All posts by Bill Latham
US – Year Two Omnibus Order Page
U.S.
Space:1999 Alpha
SPACE:1999
ALPHA
by William Latham
Afterword by Christopher Penfold
Cover art by Ken Scott
Moonbase Alpha struggles to survive as past, present, and future collide and the fate of the universe hangs in the balance!
This novel features an afterword by Christopher Penfold, the Story Consultant during Year One.
Released February 2010
Spoilers Shepherd Moon Interview
SPOILERS!!! Shepherd Moon Interview with Albert León, Lindsey Scott-Ipsen, Ken Scott and Raja Thiagarajan, authors of “Fallen Star”
Conducted by Simon Morris
This interview potentially contains some mild spoilers, so stop here if you don’t want to hear anything more!
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Note: This interview was originally conducted in 2007 and has been reviewed and in some cases updated by the participants.
How surprised were you to hear from Powys after such a long period of time that they still wanted you to work on this story?
Lindsey: It was an extremely pleasant surprise. I have to admit, I had forgotten about the project, but since I have always dreamt of contributing to the canon of Space:1999 I leapt at the opportunity.
Raja: I was completely surprised. As they used to say, “You could knock me over with a feather.” I was a little concerned whether I’d have enough time to participate, since we had a two-and-a-half-year-old-toddler at the time, but our editor Bill said he also had one of those, and kid delays wouldn’t get in the way.
Albert: Since our initial meeting, after some time had passed and not hearing anything more about it, I thought the project was abandoned. By the time I received Bill’s email about working on this, I had forgotten about it. I was very glad that Powys still wanted to include this story and have us work on it.
Ken: I was pretty shocked. I was really excited when the project was suggested at the convention in Portland, and disappointed when it seemed to have been forgotten. So when I received an email from Bill, I was thrilled to find out it was back on track.
What was it like collaborating on this story without ever speaking to each other?
Lindsey: Well I have met all of the other writers at various conventions, and believe that made the process much easier. I also knew we all shared a love for the show. One exciting aspect of our group is that we seemed perfectly matched with one another. Raja is our resident scientist, so he helped shape the concepts portrayed in the story. Albert has a gift for action and brevity, which we needed, and Ken had some wonderful insights into capturing the tone and pathos of the series in a narrative form. Everyone seemed to bring a necessary aspect to the table that propelled the story forward.
Raja: We had spoken to each other, and met in person, years ago. Though my memories of that meeting are far from perfect, it did help a lot to recall my impressions (all positive!) of my collaborators. Also Ken Scott has a very nice website about Space: 1999 that’s full of fun and chatty tidbits (http://www.space1999.net/moonbase99/). I remember seeing Ken in person more recently, and chatting with him about the website.
Albert: It was very tough working individually on our sections without being able to brainstorm with everyone and bounce ideas off of each other, where we could get immediate feedback. As I worked on my own sections, I was worried that our separate sections wouldn’t come together nicely as one cohesive story.
Ken: As I had mentioned, we had all met at the Portland convention, and some of us have met on more than one occasion. We were lucky to have Raja set up a forum for us to be able to communicate with each other, and develop the story. Bill was tremendously helpful in guiding us on this journey. It was amazing to see what everyone brought to the table. It was like what I imagine communication on deep space flight would be like. You could transmit, but had to wait in the void for the signal to reach its destination, and then for the response to traverse the distance back.
What parts of the process did you find most fun? Most difficult? Most surprising?
Lindsey: Writing a Space:1999 story! Most of the process was fun. It was hard work, but fun work. I think capturing the voices of some of my favorite characters was both a joy and a challenge – sort of like method acting for a writer. I know our audience is terribly familiar with these characters and love them, so I felt a great responsibility to remain true to their natures. Writing from Jackie Crawford’s point of view was especially taxing, because he is a child. I tried to imagine how odd his life has been – being the only child living on a Moonbase with adults in the strangest of circumstances – and how this impacted his personality. Still, it’s easy to forget how a child sees the world. Hopefully we captured this experience in the story. The most surprising aspect was the way the story changed and evolved with time, and all of the changes were for the better. I was also pleasantly surprised by the insight of the team and how we were able to incorporate every person’s vision to create a coherent story.
Raja: The most fun part was seeing new ideas and new story sections show up on our collaboration website. Some of these ideas were also the most surprising; my collaborators, and fans in general, have some fascinating perspectives on Space: 1999, and on life in general. Concerning challenges: As anyone who’s used email probably knows, it can be hard to gauge people’s feelings from their messages. You have to be careful not to misinterpret things. One thing that helped me with this was that I knew we all love Space: 1999 (otherwise we would not have involved ourselves in this process, starting with that first meeting all those years ago) and wanted to tell the best story we could. I tried to think my replies out very carefully, so it sometimes took longer than I expected to respond. I think others probably were doing this too-so I had to learn to wait patiently for responses to my contributions.
Albert: The most fun was simply writing about Space:1999. I enjoyed revisiting Moonbase Alpha and the characters, while working very hard to try to accurately capture the show and ultimately produce writing that could be taken seriously. I especially enjoyed writing and reading about areas of Moonbase Alpha that we’ve only previously seen glimpses of on the show or only briefly heard mentioned elsewhere. It was difficult to write a middle section without knowing the details of what was in the previous sections as well as not knowing what details were in the following sections that I could have mentioned or introduced in my previous sections. I kept worrying that what I wrote wasn’t “right” or “good enough”. Personally, it was also tough for me in that I had little time to write during the day, so I’d often be up until 1 or 2 am writing my sections of the story. Even though it cost me some sleep, I didn’t mind because it was well worth it! It surprised me how well some of the different sections lead into each other, as if the different authors were actually writing together.
