Interview With John Kenneth Muir, Author of Space:1999: The Forsaken Q: How did The Forsaken come about? A: Mateo has worked really hard to launch this book series, and we had discussed the idea of a 1999 novel many times since we met three years ago at the „Breakaway“ convention in Los Angeles. When Powys acquired the license, we began serious discussions about what kind of story would be fun to tell in the 21st century. Mateo and I often have intense rolling conversations about the series in which we play off each other’s ideas and things just kind of snowball. It was out of one of these rolling dialogues that The Forsaken was born.. I pitched an idea to Mateo, he liked it, we tweaked it together, and when we found something that was really exciting – and controversial – he said, ‘that sounds like a book!’ Also, I credit Johnny Byrne. He’s very much the spiritual father of this book. I had a three hour conversation with him about the future of Space: 1999 and what kind of stories would be interesting (this was back in January or February of 2001), and I used some of that material in various print interviews, but he got me thinking of amazing things. He’s such an imaginative and brilliant writer. Q: What is your experience with Space: 1999? A: I wrote a reference book called Exploring Space:1999, for McFarland (www.mcfarlandpub.com) in the mid-90s. It was published in 1997. It went to a second printing and has sold very well. I’ve been a guest speaker at series conventions in Los Angeles and New York, and had the good fortune to interview many of the program’s brain trust, including Johnny Byrne and Brian Johnson (for Filmfax), Catherine Schell (for my book), and Martin Landau (for Cinescape). I’ve also written about Space: 1999 in Rerun Magazine and in my encyclopedia of horror TV, Terror Television (2001). So I’m very familiar with the series; it’s an enduring love. It never gets old for me, and I feel like I’m always seeing something new in it. I’ve been following the DVD releases with excitement and I was fortunate enough to read an advance version of Resurrection back in the summer-fall of 2001, I guess it was. And it blew me away. Scared me silly. Q: Most of your work is non-fiction, so did you have any trouble adapting to fiction? A: Not particularly. It’s different, but I’ve had good experience preparing for the assignment. Although I’ve written eleven non-fiction books in the last six years, I’ve also sold short stories to The Official Farscape Magazine („That Old Voodoo in issue # 6 and another in issue # 8 called „Make a Wish“) and Reality’s Escape. Back in 1996-97, I wrote a novel entitled The Cyprus Harlots. So this isn’t my first stab at fiction, or even at series fiction, for that matter. Since I was in high school, I’ve written scripts for crazy horror movies that I made on videotape with friends, so fiction is fun for me. Q: What’s the book about? A: In general terms, The Forsaken concerns destiny versus free will. That sounds heady and philosophical, but Space: 1999 was often concerned with just such weighty philosophical issues. If you watch the first year, it’s all about destiny. The Alphans seem to be dealing with that mysterious unknown force. In Year Two, it’s all self-determination – „we make our own fate,“ and all that. My thought was that something pretty drastic – and catastrophic – must have happened between seasons to cause those overt philosophical changes. That’s not to say the book is some dry, metaphysical treatise. One of the things we wanted to do was include some major action sequences…some tension and excitement. Q: What was the challenge of writing a Space: 1999 novel? A: I love and admire Space: 1999 in the deepest sense imaginable, but it isn’t a humorous series, and wasn’t designed to be. Personally, I find that a little difficult as an author. Humor advances characterization, story, everything, and it’s against my natural inclination to hold back. Writing fiction for Farscape, for instance, feels very natural because referential humor is such a core concept of that franchise. In Space: 1999, there can be humor, but it can’t be the kind of zinger or self-referential joke you’d hear on Farscape, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s a formality to writing for Space: 1999 that is a challenge. You have to intimate „cosmic“ possibilities without being ponderous or pretentious. The book has to have gravitas, but not be boring or staid. It’s a delicate balance, but fortunately I have good people looking over my shoulder to kick me in the ribs when I misstep… The other difficult thing was the creation of a new alien race. This isn’t a TV show where you can put a few ridges on an actor’s head and say „these are space capitalists“ or „these are space communists,“ or „this race is like samurai warriors on another planet.“ You can’t get away with that in a full-length book. Your alien culture has to be believable, consistent, and really and truly alien. That was a major challenge, but I have to say, Mateo completely encouraged my vision, and even augmented it. He was so supportive of my efforts, and believed from the get go that this alien race had to be more than „the alien of the week.