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Space: 1999
Johnny Byrne’s Children of the Gods

by William Latham
Foreword by Sandy Byrne

Cover art by Ken Scott

A malevolent force invades Moonbase Alpha, abducting two unborn infants. Years later, the children return to Alpha with fantastic powers but no humanity. Can these two newcomers be stopped before the base is destroyed?

Based on Space:1999 Story Editor Johnny Byrne’s legendary lost script, Space: 1999 Children of the Gods reveals an untold tale from Moonbase Alpha’s past while initiating new steps forward in Alpha’s ultimate destiny.

Interview with William Latham on Johnny Byrne’s Children of the Gods

Interview on Johnny Byrne’s Children of the Gods with Author William Latham

Conducted by Simon Morris

Q: You posted on the Powys forum quite awhile back that you were intimidated by this project.

A: Yeah. This was a hard book to work on. There was Johnny’s story, then Johnny and Mateo’s story, and then I had to go into the DNA of those two stories and really come up with something that I thought would work, that hadn’t been done before. Elements of the original story have been done multiple times in science fiction. So it seemed like in whatever direction I turned, I found somebody else’s footsteps, and often not Johnny’s or Mateo’s. Whoever wrote this book was gonna take heat. So I said it might as well be me. If you’ve read Johnny’s interviews about Children of the Gods, this isn’t that story. It’s got the core components of that story. It’s got a couple of powerful children. They were kidnapped from Alpha at birth. They do return to Alpha and they’ve got superhuman powers. But that whole judgment of humanity thing, that’s gone in its entirety.

Q: How did you get the book written? How did you come up with a story using those elements?

A: Surprisingly, some of it was finding a science fiction hook to play with that was something different. I had a lot of nights where I’d spend a couple of hours and only get part of a page written. For anyone who’s read Chasing the Cyclops I had to map out a story and look for the physics, look for the vacuums, just like I do with anything else. And thankfully a way to approach this story revealed itself. I was also able to pick up a lot of threads left over from Alpha that thematically worked together. A powerful being versus Moonbase Alpha is basically every episode from Year Two, and a bunch of episodes from Year One. I had to simplify things to get something unique, pare down the plot and basically build up the characterization and make the characters work this story. I’m a plot junkie, or at least, I have been. As the years go by, characterization is getting more interesting to me. The Good MUF in Omega and Alpha, I think he was born from that. I think this time around, things were a little different. I found out that a friend of mine from high school had passed away. I hadn’t talked to him in about twenty years as we’d had a bit of a falling out, and partly this book let me talk to him again. To try to focus on what was positive about him. The character in this book is really nothing like him, but there’s an essence of their spirits that is similar.

Q: I’ve heard that parts of the book take place in Year Two and Year Three.

A: There’s a little bit that takes place in Year Two. It’s mostly Year Three, picking up about eight months after Alpha. So I got to show some of the things that were settling into place at the end of Alpha, how they panned out. Some things are changing on Alpha. Some things that might surprise you. People are making decisions that you wouldn’t expect. This was the first novel I’d written in something like five years. That’s a long time to go between novels. Chasing the Cyclops was easy. This was tough. I guess this book will seem like an episode from the show. It’s not bridging anything, it’s not wrapping up long-standing mysteries, it’s not a sequel to anything. It follows the kind of classic formula of a Space:1999 story. It all takes place in a day or so.

Q: How would you compare this book to the other Powys novels?

A: It’s self-contained, so obviously, at least for my books, it’s probably closest to Resurrection. But it’s not scary. Some folks out there who attended the PowysCon East got to read a chunk of the opening and if I read their responses right, they were surprised by the tone of the book. I didn’t have to tie any mysteries up in this book. So I managed to sneak one in anyway. Even though we’re a lot of years away from Message from Moonbase Alpha in series continuity, this book shows some of the building blocks put in place, I guess. When I say a lot of years, I mean in the timeline of the series.

Q: Do you think Johnny Byrne would approve of the book?