Ken: Space: 1999 has always been my favorite show, and the opportunity to be able to work on a story that would become part of the Space: 1999 universe was definitely the best part! The most difficult part was getting past my insecurities about writing something that others will read. That and the idea of constructing the story out of sequence. I guess I think in a very linear way. That part really threw me. The most surprising thing was how well our visions melded once we shaped the general story, and how really creative everyone was, and the depth they brought to whatever they were writing about. Most fun? Reading what everyone else was coming up with.
What did you learn about writing from taking part in this effort?
Lindsey: I learned that I could be long winded! Loving the setting of the story made the work a breeze, but I sometimes found myself rambling on. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters. Luckily, Bill did a great job of reminding us to keep the story moving.
Raja: I have been a heavy reader for most of my life. I also do a fair bit of editing, and a little bit of writing, for my “day job”. All of this writing is non-fiction, and its highest priority is to explain things, especially step-by-step processes, as clearly as possible. There’s a strong bias towards being concise, and the person who does most of the writing gives me carte blanche to edit, without his ego being involved. I was surprised that a lot of these things didn’t carry over into fiction; concise and clear is good, but vivid and involving is better, at least some of the time. In retrospect, this should probably have been obvious. I was also surprised that my ego got involved. I did a scene that I was quite proud of, and our editor said it was well dramatized, but it wasn’t a good fit for the story. I was a bit surprised and taken aback, but after asking for clarification, I agreed that it should be cut for the sake of the story. If this had happened with my “day job” writings, I would have cut it without blinking. I now read everything, including my recreational reading, more analytically. Sometimes this can spoil my fun a little; I can be a bit more annoyed by a bad turn of phrase or a sloppily cut corner. On the other hand, I also have a greater appreciation for some of my old favorite authors and books. Since I’ve been reading some of these books for three-quarters of my life, I’m thrilled to find new ways to find pleasure in them.
Albert: Obviously, different writers have different styles, but it amazed me how each writer seemed to have his or her own ideas for different details to the certain story elements and it seemed as if each writer was steering the story in slightly different directions, while staying within the confines of the story outline. If I were to do this again, I’d have the first section be written first, then the next writer takes and reads the first section, and then writes the next section. So on and so forth in succession, allowing each writer to work off of what was written in the sections before.
Ken: I learned that because we all wanted this to be the best story we could make it, the collaboration that could have suffered from people trying to take the story in completely different directions benefited from fresh ideas that everyone brought to it. I learned that I still have a lot to learn!
Once the book is/was officially released, who’s the person you’re most excited about showing it to?
Lindsey: My husband, Joe Ipsen, who offered many helpful suggestions during the process, and my friends in fandom, Terry Lee, Anthony Wynn, Robert Wood and Chris Paulsen, to name only a few. I also have many friends who are fans of the show, but have forgotten it, so I hope they will read this story and others in the book and be inspired to become fans once again.
Raja: I think I’ll have to fight the temptation to show it to everyone I know, and to random passers-by. Slightly more seriously, I’ll be especially pleased to show it to my wife, my father, and my friend Gregory, all of whom I asked for advice during some of the challenges.
Albert: I wanted to keep my involvement in this project quiet until I knew it was definitely going to happen, and then surprise my family and friends with the news. My youngest son also enjoys writing fiction, and I knew he’d understand how excited I was about this project, so he was the first one I had told. Once the book was actually released, I first showed the book to my closest friends Ronn and Steve, but the first ones I gave actual copies of the book to are my parents and my sons. My friends and family know what a huge fan I am of Space:1999 so they were very happy to hear that I was a part in the making of this story.
Ken: Anyone who will sit still long enough. Seriously, besides my family, I think the people I would want most to share it with are the friends I’ve made at Space: 1999 conventions in the past, and sadly, most of them are too far away to show them in person. But I will certainly let them know by e-mail, or in online chat! And other friends who tolerate (and even support) my fanatical devotion to Space: 1999!
When you look back on this experience in ten years, what do you think will stick with you the most?
Lindsey: I think that I will see it as a milestone in my life. I was a huge fan of the series as a child, but after it went off the air, I thought everyone else had forgotten it. I didn’t discover that fandom was alive and well until about ten years ago and connecting with other fans has been a wonderful experience. I think that staying up until the wee hours visiting with Nick Tate and Johnny Byrne at the Breakaway was a dream come true. I remember thinking back to my ten-year-old self and thinking about how I could never have imagined such a thing could happen. My visits with Barry Morse were a joy, and writing this story will be a cornerstone of my experience as a fan. I imagine a worn copy of the book will remain on my shelf for many years to come.
Raja: I think I’ll either forget, or recall with embarrassment, some of my sillier worries (from “Will I have enough time?” to “Why hasn’t anybody replied to my note–it’s been a whole 20 minutes?!”). I’ll remember the thrill of seeing new sections from my co-authors. And again, I value my new perspective on the things I read; I hope that will be with me for the rest of my life. And at the risk of getting my ego in here again, I’m incredibly proud to have been involved in adding to the “canon” of my all-time favorite TV show.
Albert: Since I was 12, Space:1999 has been a significant part of my life, so 10 years from now I will continue to be so proud to be part of this project. It is truly a dream come true that I have worked on a published Space:1999 story.
Ken: I think I will look back in ten years and be glad that a series I had thought long forgotten by others was brought back from obscurity by its fans, and that I was able to participate in its ongoing legacy in some small fashion…and make some good friends in the process.