“ Q: Any thoughts about following Resurrection? A: Bill [Latham] is a good friend of mine, and he wrote a riveting, heart-pounding horror story. Honestly, that’s the kind of Space: 1999 adventure I enjoy most. Give me „Force of Life,“ „Dragon’s Domain,“ or „End of Eternity“ any day! I like the gory, gothic, horrific aspects of those episodes a lot. But for the second novel of the Powys series, we all recognized it would be redundant to follow a great story of that particular genre with a similar one. We had to go in the opposite direction – do something totally different. In his interview with Powys, Bill compared Resurrection to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a rip-roaring adventure. Keeping the Trek analogy going, The Forsaken is probably more like The Motion Picture. It is concerned about the „bigness of it all,“ and therefore there’s a lot of territory to cover! For instance, Resurrection didn’t leave the confines of Alpha, and had this tremendous feeling of claustrophobia. The Forsaken is mostly a planetary adventure, and that means lots of material involving Eagles in flight, a new alien race, and other really intense plotting complications. But we felt strongly that the planet adventures are an important part of the Space: 1999 history and legacy, as much as the self-contained tales I actually prefer, so we set out to create one that we hope will surprise people. Q: The Forsaken has been described as a bridge novel? What does that mean? A: Even the casual fan knows how things changed between seasons of Space:1999. After Year One, we lost Victor, Kano, Tanya, Paul, Main Mission and so on. In Year Two, everyone was wearing new uniforms, Alpha had lasers installed on the base, and Command Center was underground. One mission of the bridge novel is to explain how some (not all…) of these changes came about. One of the things I like about the book is that it is almost literally a bridge. It starts out very much like a Year One adventure in mood and mystery and ends like a Year Two adventure in terms of conflict and action. It’s sort of the missing chapter in Space: 1999 history. That’s what will make the book controversial. Q: How so? A: As soon as you fill in a blank, there will be people who don’t like what you’ve fit there. Some will accept it; some won’t. But the great thing about this new book series is that Mateo is willing to ask hard questions and follow ideas through to their natural conclusion. I actually chickened out on a few things, but Mateo has balls of brass. If something should happen because it’s right, it’s going to happen in the novel. On a TV series, characters can’t change week to week. In a book series, especially one in which some characters „disappear,“ there is the possibility for growth, death, reversal, development, you name it. How these changes are received is anyone’s guess…but it’s a very provocative idea. I hope it gets people talking. That’s the way to get the series back in the forefront of the public’s imagination – to make it faithful to what came before, but also to energize it with new, exciting ideas. The more people that pick up Resurrection or The Forsaken and start feverishly debating them, the better. That’s an infusion of new life, because it means people care. Q: Does that mean beloved characters will die? A: I’m not going to answer that. Read the book. Q: Is The Forsaken a sequel to any particular episode of Space: 1999? A: The book begins with an event we saw dramatized in one particular episode, and then explains, rather dramatically, the catastrophic ramifications of that event. It isn’t a sequel in the traditional sense of the word, but something that occurred in Year One causes the Alphans considerable grief. Also, there’s a thematic strand that Bill created in Resurrection that is followed up in The Forsaken, to give the book series its own internal consistency. Q: Do the supporting characters appear in The Forsaken? A: They do. Alan Carter and Paul Morrow play major roles. Tony Verdeschi is there too, to a lesser degree, and there are some surprises for Tanya. Just about everybody is in the book: Sandra, Kano, Mathias, Ben Vincent, Bill Fraser, et al. There’s fleeting mention of Yasko, Jim Haines, Petrov, Crato, and other Alphans we know and love. I felt very strongly that the book series needed to re-establish the supporting characters and bring them forward with unique things to do. Q: What do you think the fan reaction will be? A: You can never tell. I’ve written books about many different TV series, and some fans appreciate the thought that goes into your work, even if they disagree with your conclusions, and others merely despise you for honestly offering them. I have found Space: 1999 fans to be a very thoughtful and welcoming bunch. They’ve always been very respectful of me, even when we had disagreements about particular episodes or ideas. I think they understand that the series is supposed to be awe-inspiring, challenging and sometimes tragic. And I think those words pretty well describe The Forsaken. If a fan goes into a reading of the book with those notions, he or she won’t be disappointed. Q: What do you think is Space: 1999’s greatest strength? A: It asks the important questions about humanity. It doesn’t fall back on political potboilers or genre tropes. It is about mankind facing his destiny among the stars. That’s enormously appealing and the reason why the series remains popular after all this time. The stories beckon and stir our souls, and we long to know, along with Koenig, Russell, Bergman and the others, the mysteries of our beginnings and our ending… Q: If you had to describe The Forsaken’s theme in a few words…? A: Oddly enough, it would probably be a line of dialogue – paraphrased – from a low-budget John Carpenter movie, Prince of Darkness (1987): „Although there is an order to the universe, it isn’t at all what we had in mind…“