A: Johnny wasn’t just a writer, he was a story editor. When you’re a story editor, you’re frequently needing to go in and modify someone else’s writing to make it fit into the larger whole. I think Johnny would have at least nodded and recognized that it’s never easy. I had to mutate some of what he was doing with some of the characters, but I think he would have understood why. I think this is probably more science fiction than Omega and Alpha were, since those two were more fantasy, and Resurrection was more horror. The key elements from Johnny’s original story are in this book. Other than that, I doubt you’ll find what you expect in this book. I’ve tried to make this a good, solid book. One that will stand on its own with our other books. One that won’t discredit Johnny name. Time will tell. This book might surprise people.

Q: What’s next?

A: The Final Revolution. And for everybody worried about that title, read the first page of Resurrection. That’s where the line comes from. That’ll give you a hint of what the book’s gonna be about. Final Revolution will be adventure. Big villain. Big battles. But it will represent Moonbase Alpha at its peak, even though the base isn’t in its best shape.

Q: Things are taking a long time again. That’s getting people frustrated.

A: Well, nobody will be happier than Mateo and myself when all these books are done and out the door. Surprises are coming. Wallets will be emptied. And they will be emptied soon. And Prisoner fans? Your day will come. Probably. Try to be nice to us and we’ll try to be nice to you. As for me? I’ve edited two books this year, written one, will be formatting some more. When the gates open, they’ll open wide like they did in early 2010. Stuff’s coming, folks. This year.

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The Powysverse Compendium

by Patricia T. Sokol

Foreword by Zienia Merton
Afterword by Martin Willey

Cover art by Ken Scott

Interview with Pat Sokol on The Powysverse Compendium

Interview on The Powysverse Compendium with author Patricia T. Sokol

 Conducted by Simon Morris

 Q.  What is the Powysverse for you?

 A.  As a reader or as a something else?  As a reader, it’s hard to say, because there are so many answers.  I’m not familiar with other media tie-in books, novels, whatever, because nothing ever grabbed my imagination like Space:1999 did or does, so I’ve never followed anything else.  But, for the fan side of my brain, the Powysverse was constructed by people who have a great affection for the show and understand that it never flourished as it might have.  It was 30 years ahead of its time.  Now, there is richness in the storylines and a reason for so many apparently disparate things to have happened, and belief doesn’t need to be suspended as much.   It feels like the things we wanted, but never got.  Maybe we didn’t realize we wanted it, because a lot of us were kids in the mid-70s.  But, now that we call ourselves grown-ups, and we realize how our own experiences have shaped us, we can empathize with suddenly being a step-dad to a teenager, or having a parent pass away, or having a good friend just up and go.  The Powysverse takes what was great fun, and makes it grown-up, but at the same time, it’s still a whole lot of fun.

 Q.  When did you realize that there was a metastory behind the individual novels? How do you feel about this development and how did it affect your approach to writing this book?

 Soon after Victor showed up in Omega, with BadMike shortly thereafter.   I right away went back and reread “Spider’s Web.”  Reading “Spider’s Web” the first time, you say, OK, the dragon things are here too, and they’re nasty.  Poor Leira.  Poor Yendys.  Gee, it’s nice Victor was happy and it’s too bad she had to die, and jeepers there’s more of that confusing dialog in italics and how come Yendys is in a story by Bill when Brian Ball wrote Survival and wait a minute what’s been traveling with Victor and why did it say “It was good to have known you,” and how did Ryan get there and then POW!  Well then, you start rereading all these dialogs between characters that have no corporeal form and you can’t figure out who is saying what and all of a sudden you go “Holy (noun of your choice)!” and what was that voice Koenig heard in Resurrection and who shot the moon at the Space Brain and oh, wait… I’m giving too much of this publication away.

Now, how do I feel about it…?