A Snippet From the Original Email
From: Bill Latham
To: The Team
Subject: Belated Greetings From Moonbase Alpha
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 15:27:07 -0400
Okay, it’s only taken four years for this to happen, but remember a little Space:1999 convention you attended in Portland in 2003, and a little workshop you attended on writing a Space:1999 story – there was a homework assignment, and it’s finally coming due!
And the rest, as they say, is history…
Interview with Jonathan Blum and Rupert Booth on The Prisoner’s Dilemma
An Interview With Jonathan Blum and Rupert Booth,
Authors of The Prisoner — The Prisoner’s Dilemma
by Simon Morris
Q: Okay, let’s start with the big one. Who do you think you are, trying to write The Prisoner — Patrick McGoohan or something?
JB: Bwaaahahaha! I’ll settle for Anthony Skene, that’d be accomplishment enough.
Seriously, just in case anyone’s wondering, I have no desire to diminish Patrick McGoohan’s work, usurp his place, or anything like that. But in another sense, I believe that you don’t have to be God to make a Biblical epic. Anyone from John Huston to Mel Gibson, Michaelangelo to a guy who paints baby Jesuses on black velvet, can take these powerful images and themes and ideas and feelings and present a resonant interpretation and extension of them.
Patrick McGoohan is a true original. But he and George Markstein and David Tomblin and everyone else created a tale about individuality which, ironically, is bigger than any individual one of them. Patrick’s work is in some ways very personal and passionate; I can’t copy that note for note, and I’m not out to replace it, but the best I can do is make my take on these ideas personal and passionate for me as well.
I don’t think I can necessarily plot tighter than George Markstein or be as much of an extravagant visionary as Patrick McGoohan — but I might be able to plot tighter than Patrick McGoohan and be more extravagant than George Markstein, who knows?
RB: Well, it isn’t a sacred text. It’s an entertaining, complex and multi-layered TV series. There’s no way we are going to be able to “do” a McGoohan, but then we shouldn’t really try. We’re working in the universe he and the production team created… I say universe, okay, village, and hopefully we can capture some of the ethos of the series in those terms, but obviously we are writing from a different perspective as well as a different medium.
Q: So what sort of new material or perspectives do you think you can add?
RB: Nylon.
JB: Hmm, well the big advantage we have is nearly forty years of hindsight. We know where a lot of the trends being pointed to in The Prisoner have led since then — we can see the way in which instant information has transformed the world. And ironically we live in an era now where individuality is our top-selling consumer item. “Reeboks let you be you” and all that. That hadn’t mainstreamed yet at the time of The Prisoner — it was created in a time when the idea of working for IBM in a grey flannel suit for your whole life was still being challenged, but I don’t think they’d yet worked out how successfully the grey flannel suits would co-opt that sense of rebellion right back.
RB: To add to that, we also have a completely different world to reference, new politics, new leaders, new wars, so that’s obviously going to plug in to the storyline. That’s kind of traditional for The Prisoner though, since the series frequently took on the concerns of the time. Hopefully it’s not going to be too jarring to cover some current issues.
Q: How would you describe The Prisoner’s Dilemma? What’s its style, its approach?
JB: Hmm… “Sprawling” is a good word. Also “Byzantine”. A whole bunch of angles on a bunch of related ideas.
RB: Unpredictable, with any luck. We were both quite keen to make it… accurate as well, recognisably The Prisoner. And hopefully it has moments of Many Happy Returns-esque complete bastardliness.
Q: How much of a background do you have in the show? How long have you been fans?
RB: I first saw The Prisoner in the womb. Only in black and white though.
JB: I discovered it in the early ’80s, thanks to Maryland Public Television. Every time I’ve revisited it, I’ve been impressed in a whole different way — last time I ended up watching it back-to-back with some of the Emma Peel Avengers which were airing at the same time, and that really underscored just how glossy and spectacular the show is. The Avengers is obviously no slouch in the style stakes, but even they never did anything as relentless as Arrival.
Q: How did you get the job of writing this book?
RB: Jon Blum came up to me in a hotel room in LA and said, with a big grin “Hey, do you fancy co-writing a Prisoner book with me”. I thought for exactly one eighth of a second then replied “Yeeeaahhh”.
JB: What happened was, earlier that evening Mateo Latosa had taken me and my wife Kate Orman to dinner for a meeting, because he was interested in getting her to write an original work for Powys. He talked with a lot of enthusiasm about the Space: 1999 line, and how it was going… he mentioned that because they were happy with the results, Carlton had offered him other licenses, but he wasn’t sure if he could take any of them up. They’d offered him The Prisoner but he didn’t know how to pull it off, they’d offered him UFO but he wasn’t sure if there was a market… The conversation went on, but my brain had frozen at the word “Prisoner”. I think I offered him a book before we got to dessert!
I’d thought I could co-write the book with Kate, the way we usually do, but she didn’t think she could pull off writing for Number 6, which was very sensible indeed. I didn’t want to write it by myself, because I figured it would take a ridiculous amount of time. Fortunately, Rupe was in LA for the same convention as us… I’d been a fan of Rupert’s writing for years — I’d first encountered him before either of us turned pro, back when we were both doing Doctor Who fan videos ten years ago. He’d done a hell of a lot of short films, most of them surreal and blackly funny, sort of Salvador Dali meets The Goodies done on sixpence. He’d been breaking into short stories recently, and I knew he was a mad Prisoner fan… it seemed like a perfect match. We had about half our proposal in place before the end of the night…
Q: How did the co-writing work? Who did which sort of stuff? How did you manage writing on opposite sides of the world?
RB: Hmm. I should know this, I was there.