An Interview With William Latham, Author of Space:1999: Resurrection
by Simon Morris

 Q: Space:1999: Resurrection is the first original Space:1999 novel since the 1970s. How did it come about?

A: The inner circle behind these books spent about a year or so talking about what the Space:1999 books should and shouldn’t be. We were aware there was a lot of fan fiction out there. I can honestly say I haven’t read any, since I’m pretty new to Space:1999 in general. We talked about other franchises that have been relaunched. Dr. Who. Star Wars. But especially Star Trek. And I’m not just talking about the Trek book series. We talked about the films as well. We wanted to avoid the mistakes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture – you know, run off and try to do something on a grand scale, just because we had a potentially big canvas to play on. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was the model.

Q: In what sense?

A: Star Trek II was a perfect example of how to relaunch a series. You played within the existing confines, to get the fans comfortable. If my book takes any real risks, it’s that the characters start behaving out of character fairly early in the story, but there’s a reason for it. That was kind of my own personal challenge. I think readers expect you to go wrong with the characters. By the end of the book, I wanted to show that I really did understand them. Star Trek II gave you the classic characters in familiar territory, with their relationships intact. That’s where ST:TMP stumbled – the character relationships were all over the place. I know we thought doing a sequel to an existing episode was a little dangerous. The readers might get a little concerned that we really couldn’t do anything new.

Q: You said you’re pretty new to Space:1999. How new is new?

A: I saw my first episode of the show this year, in 2001. I saw a bunch of them. Mateo sent me videotapes to get me exposed to the show, and after a couple of weeks, I guess I saw about twelve of them.

Q: Are you worried that’s going to get the fans concerned?

A: I walked in knowing that was an issue. I knew there were going to be people in the inner circle who could correct my technical inaccuracies, so that helped a little. I kind of had a safety net beneath me. The episodes I saw initially didn’t give me much to grasp onto.

Q: How many episodes did you see?

A: Let’s see. I saw about twelve episodes, all from Year One.

Q: What was your impression of the show while you were watching it?

A: What’s funny is Breakaway is one of the last episodes I saw! Let’s see. I remember being pretty unhappy with Collision Course. I thought it was really unfair what they did to Koenig, and I’m saying that as a writer. I guess I just disagree with the moral of the story. Let’s see. I knew of the series, even though I’d never seen it. I knew that in its day, the production values were pretty high. I went to a convention in New York last year and actually got to hear Johnny Byrne and Christopher Penfold talking about the time constraints they were under. The first few episodes I saw were okay. I watched one a night for a week or two. Then, I saw Black Sun and that’s the one that kicked the series into overdrive for me. The characters just came to life, particularly Victor Bergman. He gave me a foundation to build on. That’s still my favorite episode. That was the Rosetta Stone of the series, for me. I think I could have watched Black Sun and one other episode and written the book. I won’t tell you what the other episode is.

Q: So how did you end up writing the book?

