New Old B5 Novels from Del Rey

[spuzzum]

Saw this little piece of news in the latest Del Rey Newsletter:

"DEL REY TO REISSUE POPULAR BABLYON 5 NOVELS

In response to tremendous demand from the fans of Babylon 5, Del Rey
will being reissuing the Babylon 5 novels that were originally published
by Dell Books. There were nine novels from Dell, and Del Rey will begin
with the two most popular, THE SHADOW WITHIN by Jeanne Cavelos and TO
DREAM IN THE CITY OF SORROWS by Kathryn M. Drennan. The first
(scheduled for December 2002) will be THE SHADOW WITHIN, which acts as a
prequel to Jeanne Cavelos's trilogy The Passing of the Technomages.
In THE SHADOW WITHIN, Anna Sheridan, wife to the man who will command
the BABYLON 5 space station, is a scientist on an expedition to Z'Ha'Dum.
There she uncovers the source of the greatest evil the galaxy has ever
known--for Z'Ha'Dum is the homeworld of the Shadows. And what she
discovers there may cost Anna her life, or worse, her very soul."

Note the first reprint isn't scheduled until a year from now.

Old books are better than no books, I guess. I haven't heard about any new novels in the works in the meantime. Has anyone any news on that?



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"No matter where you go, there you are."
-- B. Banzai

 

[channe]

What IS it with this resurgence of interest in Babylon 5?

I like it, I like it.

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The writer's life is not meant to be a happy one. We all accept that going in. -JMS

 

[Shaal Mayan]

Ditto here I love all the interest in B5

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[whitestar90]

This good news, I wanted for about 6 months before I got a copy of To dream in the city of Sorrowsbecause they are very hard to find.The reprint will make these copy more accessible

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"When it is time, come to this place, call our name, we will be here" -Walkers of Sigma957

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>
What IS it with this resurgence of interest in Babylon 5?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I suspect that the resurgence will occur every few years. You get children seeing it for the first time and old vierwes wanting to rewatch it, after a rest.

Dizney re-issues its cartoon movies every 7 years. With luck, Babylon 5 will have a similar sequence. Star Trek does.

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Andrew Swallow

 

[Quagmire]

Moving to scifi probably helped. New audience and old fans watching it after not doing so for awhile. I know having it on scifi at a decent hour got me watching again. Being here, buying books and dvds soon followed.

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"Crying isn't gonna get your dog back. Unless your tears smell like dog food. So you can sit here eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell like dog food or you can go out there and find your dog."-Homer in The Canine Mutiny

 

[Kribu]

It's good to get the official confirmation. I can well wait a year to get The Shadow Within.

Now the next good thing would be to get some new books...

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"Narns, Humans, Centauri... we all do what we do for the same reason: because it seems like a good idea at the time." - G'Kar, Mind War
Kribu's Lounge | kribu@ranger.b5lr.com

 

[GaribaldisHair]

The only two of the original series of B5 novels I bought were "The Shadow Within" and "To Dream in the City of Sorrows", having read the reviews that said the others were not that good, (apart from Clark's Law which I never located).

They are both certainly worth a read, and have some interesting background stuff in.

The fact thay Del Rey have decided to reissue the older books indicates to me that they have been pleased with sales of the new trilogies. Hopefully that means we will see some more new stuff.

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DaveC
"Want to talk socks?"

 

[GaribaldisHair]

One other interesting aside.

Being a big fan of Amazon I tend to order most of my books through them - with the B5 ones that normally means .co.uk having to get stock from the USA.

I checked my e-mail this morning to find a message which reads thus

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> We have contacted our suppliers of this item and they have informed us
that as this title is very popular the dispatch of stock to us had
been delayed. However they have advised us that they have now
dispatched stock to us and we anticipate to receive this shortly.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not ecstatic at having a longer wait than usual - but if thats the price we pay for good sales and the possibility of more books then I can certainly live with that.

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DaveC
"Want to talk socks?"

 

[Leto II]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kribu:
It's good to get the official confirmation. I can well wait a year to get The Shadow Within.

Now the next good thing would be to get some new books...

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Don't worry...with the entire series at last on the upswing anon, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that new Babylon 5 novels will be on their way from either Del Rey or from another publisher.

But, if both this news and the news that B5 novel sales have been extremely strong are any indicators at all, Del Rey should logically be pushing for more original novels...but let's just hope that they do a little but better job this time around with releasing them in a quasi-timely fashion, eh?

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[This message has been edited by Leto II (edited December 10, 2001).]

 

[RW7427]

I have read all of the number B5 novels, with #7 "The Shadow Within" and #9 "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" as being the best in my opinion.