JB: With this book, usually we’d divide up bits to write, we’d each do a draft, email them to each other, then come up with rewrites. Which was mostly me putting my grubby fingerprints on Rupert’s stuff rather than the other way round. If you want a quick guide, most of the Number 2 material, most of the Irrationals, and the stuff with the Fish are Rupert’s scenes, and the first big interrogation scene is him with bits of me. The Minister, Number 101, and Number 54 are pretty much all me. So is Rover. A bunch of scenes are intermingled almost line by line. The last half of the book is much more me, because Rupert suddenly got a chance to do a sketch-comedy TV pilot which had to take priority, but the climax action is mostly him. Any bit where the characters talk too much is probably me!
RB: It was also often the case that there were things each of us brought to the initial plotting and thrashing out of ideas. Jon was very into Number 101 for example, so handled pretty much all of his material because he knew where he wanted to go with it. I came up with the whole gameshow angle and therefore most of the middle section where Numbers 6 and 18 are being put through the various tasks was mine.
Q: How did that co-writing process compare with your previous books or short stories?
RB: Jon was five million miles away rather than down the road like my usual co-writers.
JB: Well, usually I’m sleeping with my co-author, but we decided to skip that bit! With me and Kate, there can be a bit more friction… oh God, let me rephrase that. Since Kate and I are both experienced novelists, if we disagree we each defend our own judgement to the hilt, and go back and forth over things in incredible detail. But Rupert tended to assume I knew what I was talking about, the poor fool!
RB: Yes, I did definitely start out like that. Having said that, Jon generally tended to let me do pretty much what I wanted with the bits wot I wrote. I think the most discussion came about when we were evolving the skeleton, or as normal people call it, the plot. At that point, it was a case of anything goes, and indeed a lot of material went. Once we settled into actually bashing out the prose, we had defined guidelines that we had set out so there was less room for conflict.
Q: How aware were you of the legacy of the show? What did you feel like you just couldn’t do? Content limitations, limits on sex or violence, things you couldn’t nail down?
JB: The things I felt we couldn’t nail down were the sorts of things that are better left un-nailed-down anyway! I tend to feel establishing who really runs the Village or whatever would be a distraction from the real strengths of the series, its implications and psychology.
I do remember feeling very cautious about any physical contact between Number 6 and Number 18 — but not absolutely rigid about it. McGoohan seems to have been very unpredictable on the subject — he wouldn’t dance with his Observer in Dance of the Dead, but he dances with B in A B & C…
That said, there are a few things where we consciously went beyond things the TV show could get away with. Mainly in terms of serial content — we didn’t need to worry about everything being back at the status quo by the end of an episode, we can resolve the current story but leave implications hanging for the next book. And there’s at least one thing in this story which the authorities at Portmeirion would never have allowed them to shoot!
RB: Yeah, we had a budget massively bigger than Lew Grade’s cigar fund, so in terms of events, we could do what we wanted. And did. I was always the more conservative of the two of us, I think, wanting to keep it as closely tied to the series as possible, which wasn’t necessarily a good idea. We both agreed that we didn’t really want to explain too much, delve too deeply into the background of the Village and so on, work out what the hell Rover actually is. The reasoning behind this is twofold. 1. The show thrives on unsolved mysteries, it’s part of what has kept it going for so long. 2. It would be fannish bollocks.
Q: How much of a period piece would you say The Prisoner has become? Is the book consciously “’60s”, or does it try to be timeless?
JB: I think the show was trying to be timeless even then. Look at the Villagers’ dress-code — aside from a the women’s make-up and hairstyles, there’s almost nothing there which would look any more out of place in 1930 than in 1970.
In terms of content… one of the ideas of the show is the idea of the Village as a prototype for the world of the future… which means that they’d be going through test cases of what we’re living with now. The scary thing is, at the same time they were making The Prisoner DARPA was developing the basics of the Internet, we were getting the growth of the modern mediasphere… it really was the birth of the Information Age. So things which people think might be anachronistic were already there, in their early stages.
RB: The series is dated in trems of excecution. Of course it has, it was made in 1967. Very well made, I hasten to add, it’s something that stands up now in many ways, but it is still very recognisebly a product of its time. The novel doesn’t have the constraints of being made on 35mm film with limited technological resources, so hopefully is able to use what IS timeless about the series: the central concept, many of the themes, Wanda Ventham…
Q: Is The Prisoner still relevant, or is the whole I-am-not-a-number thing too obvious now?
RB: It’s not about being a number or not though, is it. It’s about individuality and maintaining that in the face of coercion. I think that the fear of numeralisation is a very 60’s psychosis that means nothing to most people today, it’s part of life.
JB: Well, the very nature of the Village does sort of blunt the relevance a bit — people will just assume that anything the Village is doing is something over-the-top and fantastical, too grandiosely evil for anyone to take seriously… which can obscure your point if what you’re having them do is actually going on right here right now.
But if anything, we had a bigger problem, in that things we kept coming up with which we thought were ludicrously satirical then more or less happened! It was really hard to keep the book a step ahead, as it slid from parody to today’s headlines to yesterday’s news. God, I don’t envy satirists these days. I mean, millions of people get their news about WMDs from a TV network co-owned by a company that made nuclear bombs. How can you send that up?
But anyway, I think it’s hugely relevant, but the tricky thing is convincing people that it’s not simplistic.
Q: What would you say Prisoner’s Dilemma is about, thematically?
JB: The ways in which we define each other, I guess. We were exploring the questions thrown up by the series’ viewpoint… it’s not enough just to be an individual, what matters is what sort of an individual you are. The show sees it as a virtue to be true to yourself… but what if yourself is a selfish bastard? What else factors in there?
RB: Basically, it’s about trust.
Q: How does the book slot into the TV series?