A: I was talking with Mateo a fair amount about what I thought he should do just from a business perspective, you know. All the stuff about launching a franchise. And I started pushing him to make the first book something familiar, and I just talked and talked and eventually there were some time constraints coming in, and I thought to myself that nobody else was gonna finish a book in time for when he wanted the first one out. I think Mateo knew I could put together a good book. The big question was could I put together a good Space:1999 book. And the fans are gonna be the ultimate decision makers on that one. Being new to a series is in some ways a handicap, but it keeps you objective. Let’s not forget, when Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer started Star Trek II, neither of them had really seen the show before. Nick Meyer brought great things to Star Trek, as an outsider. Hopefully, I’m following in his footsteps.

Q: What’s the book about?

A: We’re keeping the plot pretty secret. I can tell you it’s a sequel to a first season episode. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot I can divulge.

Q: Was this book a challenge?

A: Sure. When I write an original novel, I make the rules. In the case of Space:1999, somebody else has written the rules. I had to relate to existing characters, work with them in somebody else’s sandbox. Frank Miller talks about playing with other people’s toys when he writes graphic novels with Batman. That’s how I looked at it. There are a couple of different types of episodes of Space:1999. I told Mateo I felt comfortable working on a book inside the base more so than introducing a new planet and having the Eagles heading off the base to engage some new society. There are too many technical considerations. I think I could write a kick ass Star Trek battle scene, because I know about phasers and photon torpedoes and all that stuff, but until I’m more well-versed in Space:1999 lore, I’d be a little leery. I know the fans have been waiting a long time for this. That was a definite concern. But you have to put it out of your head, and just do the writing. We knew going in that everybody was probably gonna buy a copy of the first book. But if my book was a real stinker, they wouldn’t buy the second. That was the biggest pressure I felt.

Q: Take us through the evolution of the book.

A: Mateo had pretty much decided what I was going to work on, given other things I’ve written. He sent me the episode he thought I’d be good at writing a sequel to. I watched it and we started talking about what might be interesting to do, in between watching other episodes. I checked out Martin Willey’s website, and that was helpful. In particular, I got to find out what the author of the original episode had to say about his story, and what some critics have had to say. The original author’s concerns were paramount in my mind. He described some of what he perceived as faults in his storyline, and I knew exactly where he was coming from. Those guys never had enough time to write the episodes. Martin’s website gave me the few pertinent details I needed to throw together a story. Then, it was a matter of pitching an outline to Mateo. We hashed out some details, and a lot of the story evolved while I was writing it. In a lot of ways, this book was very much a collaborative effort. Plus, we had some Space:1999 fans read some early drafts just to get an idea of where we stood, and the feedback was much more positive than I expected. Then, it was just a matter of finishing the book, then polishing it, fleshing out certain aspects of it.

Q: Can we expect another Space:1999 book from you at some point?

A: Never say never. I don’t know. There are plenty of people already lined up to write the next several books. I’ll have to wait and see how this one does. If people want more, I’d at least consider it. I’ve got an idea I’ve been kicking around.

Q: What’s involved with writing a Space:1999 story? What are the things you’re thinking about when you’re first putting together an idea?

A: Well, let’s see. A good story is a good story, whether it’s Space:1999 or not. You’ve got to be consistent with the universe that’s out there. There are concerns that some readers might prefer one season over another, and everybody wants their favorite characters to be the stars of the book. Then you have to make sure you’re working inside the chronology properly. I’d say the biggest challenge is doing something that hasn’t been done before. Surprising a reader in a known universe gets tougher and tougher all the time. In mapping out the plot of this book, I threw in a whole bunch of things that people may not see coming. There are ways to move a story along that you see more in thrillers, and less in science fiction novels, that should surprise people in this book. The heart of any story is conflict, and the conflicts here go pretty deep. There are a couple of major components, to answer your question. You’ve got to use the characters as your foundation, and really build a story around them. You can’t just come up with a threat and throw it at Alpha. At least, I couldn’t. You set up the borders, the chronological borders, and you unleash a set of events. But I did get to add my little bit to the mythos of the show. There’s a part of Alpha you’ll see in this book that’s never been seen before.

Q: Are there any special challenges in writing a sequel?