 Q.  Was it something you expected…?

 A.  Never ever expected, because there was no reason to.  Resurrection is a good stand-alone, and it had its own little mini-arc.  But that bit in the middle with Koenig on the surface, I didn’t know what to make of it.  Of course, neither did Balor.  Then, The Forsaken was good, because it answered a basic question in a reasonable way, but the Prelude?  Well, it didn’t make sense except for the obvious.  I mean, why the emphasis on malfunctions?  And why the big long discussion about external influences?  And the dialog between Susurra and something at the end of Survival?  That was just confusing and it annoyed me.  But it is so obviously Bill Latham’s style, again in Brian Ball’s book.  Then, I realized there must be a thread running through and that made me go back and study the most innocuous conversations.  I think that’s how the metastory development affected my approach to this book.  The realization made me look deeper and understand things I had glossed over because they didn’t seem relevant.  After that, it was like a treasure hunt, with lots of little “Eurekas!”  And I’m anxious for the stories to play out, because we know where they’re headed, but not how they’ll get there.  That affected the writing, for sure, because there are many, many avenues the metastory can take, so putting together the book entailed a lot of “What if?”  and “Hey, maybe…” and even more of “Now that makes sense.”  So, I guess realizing there is the metastory has made everything more exciting.  Intriguing.  Being wrong is fine, too.  Theorize, experiment, revise theory, test revised theory.  That’s what it’s about.  Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

 Q:  How did this book come about?

 A:   Apparently the Powys folks were thinking that the Powysverse had expanded sufficiently that some stellar cartography was needed. And Mateo thought I would be the right person to do it. There are so many things sprinkled through-out.  A line here, a few words there.  After a while, patterns emerge, and, well, at the risk of making another bad astronomy reference, the panoply of constellations in the over-all arc is really taking shape.  They figured it was time to get it in writing, partly for people to read and have a “D’oh” moment, and also as a reference guide for future authors.  I mean, when you need to know Sandra’s cousin’s name, or the name of the music school Paul was accepted at, do you want to go flipping through the books to find it, or would you like it conveniently at your fingertips?

 Q:  And your involvement?

 A:  I opened an email with the subject line:  “So, we were thinking…”  After recovering from convulsive laughter, I thought about it, though for not as long as I led the email sender to believe, and thought it might be interesting to take on.  I get a real kick out of putting things together, and even letting my imagination run a bit to see connections where there may or may not be any.  The guys have been most gracious in saying I’ve made some observations they never thought about, but fit.  I think they are underestimating their own intuition.

 Q:  How did you decide what to put in and what to leave out?

 A:  Just a few criteria.  For the major characters, I did my best to combine everything that has been available in writers’ guides, broadcast episodes, early draft scripts, early novelizations, which were often based on early scripts, cut scenes, and so forth, to flesh out their backgrounds – with special attention to what has appeared in Powys’ original novels and stories.  That’s how the term Powysverse was coined.  Events and characterizations that Powys has published and are canon as far as their incarnation of the Space:1999 universe is concerned.  With that as a base, you can build, to say, “Oh, yes.  Koenig might have referred to Sam Burke as a scoundrel and sneaky Romeo because of XYZ.”  It might be complete bunk, but it might also be something somebody wants to run with at some point, if only as a launching point for their ideas.  Or to make a character more real, which is good for story development.

For secondary characters, they got a nod if they showed up once on-screen, but did something or were added in a Powys edit or a Powys publication.   Sally Martin, for example.  She’s killed within 5 minutes in “The Lambda Factor”, but has something to add to the fabric earlier on.  Completely new characters and species have as much as I could glean about them, just in case they pop up again in the future.  Or past.

 Q:  But this is Powys authorized?  How can you make things up the authors didn’t intend?

 A:  I’ll paraphrase a wise man.  Fiction writers get paid to lie.  I’ve been told this will be “Powys authorized”, but not “Powys approved”, so I have a little free rein.  I’ve been careful not to make anything up, like, Carter hasn’t had a steady girl until Eroca because his first wife was eaten by rabid wallabies.   I guess we could consider some parts speculative non-fact, as opposed to speculative fiction.