JB: The book range as a whole is supposed to fit just before Once Upon A Time. The order of the TV series is obviously up-in-the-air… but in most of the usual orders, the episodes just before the final two show Number 6 at his most cool and copeful, someone who’s really good at playing the Village game, who can be smooth and even charming and manipulate the authorities right back. Then, by Once Upon A Time, he’s this almost monsyllabic, obsessively pacing figure whose only interactions with other Villagers are downright bizarre. I figure the books can show him developing from one state to the other, and we give him a big nudge in that direction as the book goes along…
RB: I always held the firm belief that it is set between the words “I am not a number” and “I am a free man” in the title sequence.
Q: So how do you try to evoke in prose a show which ended with a bunch of white-robed goons in theatrical masks doing a musical number?
RB: By going for lots of long walks and thinking heavily.
JB: Sort of Dangerous Visions – era New Wave SF prose tricks, really. I’d love to go back and put more description of the colours in.
Your Questions
Be warned — some of these questions contain SPOILERS! If you don’t want to know the surprises of the book, look away now…
From Mira Frenzel:
Q: What is this “Rover and the ducks” idea mentioned in the acnowledgements?
RB: That was cut from the sequences of 6 and 18 having to do various Villagers “favours” to get their co-operation. I can’t honestly remember the exact train of events but it was something to do with a Villager wanting to get hold of a duck. Maybe to eat? Who knows! Anyway, I was somewhat at a loss as to how Number 6 was going to get his hands on these ducks without access to any weapons and the idea was suggested to me that he would somehow set Rover on them. I think it was junked before it got very far into the writing so I can’t really be any clearer. Sorry!
Q: Why Roadrunner cartoons?
JB: Because it’s the sort of unexpected, personal, humanizing quirk which genuine individuals tend to have. If Number 6 is really going to be an individual rather than a stereotype, he’s got to be able to surprise you. Even if you’re sure you know him.
I knew going in that it would be a bit controversial, and would sit wrong for some people… it doesn’t fit with the mental picture some people have of Number 6, and also more importantly I didn’t actually want to take away the man’s wonderful ambiguity, where he could be practically anyone under the Number 6 persona. So when I wrote that bit, I deliberately made it so that he could simply be making something up to make Number 18 feel he trusts her… there’s a line in there specifically to suggest that. After all, John Drake came out with fake personal details like that from time in his various cover stories… just to wave around another can of worms.
I think I might also have been thinking of an episode of M*A*S*H in which high-culture snob Charles Emerson Winchester III confessed to a liking of Tom and Jerry…
But anyway, that was entirely my idea, so don’t blame Rupert for it!
Q: Were you setting things up for future books, or is this book basically a standalone?
RB: Well, the war, the bell tower…I think the influence on those events is pretty clear! Aside from that, my main influence was drawn from the media. I brought in the idea of the reality/game show aspect, it suddenly seeming very obvious for a place where your every move is watched by a camera and the greeting is “Be seeing you”. So I suppose, we’re talking Big Brother really. Jon then picked up on that and ran with it with the chat show.
Mainly, I wanted to be influenced and guided by the series itself. The Prisoner is a very focussed piece of work, there’s nothing else like it, and so for that reason, I feel that you can’t deviate from the form too much or it becomes unrecogniseable.
From Frodo Baggins:
Q: Did either of you watch The Prisoner during the writing of the book? If so, which episodes?
JB: I watched the whole series straight through — I’d last done that about three years earlier. This time for variety’s sake, I watched it in production order, which gave me a whole new perspective on how the show developed! It started out outlandish, got more conventional for a while after the first six episodes were made, and then went into complete fairytale mode starting around Do Not Forsake Me…
RB: I did exactly the same thing, sat through it all from start to finish, but made a point of trying to analyse how Number 6 is constructed as a character. It was then that I came to the horrible realisation that the majority of the characterisation comes from McGoohan’s performance. Aside from that, it helped to crystallise my ideas for the tone of the novel. I wanted to draw on the variety of styles present in the show, from post-Danger Man “secret agent paranoia” stuff, epitomised by episodes like Arrival to the barbed social comment of Free For All, the gorgeous abandon of Fall Out and the moments of absolute kick-in-the-groin evil (“Susan died a year ago, Number 6”).
Q: Who came up with the mindwipe idea?
RB: I can’t remember.
JB: I think that was me. In the outline, there was only 18’s initial mindwipe, and then the one after the first attack on Juliet. But then I thought, no, we can be really nasty here…
Q: Why the number 18? Was there any signifigance (aside from being six times half that), or was it totally random? Or am I thinking too deeply in thinking there was a signifigance? And why were all the chosen numbers chosen — 54, 101, and the late Villagers 23, 81, and 292?
JB: A couple of the main characters were designed to reflect different aspects of Number 6, and I gave them numbers which were multiples of 6 — 18 and 54. Number 42 was also a multiple, but that was a coincidence — that’s a The Kumars At Number 42 nod, of course. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Number 101… Well, there’s both an Orwell reference in that, and also a joke in that the number looks like it’s binary.
The others were sort of pseudo-random. It’s strangely tricky to come up numbers which are hard to confuse — I had real problems remembering who was supposed to be who in the old Prisoner book A Day In The Life, so I paid some extra attention to making sure the numbers weren’t too much like any other numbers in play! I think generally I tried to avoid using numbers with the same value in the tens place.
Oh, and we followed the rule that there is no Number 7 in the series, nor any numbers with 7 in them. We did stop short of asking the typesetter to skip any page numbers that had a 7 in them — but we did have fun with the gaps in the story!
Q: I noticed that sometimes the word “Number” was omitted, for example “6 said,” “looked at 54”. Was this out of laziness, or an author discrepancy, or to fit into speech better?