A: I didn’t really look at it as a sequel. There are characters and incidents from an original episode that are vital to the plot of Resurrection, but I thought of it very much as its own entity. What drives people crazy when they hear it is I only watched the episode once. I still haven’t watched it again. There aren’t many good sequels out there to books or to movies, but what usually makes them work is they’re not just retreads of the original. This one goes off in its own direction. Mateo gave me a lot of freedom. I’ve never read a Space:1999 novel, so from the point of view of structure, and characterization, I could approach it pretty much any way I wanted to approach it. I had it easy, at least from my perspective. I got to put the first set of bricks on the foundation. I didn’t have to build the roof, or make sure the doors work, or any of the really complicated stuff.

Q: What’s been most satisfying?

A: Resurrection is actually my tenth novel. And what has amazed me about all of them is the surprises you get as an author, where characters do things you as the author don’t expect them to do. You can outline a story and sometimes the characters just go off the beaten path. That’s usually when you know you’re onto something special. Plus there are afterthoughts that you just kind of insert into the fabric of the book and some of those afterthoughts, things that were never planned, turn out to be some of the best parts of the book. One of the guys who read the first draft has a lot of excitement waiting for him when he reads the finished product, because there’s a whole bunch of new stuff in there that we’ve gotten some really good feedback about that wasn’t even in the draft he read.

Q: What do you hope the reaction will be when a fan finishes reading Resurrection?

A: One of my favorite reactions I’ve gotten from people about my books is complaints that they missed a good night’s sleep, because they stayed up late reading and lost all track of time. But to be honest? When you’re a fan of a series you want to walk away remembering why you loved that series in the first place. I want people to feel like they just unearthed an episode they’d never seen. The advance readers have said the spirit of Space:1999 is in the pages of the book, that it captured the feel of the show. That’s incredibly flattering to hear. It’s hard enough to write a book, but to write it in an existing universe, and then have people say that it belongs there, if the readers feel that, I’ll be satisfied.

Q: Some fans will want to know what music, if any, you listened to while writing a book. What did you listen to while writing Resurrection?

A: Let’s see. I’m a big film score buff. The opening of the book I remember distinctly – the music from John Williams’s score to Superman, the music where the camera is first approaching Krypton. I knew I wanted to listen to that music for the opening before I even sat down to write it. For the rest of the book? A lot of Howard Shore music. Particularly his complete score to Seven and Looking For Richard. I frequently listen to Cliff Eidelman’s score to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when I’m editing a book, particularly the climax of a book, and I did that this time around, too. What else? John Barry’s Raise the Titanic and The Deep. I think for a few sections I listened to Shore’s Silence of the Lambs. I can usually be expected to listen to some John Carpenter, too. This time around it would have been the newly updated Escape From New York soundtrack. I know I was listening to Film Score Monthly’s release of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. I think a little bit of Ifukube’s Godzilla music. Oh, and the new collector’s edition of the score to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. For the most part, though, this book was scored by Howard Shore, especially his Looking For Richard score. When you read the book, that’ll make more sense. It’s a really intense score. Anything else? A little bit of Patrick Doyle’s score to Henry V. That’s very much like Looking for Richard.

Q: What do you think would surprise readers most about the writing of a Space:1999 book?

A: I don’t think I can generalize about a non-sequel. A sequel leaves you, at step one, painted into a corner, because you’re picking up the pieces of a story that already had an ending. The primary challenge you face is NOT rewriting the original story, and taking it somewhere else. So there are really two premises in the book. There are what I’ll call the dovetailing elements, that tie it into the original story, and then there’s the story that makes up the backbone of the new book. That backbone has its own structure, with its own set pieces and what I’ll call surprises. Where I really had fun on Resurrection was playing with the expectations I would assume readers would have. People have been waiting twenty years for somebody to revisit the Alphan universe in a novel. The biggest surprise, though, that people probably wouldn’t think of, is the amount of bouncing around of ideas that you ultimately need to go through to get a whole story together. There’s a whole set of things you can’t do because they’ve been done already. There are the things you can’t do because it would betray the characters, or the spirit of the show. There’s a kind of delicate balance in an existing franchise, as formulaic as they may seem to be, they have their own unique boundaries that you can’t really cross. You can give ‘em a good kick every now and then. But you have to stay faithful to the whole. Then, there are the terminology debates. If you refer to an object on Alpha, it’s got a name. But depending on where you look or whom you listen to, the names aren’t always the same. There’s nothing more fun, in being new to the universe, to have to stop in the middle of a sentence sometimes and jump over to Martin Willey’s website just to see what you’re supposed to call a can opener.