Personally, some of the dots that were most fun to connect were the ones I had to really stretch, because there is no reason to believe it other than it’s something that just popped into my head, but it makes sense.  I’ve made a case about Psyche that, when I first mentioned it to Mateo, he wrote back, “No, no, no…It’s (blah blah blah).”  That made me more resolute, and I went back and found more supporting evidence for my “theory.”

 Q:  Will there be updated future editions as new books come out?

 A:  As long as Powys keeps publishing, there will need to be updates. 

 Q.   How does it feel to know you’re going to be a published Space: 1999 author?

 A.  Really, really weird.  Like on your birthday, that indefinable good feeling.   A few days ago, my son, who is the same age now as I was when Space:1999 first aired, was bugging me with questions trying to figure out what his Christmas present is.  I told him that when I was his age, I asked for books for Christmas.  What I had actually put on my “wish list” was “any more books in the Space:1999 series.”   I remember that quite clearly.  Is that geeky?  Anyway, I got Android Planet and Phoenix of Megaron that year.  Now, I hear Powys is aiming for announcing this book on Christmas.  So, this year, I got a new Space:1999 book, too.  It’s sort of karmic.  Or MUFlike.

Chasing the Cyclops Interview

conducted by Simon Morris

 Q:  Chasing the Cyclops is a book about…well, what exactly is Chasing the Cyclops about?

 A:  Well, quick heads up to everybody, it’s not a novel.  It’s not fiction.  When it was time to do the final entry of the Omega Diary on my web site, I started trying to pull together my notes that I always said I’d put up on the site once Omega was out.  I thought it would be one long entry.  It just started growing and growing.  There were just too many things to cover.  Particularly how we came up with the whole Powysverse mythology.  I think one weekend I had too much coffee and I just started digging in and after that first weekend I already had more than sixty pages of stuff.  So I talked to Mateo and I said let’s just put it out as a book.  People are either going to be interested or not, I don’t know.  The Space:1999 books are already a niche market, and this book’s going to appeal to a niche inside the niche.  The writers out there might be interested and there are a lot of writers out in Space:1999 land.  But this is one of those books that if we sell five copies, I’ll be happy.  Thanks to lulu.com, there’s no big investment that we have to cover.

 Q:  How is the book structured?

 A:  It’s grouped together into the sections you would expect, how the mythology was built, how the plot for Omega and Alpha were pulled together, why Spider’s Web was written in the first place, but a lot of it stems from how we were going to bring Victor Bergman back.  This book’s even got diagrams in it, cheesy old diagrams I threw together when we were figuring out how the polar ice caps on the various planets were going to be melted.  I made one rule for myself going in – I wasn’t going to try to sanitize anything.  You’ll see a lot of old analyses and emails that I sent to Mateo over the years as we pulled together the pieces and we ended up switching gears on a lot of topics.  Like the MUFs, the good one and the bad one, if you can simplify things to that degree.  The good one and the bad one kept switching identities.  The MUF of Dragon’s Domain, at least on the surface, looks very nasty.  Over time, we realized that for the story we were going to tell, the MUF of Dragon’s Domain, even the dragons themselves, were the good guys.  There are also some cool things in the book that people don’t usually get to see, like my original story treatment and the first stuff I wrote on a story or novel called “Drip” that was the birth of the brell.  I found all of it and put it in this book.  You’ll see Martin Willey’s “vetting” emails where he goes through and humbles you on matters of science or Space:1999 but occasionally has you bursting out laughing with his comments.  I usually call this going before the Supreme Court of Space:1999.

 Q:  Did you like working on this book?

 A:  Yes and no.  It’s so different from writing fiction.  It’s making me miss writing fiction because with a novel, I can tell if I think the plot’s working.  This book has a kind of plot, but it’s more like journalism, where you’re trying to tell what happened rather than show something happening.  This is a book that will be pulled away from me more than me reaching a point where I can say I’m finished.  There are always more details I could talk about. Plus, going in, knowing that you’re writing a book that’s going to appeal to a pretty small audience, you want to deliver what that small audience would want to read, and I honestly don’t know who the audience is for this book.  Is it people who really liked Omega and Alpha?  Maybe.  But they already had Omega and Alpha to read.  I guess I asked myself…is this book necessary?  Something inside me wanted to come out.  Maybe I’m writing this book for me twenty years from now.  But, back to the writers out there, there’s probably a formula in here for how to approach building a universe, or a mythology, or something in the middle, if that makes any sense.