JB: On my part at least, it was an attempt to cut down on the tremendous repetition of the word “Number” within sentences. It also sounded a bit more natural when read out loud, I thought — something I picked up from my wife’s writing is that once we finish our first draft, we get a group of our friends together for a weekend and read the whole book through out loud, everyone taking a chapter, looking for anything that sounds awkward or just plain goes on too long.
RB: Yep, agreed. It’s tremendously tedious to have to read the word “number” again and again, so it just became a form of shorthand really.
JB:The one phrasing thing which was a deliberate affectation on my part is the use of “Village” versus “village”. As Number 6 observes in the first chapter, he capitalizes it when he refers to the place, but to the people who run the place it’s a generic noun rather than a proper one. For them to call it the Village with a capital V would be like calling it Here, or This Place. To him the Village (and its society) is an entity in itself, to them it’s just what the world is. It also fits in with George Markstein’s original outline document, where they avoid capitalizing it.
(God, do you think I’ve thought about this too much for the last couple of years?)
Q: Why is Pi trying to be French?
JB: That was a fairly late addition, I think, and a bit of a surprise to Rupert! It was me mucking around with one of his scenes to change some of the slang and make it more unexpected. I also thought it might be more in keeping with the time-bending nature of the Village if its teenage rebels weren’t strictly contemporary in style, so they wouldn’t be long-haired hippies of the sort who are conspicuously absent from the show (even Number 48 is surprisingly clean-cut in look). So instead I thought of the ’50s beatnik / Parisian existentialist sort of image.
In terms of Pi’s character, it’s also to reinforce what a poseur he is. A bit of a character note to keep the Irrationals from being a sort of undifferentiated mass.
Miss Freedom
Miss Freedom
by Andrew Cartmel
ISBN: 9781387177998
A team of British secret agents are being trained for a special commando mission. They will parachute by night into a secret location —
The Village.
Here they will infiltrate, locate Number 6, and rescue him and return him to freedom.
But the Village can be a deadly place to visit…
Miss Freedom is an audacious new Prisoner adventure, set at once in the sinisterly cheerful, psychotically regimented microcosm of the Village itself and also at large in the colourfully lethal and exciting world of the classic sixties spy novel.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
The Prisoner’s Dilemma ISBN-10: 0-9677280-5-3 / ISBN-13: 978-0967728056
By Jonathan Blum and Rupert Booth
Foreword by J. Michael Straczynski
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| “Everyone’s an individual now. Everyone’s a rebel. Everyone does their own thing. You’ve inspired them all. To NOTHING.” Released March 2005
Things are changing in the Village. The authorities have found new ways of exploiting community spirit… using a lost pioneer of computer science to put their stamp on the coming Information Age. But then there’s Number 18. She’s a murderer… for the best of reasons. She’s a bit of a collaborator, for reasons of her own. She’s fiercely protective of herself. And she may be Number 6’s best chance of out-thinking the Village, as they pit themselves against the authorities’ newest attempt at control. But it all depends on what the Village’s masters are really aiming for. Do they expect him to trust her… or destroy her? Read an interview with the authors.
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Interview with William Latham on the Resurrection Audiobook
Interview with William Latham on the Space:1999 Resurrection Audiobook
conducted by Simon Morris
Q: What can you tell us about the audiobook?
A: I’m really excited that this is finally going to see the light of day. Barry Morse did a truly, truly outstanding job with the reading. What I always tell people is I’ll probably never read “Resurrection” again — but I will definitely listen to it. Hearing Barry read Victor Bergman’s dialogue is just amazing.
Q: What held up the release?
A: For a small company to put out an audiobook is easier said than done. With formats changing over the past five years, picking the final format was always a moving target.
Q: What is the final format?
A: It’s an MP3 CD. What that means at the end of the day is older CD players might have trouble playing it, but most modern CD players are MP3-compatible. What finally decided the format, however, as opposed to classic CD, was the price. The cost for the consumer of a 6 CD audiobook would have been about twice what it will cost for 1 MP3 CD.
Q: Are there plans to do any more of the Powys books as audiobooks?
A: Probably not.
Q: What do you think people will experience hearing this book as opposed to reading it?
A: This audiobook is really all about Barry. You’re interviewing me on it only because Barry’s not here to do it anymore. Yeah, I wrote the book, but I forget that when I’m listening to it. This is a performance, and he did such an amazing job with it that I probably get as much caught up in it as anyone will. Because, of course, he doesn’t just perform Victor Bergman. He performs Balor. He performs Koenig. Even Helena! Even Computer! I like the book and all but Barry brought it someplace that the printed page just couldn’t. It’s alive and exciting and I can’t imagine anybody enjoying it as much as I do! Plus, I mean, it’s Barry Morse. Simple exposition in the book is just a pleasure to listen to because he brings such style to it with that great voice of his. Special thanks need to go out to Anthony Wynn and Robert Wood who actually produced the recording. They did such a great job keeping Barry visible and accessible over the years. This never could have happened without them.
Q: Any closing thoughts?
A: Just want to point out that this recording is the full, unabridged book. Barry read every word in there. I think for the fans, especially since Barry’s no longer with us, listening to this book is going to be such a pleasure. I know it is for me. Just imagine how good you think this could be…and it’s actually better. He really, really delivered.
Interview with William Latham on Space:1999 Omega
An Interview with William Latham on Space:1999 Omega
conducted by Simon Morris
Q: You kept a running blog of sorts during the writing of Omega. Any particular reason?