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Lorien: Who are you?
RW: The salad man.
Lorien: Why are you here?
RW: To be the salad ambassador.
Lorien: What do you want?
RW: Everyone to know the joys of salad.
Lorien: Do you have anything worth living for?
RW: Yes, my salad bars.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that new Babylon 5 novels will be on their way from either Del Rey or from another publisher.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, Del Rey obviously has the license for B5 novels at least through the end of 2002, since they've announced pub dates for next December. So no other publisher will be releasing any B5 books. Nor will Del Rey unless JMS either writes more outlines or approves proposals from other writers. The Technomage books were the last stories he worked out for other writers to do, and that was back when Crusade was still in production. Since then he has not mentioned any plans for new books, or having any other outlines in place.

All of the Del Rey trilogies were designed to "fill in the blanks" in the B5 story. The only major blanks left are the Telepath War, which will not be told in any form except a feature film if JMS has anything to say about it, the Rangers and Crusade periods (which won't be heavily explored in novels for obvious reasons) and the periods 2271 (end of Crusade) through 2278 (Centauri trilogy, ItB, "WWE") and 2278 to 2281 ("SiL")

We'll have to see how much or little he intends to do with those "open" spaces.

Actually a book, or trilogy, that I'd very much like to see is the story of Delenn's final journey, which could easily tell the story of her whole life, with flashbacks. I'd also like to read about Valen, and especially Zathras, during the Shadow War of the 1300s. But this is all in the lap of the Great Maker, and he seems to have his hands full at the moment, what with Jeremiah, The Amazing Spiderman, Midnight Nation, Rising Stars (both comic book and movie) and other projects.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[GKarsEye]

I have sources that tell me there will be a trilogy about Jinxo's Adventures In Space.

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

 

[Recoil]

Yea,

I heard that too. The plot is something like this:

David McIntyre, while helping the Narns, suffers a blow on the head, and goes back to thinking that he is King Arthur. He hooks up with Jinxo, and together they go looking for the Holy Grail. In the middle there somewhere there is talk about their trip to a Brakiri Brothel, some Iron Chef Flarn cook-off where Jinxo offends everyone by standing on the cooking counter cheering, and some weird trip where they are trying to find information disguised as Centauri and Arthur's hair catches a draft and he takes flies 2 cities away. To make a long story short, they end up finding it in Harrison Ford's tomb of all places.

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'I don't believe in the no-win scenario' - JTK

 

[spuzzum]

I'm surprised there's no novelization of the Rangers movie, considering Del Rey did novelizations of the other four B5-movies (even if one of the books got yanked and was never released).

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"No matter where you go, there you are."
-- B. Banzai

[This message has been edited by spuzzum (edited December 13, 2001).]

 

[spuzzum]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>
Joseph DeMartino said:
Well, Del Rey obviously has the license for B5 novels at least through the end of 2002, since they've announced pub dates for next December. So no other publisher will be releasing any B5 books.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Although you're quite probably correct, stranger things have happened.

For a brief time in the early 1980s, Bantam Books and Pocket Books were both releasing Star Trek novels concurrently.

Also, since these are reprint books that Del Rey presumably already has the rights to (since Dell Books and Del Rey are now both part of the giant Bertelsen Publishing Group), it is entirely possible that a different publisher could end up with the contract to publish new B5 books, while Del Rey serves up the re-issues. Possible, but highly doubtful. I can't see Del Rey ever letting the contract go with out a fight.

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"No matter where you go, there you are."
-- B. Banzai

 

[Psi-gryphon]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by spuzzum:
I'm surprised there's no novelization of the Rangers movie, considering Del Rey did novelizations of the other four B5-movies (even if one of the books got yanked and was never released).

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Which was never released? I know I have Thirdspace and In the Beginning . . . Was it River of Souls? I still have never seen the movie. Think I have it on tape somewhere . . .



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"There is always hope. Only because it's the only thing no one has figured out how to kill yet."

 

[Leto II]

Right, the novelization of The River of Souls, originally written by Yvonne Navarro, was placed on Del Rey's active release list for late 1998, but then was pulled completely.

JMS stated (have to look around for the exact quotes, but this is a paraphrase) that "the book wasn't where we wanted it to be," and that the author had devoted more page-space than is typically desirable over to the B-story (the holo-brothel component, I'm guessing here), with not enough attention paid to the A-story, the Ralgan souls and the Soul Hunters.

Oh, well...

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[bakana]

Guess the author wasn't willing to do whatever revisions JMS asked for.

Too Bad.

Although I have a vague memory of having seen a copy in Narns & Ignoble.
Perhaps a few shipments went out before they pulled it.
That could turn it into one Heck of a collectable.

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The 3 most common elements in the Universe:
Hydrogen, Greed, Stupidity!