 Q:  Is there anything in here that will surprise people?

 A:  There’s stuff in this book that surprised even me.  Especially if you know anything about Joseph Campbell.  But if there’s anything that will surprise people, it’ll be in learning how we didn’t just say hey, let’s have David Kano talking to Susurra, or a future Koenig kid.  This whole thing started from trying to bring Victor Bergman back.  The earliest analysis I found that had some of the seeds of Spider’s Web as well as Omega and Alpha was actually written in 2001, before Resurrection was even published!  The Powysverse mythology and Omega and Alpha are tightly intertwined.  But so many parts of the plot came about because of problems we had to address, like how could Victor find his way back to Alpha.

 Q:  Are we going to see more non-fiction from Powys, more Space:1999 non-fiction?

 A:  Yes.  But not from me.

 Q:  What’s next for you?

 A:  Johnny Byrne’s Children of the Gods.  That’s a pretty daunting project.  Johnny and Mateo got to spend a fair amount of time talking about it before we lost Johnny, so I’m picking up the threads from the work they did, so I always have to balance a lot of things when I work on that, including being faithful to Johnny’s original vision of it.  Then I think I’ve probably got one more Space:1999 novel in me before I call it quits.  But my dream project is something I call “Tales of Arkadia” –stories about pieces of the Powysverse mythology that warrant some more substance, like the story of Adantia from Alpha.  I don’t know that I’ll ever even write it, but I think I could have a lot of fun with that.  With the Adantia story in particular.  We’re also trying to get all of the reprints going soon, including “Eternity Unleashed” as a standalone novel.  So people can stop trying to sell it on Amazon for a gazillion dollars.

 Q:  When will Chasing the Cyclops be released?

 A:  I’m seriously shooting to have it out by mid-December, so people can have it under the tree.  It’s in its final edits now.

Q:  What’s the significance of the title?

 A:  Naturally, it’s a bad pun, on chasing a unified vision.  But don’t tell anyone.  They might groan.  But I promise, no cliffhangers, this time around.  Hey, I warned everybody!  At the end of my interview for Omega, just check out the last thing I said!

Chasing the Cyclops: The Creation of the Powysverse Mythology (and Omega and Alpha)
by William Latham

Foreword by Mateo Latosa

Cover art by Ken Scott

Interview with William Latham on Chasing the Cyclops

In 2001, Powys publisher Mateo Latosa and author William Latham embarked on a journey that resulted in the Space:1999 novels Omega and Alpha, a journey that involved creating a unified mythology to tie together the apparently random incidents that fans have called the Mysterious Unknown Force. Chasing the Cyclops tells the story of how the mythology was built, how the novels were plotted, and ultimately, how answering questions posed for a quarter century revealed still greater mysteries!

SPOILER ALERT!!! The diagrams below contain major spoilers about Omega and Alpha!

Spider’s Web Audiobook Interview

Conducted by Simon Morris

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Q:  Spider’s Web is not your typical Space:1999 story.