A: I thought it might be interesting to some people how complex a project this was, and how we went about putting this one together. Normally, you sit down and plot out a novel with a beginning and a middle and an end. This time, we first had to plot out an entire mythology and then figure out how to tell a story that would best explain that mythology but still work as a story. The mythology part literally took years. The plot had to wait until the mythology was fairly concrete. Or, should I say, synthecrete. This is Space:1999 after all.
Q: What can you tell us about the mythology?
A: Only that the pieces of the mythology all come from the episodes, primarily Year One. I’ve corresponded with some folks who are adamant that there’s a mythology in Year Two as well. The mythology we focused on was the Year One mythology. The Year One mythology is very mystical, very kind of Arthur C. Clarke. Which is all well and good. I think that’s what attracted people to Space:1999 in the first place. This is not a mystical book. This is where the mythology starts hitting home and you finally start getting some answers, which is the antithesis of mysticism.
Q: But it’s a Year Three book, correct?
A: Yes, Year Three. It takes place well before “Message From Moonbase Alpha” and at least a couple of years after “Born for Adversity.” That means Maya and Tony Verdeschi and the rest of the folks have had plenty of time to absorb what happened in “Born for Adversity.”
Q: How would you compare “Omega” to your earlier novel, “Resurrection”?
A: “Resurrection” was gothic and creepy and largely about the characters interacting. “Omega” is a lot of action. You’re going to see battles in “Omega” like nothing you’ve ever seen in the Space: 1999 universe before. Everybody’s going to be in danger in “Omega”, bar none. What was a challenge with “Omega” was the sheer amount of detail we had to convey about the mythology without bogging the book down. “Resurrection” was more of a horror thriller than “Omega” is, and “Omega” is on a much bigger canvas. So there’s a lot of time spent outside of Moonbase Alpha.
Q: What’s the significance of the title?
A: Well, the obvious thing is the position of the letter in the Greek alphabet. This book series is rapidly approaching its ending. All the threads we’ve been trailing through the other books are coming together in this story. The Space:1999 universe will never be the same after this book.
Q: You saying that is bound to get people concerned.
A: Whenever you demystify anything, you run the risk of alienating people who preferred their mystical perspective. That comes with the territory. It was never our intent to just trash this franchise. Nor are we taking unnecessary risks. We kicked this mythology until it was solid. We’re just dealing with what we inherited from Byrne and Penfold and the others. Based on what they gave us, this is our unified field theory of Space:1999. And when you put the bits together, like anything else that gets demystified, things don’t always end up being what you projected onto them. At the same time, this story, the scale of it, is going to be the movie the Space:1999 fans never got. I can promise people it’s not going to be a boring story. We’re gonna twist you all over the place, but you’re going to be rewarded for your patience.
Q: I guess it’s safe to say you’re finished after this book?
A: I don’t know that Omega will be the last word from Powys. I’ll say this, though. When I agreed to do “Resurrection” way back when, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I still wouldn’t call myself an expert on Space:1999 – I’m not Martin Willey! But I can tell you I’ve been into the DNA of this show, both seasons, and I’ve gotten to know these characters like members of my family. I can see their flaws. I’ve been a Star Trek fan for decades, but I don’t really have the same grasp of the characters in Star Trek because I’ve never had to be them in my head! I’m gonna miss these folks. For fans of this series, I’m not going to say I’ve delivered what you wanted, which is probably just another run around the block with these folks you know so well. I tried to deliver what you needed. Fresh air, a change from the regular format of how you tell a Space:1999 story. I aimed for the fences with this story. If people don’t like it, that’s fine, that comes with writing for an established franchise. You’re never going to please everyone. But for some folks out there, I can’t wait to hear your reactions. If this were one of my favorite shows from childhood, or even early adulthood, this is what I would want, something that makes it all vibrant again.
Q: In your Omega Diary, you talked a little about the process you and Mateo went through in coming up with the mythology. What did that entail?
A: There are some things I can’t really talk about, not until the book’s out, because it will spoil some things. But I guess the simplest way to describe it is we first had to identify the footsteps of the gods. We mapped out everything from the show that looked like it could have been some sort of MUF-related event. We strung those events out and started analyzing it for the answer to the most important question – what would motivate a god? What was the intent of the MUF? That doesn’t give you a story, really. It gives you a sequence of a larger story. Then you have to go back and come up with events that happened prior to the episodes of the show and somehow tie it all together into one overriding chronology. And considering the fact that Mateo and I are never in the same room, not even on the same coast, we’re talking about emails and phone calls and some lightbulb moments where suddenly something new falls into place. Once that’s in place, coming up with a story that will use that mythology is the hard part. This is where making a comparison to Tolkien is handy. Tolkien’s mythology, if you’ve ever read “The Silmarillion”, was barely scratched in “Lord of the Rings”. I’ll give you a perfect example. Shelob, the big spider that Frodo and Sam end up fighting. Shelob is an offshoot of the mythology that goes back well before the events of “Lord of the Rings”. So was the Balrog. Sauron isn’t the first nasty spirit in Middle Earth, he’s a former lieutenant of Morgoth, who was really the first nasty spirit, or god if you want to use that word. What you end up with in “Lord of the Rings” is a big spider, a big fire monster, some mentioning of Morgoth, some action scenes, end of story. The mythology isn’t revealed in “Lord of the Rings” – it just gets tapped into from time to time. With “Omega”, we don’t tell you everything we could have. We could write “The Silmarillion” for “Space:1999” at this point. But if you’ve ever read “The Silmarillion”, you realize it’s kind of interesting but it isn’t nearly as compelling as “Lord of the Rings”. The mythology is the part of the iceberg that’s under the surface of the water. It holds up the point you see above the surface, where all the action is.
Q: What do you think readers will be most surprised by?
