.), both of which are far more deserving to be blown up.

I've never read the novelizations.

The Peter David ones (In the Beginning and Thirdspace) aren't bad. Robert Sheckley's "A Call to Arms" is bad, but not completely worthless. It did clear up a couple of things from the movie for me.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

The Trilogies are ok. The Psi Corps trilogy - particularly the first book - is far and away the best writing of all the B5 tie ins.

I prefer the Centauri and Technomage trilogies to the Psi Corps trilogy.

Of the initial standalones, I would strongly suggest that people who come across copies of that John Vornhort turd should back away slowly and call their local law enforcement agencies in order to report an unexploded bomb in their presence. Terrible.

And yet, Dell #1 "Voices" (John Vornholt) and Dell #3 "Blood Oath" (John Vornholt) are not nearly as bad as #4 "Clark's Law" (Jim Mortimore) or #5 "The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name" (Neal Barrett, Jr.), both of which are far more deserving to be blown up.

I've never read the novelizations.

The Peter David ones (In the Beginning and Thirdspace) aren't bad. Robert Sheckley's "A Call to Arms" is bad, but not completely worthless. It did clear up a couple of things from the movie for me.

Clark's Law started out feeling like it was going to be a good book, but then it never delivered, and it had numbers of egregious factual errors about the workings of the B5 universe, and ultimately the plot made little or no sense, and was completely trivial. I'd sumit the one that takes place while G'kar is in Cartagia's prison is worse, though.

Never made it through "The Touch of your shadow."

So what things did the "Call to Arms" novelization clear up for you?

 

[KoshN]

Never made it through "The Touch of your shadow."

Not surprising. It was a long, looooong buildup to a [size=-2]fizzle[/size]. It is surprising how so few words could seem to drag on for sooooo long. The best thing about that book was the cover art.

So what things did the "Call to Arms" novelization clear up for you?

Page 49 - The things pictured in front of the Excalibur when it first moved, were ships pulling on it (with cables? ... some kind of fixed masts?). When I first saw the movie, I thought those looked more like warning lights on the ends of antanna masts, not the engines of many distant ships that were pulling. In the movie, they all looked too perfectly straight. Not one of my favorite scenes.

Page 228 - "The beams from all four primary guns met in front of the Excalibur and shot out like a serpent's tongue, disturbing the fabric of space itself." I'd never considered that the Excalibur had four primary guns that formed the main beam. I'd always thought of it as three, one from each main strut, and the front was merely a merging/targeting point, not another gun that contributed to the beam. OTOH, it could be from the original Excalibur design that had a fourth strut (lower middle, full sized), and the book never got changed to reflect the final, "movie" look of the Excalibur.

The "A Call to Arms" novelization is littered with errors, things that don't line up with the B5 universe, errors in scale, lines that conflict with the script, etc. Sheckley's additions are for the most part, weak, except for Chapter 17 (pages 87-95) about Captain Anderson, which isn't bad.