A:  I don’t know if there is a typical Space:1999 story, anymore.  We’ve certainly been trying to challenge that concept recently.  Spider’s Web was written more than four years ago.  I think a lot of things came together to make it what it is.  Its role as a linking piece between Survival and what would become Omega was certainly an important part, but when I first started mapping it out, I don’t think I knew that yet.  Coming up with an idea for what story I would do for Shepherd Moon was really where it started.  I wanted to play with the beasties from “Dragon’s Domain” but we were still mapping out the mythology for Omega and Alpha and we didn’t know what role, if any, the dragons were going to play.  So when I say I wrote it four years ago, I started working on it five years ago.  What people probably won’t realize without me saying it is this story is very much an homage to Richard Matheson’s “The Shrinking Man” – his battles with the spider.  You also can’t tell a story like this anymore without at least acknowledging its lineage to “Alien” and going back even further, “It:  The Terror From Beyond Space”.  I think a lot of people don’t realize these days that Ridley Scott or rather, Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett, they didn’t invent the idea of a monster stalking people aboard a spacecraft – Jerome Bixby did it first.  And there are some court decisions out there that will back me up.  But you also have to throw James Cameron in, too.  When you’re doing a story like Spider’s Web, you have to establish what people expect from a story like this before you’ll be able to surprise them, and what they would expect would be what they’ve seen in the first two Alien films.  So it comes down to understanding the structure of the Alien films, then knowing what you want to pick up from Dragon’s Domain, then knowing I wanted to play in the same milieu as “The Shrinking Man” and then you get a picture of the story you can write and a better sense of the one you want to write.

Q:  Spider’s Web also continues the horror lineage you carried through Resurrection.

A:  That’s a funny thing.  Boris Karloff always hated the term “horror film” – as if the film were made just to gross people out.  He liked the word “terror” better, which implies something scary.  Spider’s Web is definitely a monster story, but it’s more of an action story – a horror story would be the dragons hunting Victor – this is the opposite.  It’s like “Jaws” I suppose – is that a horror film or an adventure film?  It’s both – the first half is certainly horror, the second half is certainly adventure, but with the horror underlying the action.  If you fall in the water in “Jaws” you’re going to die a very, very nasty death.  Same with Spider’s Web.  Victor’s hunting these things, and his confrontations with the dragons are all meant to get your anxiety going, but that’s what action thrillers do.  At one point, Victor’s walking around with bleeding feet, wrapped in makeshift bandages.  Bruce Willis wasn’t available!  Dragon’s Domain has some of the most horrific moments of the series, and I think Spider’s Web stays exactly as horrific, if not less so, than the episode that inspired it.  Nobody gets eaten by a dragon in this story.  If this were written from the dragons’ perspective, Victor Bergman’s a serial killer.  The scary character is that dude they see on the bridge of the ship.  And Omega and Alpha let you know who that is.

Q:  So returning Victor Bergman to the series, or using this story as one stepping stone in that path, only makes things more complicated.

A:  Yeah.  If you think about it, I’ve used Victor as a hero before, in Resurrection, but this time around, he’s an action hero!  I think everybody’s afraid of the dragons.  The last person you’d want to put in hand to hand combat with these things is Victor.  Wrapping the reader up in the action and horror elements let me sneak in an understanding of the core character here, as he’s facing the dragons – when you find out it’s Victor, you shouldn’t really be all that surprised, because he handles all of this in a very Victor-like fashion.  You know the protagonist is from Earth fairly early on because he mentions wood and vampires.  You know he’s got some serious analytical chops.  So the biggest toy I had to play with was context.  We haven’t seen Victor since the end of Survival.  We aren’t even aware the Leira have found their new home world.  Nobody should have expected the character in Spider’s Web to be Victor Bergman.  But from a surprise perspective, we knew we were letting the cat out of the bag that Victor would probably be coming back to the series in this story.  You just wouldn’t know when.  So when Omega was coming out, a lot of folks were surprised that he showed up so early.  At that point, that was the only real surprise left.

Q:  Killing off Bergman’s wife Yendys seemed a little harsh to some readers.