A: That’s a tough one. We know this is going to be a controversial book. We know there are people who will hate us for doing this book. It’s a very respectful sort of heresy we’re committing with “Omega”. I’ll tell you, I remember the first time I saw “The Shawshank Redemption” and you can never see that movie again the way you saw it the first time. The first time it’s a bleak and even difficult film to watch, that is until the last half hour or so. Every time you watch it after that, it’s hopeful right from the get go. After working on this book, there are episodes of the show that you won’t be able to watch anymore without seeing things in a different light. It’ll almost make you want to go watch some of the episodes again just for that experience. One of our test readers told me something fascinating. There’s a particular performance in one episode that to him didn’t seem to make sense. After reading “Omega” he said that performance suddenly made sense, because now you understood what was really going on for that character. I mean, how cool is that?
Q: What do you hope readers will experience?
A: It’s a book that’s designed to be read more than once. For the first read, I’m hoping people will kind of hunker down and get concerned because they won’t be able to anticipate what’s going to happen next. Nobody’s safe now, folks, it’s Year Three. I can guarantee you this, though. We’re gonna leave you wanting more.
Interview with William Latham on Eternity Unbound
Interview with William Latham on Eternity Unbound
Conducted by Simon Morris
Q: What exactly is The Balor Saga?
A: It’s kind of a self-contained trilogy, almost like the Godfather Series for Balor from “End of Eternity.” It’s got a new novelization of “End of Eternity” in the middle. It has an altered version of “Resurrection” at the end. And it’s got a brand new novella at the beginning that tells you all about Balor’s rise and fall on Progron.
Q: Why continue the story of Balor?
A: He’s a fun character to play with, first of all. The big thing is when I was putting together the flashback sections in “Resurrection” I really waited until fairly late in the game to write them, even though I had a sense of what they were going to be. Finally, I convinced Mateo that it made sense to at least try looking into Balor’s past a little, and those flashbacks were just way more intense than I think we’d been expecting them to be. There was more of a story there than just the little glimpses we got in “Resurrection”. Back-story, I mean. So, add that to the fact that the E. C. Tubb novelization of “End of Eternity” was very short, and could stand to be lengthened, one thing led to another and we realized that a new book was shaping itself. Since it was going to have all of the details of Balor’s back-story, the flashbacks in “Resurrection” didn’t make sense to still have in “Resurrection” so even that book started to change.
Q: Would you say that “Resurrection” is very different or just a little bit different?
A: Nothing’s been removed from “Resurrection” really. Things have just been moved, and changed from a remembered version of an event to a portrayal of the actual event more in real time. If anybody really likes the wording of the flashbacks in “Resurrection” they should hold onto their copy. There are things that have been added to “Resurrection” however.
Q: Was this something you wanted to do or something Mateo wanted to do?
A: I don’t know if I even remember. I do remember one really nice thing he said to me on the phone. He was interested in seeing the novella from me because I’d never really written any science fiction about a whole new culture or anything like that, and he was curious to see what I might do with it.
Q: What should readers expect from The Balor Saga?
A: If I were looking at this book as a film, I’d say the “Resurrection” portion is like a director’s cut, the novelization of “End of Eternity” is kind of like me going back to make “Red Dragon” and the prequel part, that’s where the most interesting stuff really awaits. But if I’ve done my job right, the three stories link together into one cohesive whole. The first story has elements of “Frankenstein” in it, I suppose, but not really as many as you’d think. There’s something of a love story in there, believe it or not. I think by the end of The Balor Saga, we’ll know why Balor acts the way he acts, or at least we’ll see the evolution of his particular brand of evil. I think that, without giving too much away, you’ll see that Balor and Helena Russell are mirror images of each other over the course of the book. The formula for immortality is both created and neutralized for the same basic reason.
Q: How did you go about putting together the novella?
A: One aspect of it was certainly going through “End of Eternity” and “Resurrection” and identifying the plot strands that could be pulled together and given their beginnings in a new story. And Balor implied that the character of Talian had been along for the ride for much of his rise and fall on Progron, so obviously, Talian’s got a pivotal role in the prequel. What was a challenge here is that I really needed to get into Balor’s head this time around. In “End of Eternity” Johnny Byrne presented him in a certain way, and I wasn’t going to change any of that, and Balor in “Resurrection” is just an extrapolation of Johnny’s version of him. Stepping back, I had to take Balor in “End of Eternity”, subtract the influence of a thousand years of isolation from him, and then figure out who he was. So he needed flavors of who he is in the later stories, but he obviously couldn’t be the same guy. Then, I needed to map out a beginning, a middle, and an end for the novella, that basically shows Balor coming to power and then losing it so he can be exiled. There’s a little bit of Napoleon in Balor’s story, I suppose. A little bit of Hitler. But I think if you look at “End of Eternity” that Balor’s adversary is Koenig, and in “Resurrection” it’s Helena Russell. “Resurrection” already hinted that Balor was reenacting elements of his relationship with Talian in his battles with Koenig. In the novella, we’re going to see the relationship that Balor is reenacting when he’s facing Helena Russell.
Q: Was it fun going back into the Space:1999 universe?
A: Yeah. The novella was the most fun, and that’s really got nothing much at all to do with Space:1999. Playing with the fabric of “Resurrection” was fun, too. I had to be careful not to upset the balance of a carefully constructed book.
Q: What’s next for you in Space:1999?
A: Let’s just say that Mr. Latosa and yours truly have been mapping out what I’ll call the mother of all Space:1999 stories. It’s got elements from multiple Space:1999 stories, including Powys Media’s stories. I think the best way to describe it is with “Resurrection” I was very cautious. The next book, it’s not cautious at all. The Balor Saga was really just to get my juices flowing for the next project.