Q: Any advice for other authors in the series?

A: It’s got to work as a story before it’s even a Space:1999 story. Over the course of the book series, you’re going to see what Mateo calls “bridge stories” that bridge the two seasons, and then that go out after the last episode. There’s a conscious effort to try to fill in the gaps. I was very lucky in that I didn’t have to really worry about any of those bridging elements, but other authors will and it’s hard stuff to tackle. The fans are going to be tough critics on those stories. But, this is science fiction fandom we’re talking about. They’re going to be tough on any stories. I guess the biggest advice I would give is really dig into your story and find stuff you like reading and put some of it into the book, throw a little passion into the story. Don’t be afraid to take some risks.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Space:1999?

A: When you scratch beneath the surface of the show, it’s not what it appears to be. It’s not a straight science fiction show. It has horror elements to it. In that sense, you can tell this show wasn’t the product of American TV networks. There’s also a strong element of mysticism. I can’t say I’m a big fan of mysticism in general, but it’s interesting to see something other than the standard Judeo-Christian mindset in outer space. As far as science fiction series go, there’s certainly no other I can think of that seemed so open to particularly Eastern mysticism. Maybe that’s just the product of the age in which it was produced, or the fact that it has a decidedly British soul. What I found most interesting, though, is something that’s a little hard to explain. In the 1970s, there was a kind of “Lifeboat: Earth” mentality that I think gave rise to what we now would call the environmentalist movement. In the 1960s, with Star Trek, there was a very frontier-oriented mindset, of going out to explore and find new things. It’s very capitalist in that sense, very much into finding new markets. Space: 1999 is in many ways more introverted. It has an older soul, if I can call it that. It’s about trying to survive, not exploration for its own sake. That’s much more like real life, I suppose, than Star Trek. To be out in space, the ultimate macrocosm, and to be confined in what is essentially a microcosm, which is Alpha, is pretty fascinating. Alpha is much more like Earth than is, say, the Starship Enterprise. You screw things up and it’s all over. You can’t call Starfleet and ask for a supply ship. That’s a unique perspective for a television show. If there’s a message in Space:1999, it’s that help isn’t coming, with the exception of a mysterious unknown force or two. It’s very existentialist in that sense. It’s not about ideals so much as it’s about facing realities. The fact that they squeezed mysticism into a show with an almost nihilist spirit, that’s not something you run across every day. There was definitely something interesting in the framework of the show.

Q: What should we expect from Resurrection?

A: In a nutshell? Help isn’t coming…

SPACE: 1999
RESURRECTION

By William Latham

Foreword by Johnny Byrne

Cover photo by Rob Gendler/Montage by Cesar Gallegos

A perversion of nature.
Unseen, merciless, deadly…it lurks in the shadows of Alpha.
One by one the Alphans fall…
Until only one Alphan is left.
Until only one hope remains.

Featuring an exclusive introduction by Johnny Byrne — the television series’ script editor, who wrote some of the series’ most memorable episodes.

Released May 2002

Interview with William Latham on Space:1999 Resurrection

 

 

 

 

SPACE:1999
OMEGA

by William Latham

Foreword by Christopher Penfold

Cover art by Ken Scott

 

 

A looming darkness…an ancient threat…

Friends and foes from the near and distant past converge to face the ultimate challenge…

Where the destiny of Moonbase Alpha will be decided.

Where past and present collide.

Where all will be revealed.

For every ending has a beginning…

 

This novel features a foreword by Christopher Penfold, the Story Consultant during Year One.

Released February 2010

Interview with William Latham on Space:1999 Omega