A:  And to this author.  I like Yendys. But if you’ve read Omega and Alpha, Yendys died for a reason.  Not a good one, necessarily.  Cutting Victor off, leaving him emotionally stranded, created the glue that would make him easily fit into the Year Three continuity. His bond with Yendys could easily have kept Victor on New Leiram after the events in Alpha.  Which might also have kept Eroca on NewLeiram.  So if you think about it, Victor Bergman is more than the sum of his parts.  He’s a focal point in the Space:1999 universe, and there’s gravity to that.  Victor needed to be in pain to be manipulated.  Needed an emptiness inside him.  The last page of Spider’s Web really tells you what Omega and Alpha are going to be about, but you’d be hard-pressed to guess the details.  If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that demagogues can’t show up when things are good – they usually show up right after things have been bad – that’s the physics of what lets a demagogue get in power in the first place.  You don’t have the Treaty of Versailles and the economic collapse in the 1920s, you probably don’t get Adolph Hitler.  Not every crisis results in a demagogue, but every demagogue is preceded by a crisis.  So poor Victor, his role in everything that will come in Omega and Alpha, just goes to show that MUFs aren’t very nice.

Q:  Spider’s Web goes a little surreal when Victor is having his visions.

A:  A lot of that, including the physical movement he’s experiencing, is very much an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In Alpha, Koenig has a very, very similar experience, but they’re different experiences, experiences manifested by different MUFs.  That’s something somebody might have fun analyzing.  Science fiction gives you freedom to go a little surreal sometimes, to throw information at the reader that you as the author knows is in a particular context but the reader can only subliminally absorb it.  Alpha, the novel, lays things out a little more linearly at its opening.  The MUFs, like all of us, are very defined by their beginnings.  Their movement into our universe, at its birth, has huge repercussions in our universe.  Giving people multiple passes as that, in a surreal fashion, then linear, then surreal again, gives you something that’s fun and challenging as a reader.  It’s more like poetry, where you have to glean what you can from highly compressed language or imagery.  It’s not for the Tom Clancy fans of the world, who like everything detailed and spelled out for them and described to its fullest possible extent.  But then again, neither was 2001.  If you ever map out the plot of 2001, it’s very, very simple.  But the way it was presented, in typical Stanley Kubrick fashion, it’s not simple to follow.  What Kubrick did in that film, and I guess I shouldn’t just say Kubrick but also Arthur C. Clarke, they created a future, then really, really sold you on the believability of that future, then slowly removed the new context you’d gotten familiar with, leaving you almost literally hanging in space, without knowing anything.  I can argue that Kubrick did almost the same thing in “The Shining” – put you in an alien context, made it familiar, then turned the humans, or one of them, into an alien – so it’s kind of the mirror image of 2001.  “Full Metal Jacket” is the same thing.

Q:  How does the audio book for Spider’s Web vary from the Resurrection audio book?

A:  I think Rupert did a fantastic job with Spider’s Web.  Rupert walked into the project with a serious handicap, in that his name isn’t Barry Morse, and I don’t think it caused him a moment’s hesitation.  He made it his own, performed it on his own terms, and more power to him.  He gives Spider’s Web a real intensity that I think matches the story perfectly.  Barry read Resurrection like a father would, with love and warmth.  Rupert reads Spider’s Web like a kind of slightly sadistic older brother, who’s trying to scare you late at night but knows he can’t scare you too much or Mom and Dad will hear you whimpering through the wall.  But he also gets the emotional content in the story and changes tone, changes his pace at the right times. There are some very emotional moments in the story and he aced them, just like he aced the action scenes. There’s no comparing the two audio books.  They’re very different stories read in very different ways, and both end up as exactly what they should be.  So, my hat’s off to Rupert.  I’m very happy with what Rupert produced.  If he only wanted to do audio books for the rest of his life, I think audio book listeners would be the ones to gain the most.  He’s become a very serious asset in the Powys team, like a new player on a baseball team who can hit a home run whenever you need one.

Q:  Audio books are suddenly becoming a staple in the Powys line.

A:  That’s a testament to Rupert and changes in technology.  Getting Resurrection out took years.  Getting Spider’s Web out is taking only a matter of weeks.  We’re a very small outfit, but you’ve gotta admit, we are pretty cutting edge!

Q:  What’s next?

A:  Omega and Alpha, not to mention The Prisoner’s Dilemma.  And I think Eternity Unleashed at some point. Eternity Unleashed is going to come out as a regular book one of these days.  Perhaps a bit enhanced.  Time will tell.