- This topic has 58 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 12 years ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Thanks Mateo 🙂
I shall have to re-read Tubb’s AS and RP novels. I really never liked them that much, but it has been [i]many[/i] years since I read them and it’s always possible my views might have changed.
I quite like EARTHFALL too, although I don’t believe it’s the ‘finest Space:1999 novel’ (as it was once called elsewhere). I always have difficulty reading more than the first half of it for some reason, and again I wasn’t wild about the characterisations….
Simon
Interesting to read Mateo’s thoughts on [i]Alien Seed [/i]and [i]Rogue Planet[/i] (& yours too Simon).
I for one am looking forward to a Powys re-release of both books at some point in the future (just don’t use Eagle One Media’s version of [i]Alien Seed [/i]as a template. It’s riddled with typo’s whereas the orginal paperback version released by Orbit here in the UK is typo-less) 🙂
Have read Chapter 1 of PoM today.
Very well written so far. I liked the way the author describes Eagle Seven’s orbit and its decent into the planets’ atmosphere. I could picture it in my minds’ eye very easily. The imagery of the Eagle flying over the dead cities is evocative. A good start to what I’m sure will be a great story.
We’ve been quite lucky this year. Powys has released 2 stories set in [b]Year 1[/b] (AP and PoM) with a story set in [b]Year 2 [/b](The Whispering Sea) due out shortly and several novels set during [b]Year 3[/b] (Children of the Gods, Black Doves and The Final Revolution) due out next year.
It’s an exciting time to be a (literary) [b]SPACE: 1999[/b] fan! B)
[b]mateo wrote:[/b]
[quote]Anticipation…[/quote]Right on, bruvva!!!!
And as luck would have it, Royal Mail has delivered [b]Phoenix of Megaron[/b] this morning. 🙂 I loved the red spine, which is a nice throwback to the original novel.
As this book (and Butterworth’s last Year 2 novel) was never published in the UK, I remember spending a lot of money engaging the services of an American book search service to get hold of the US paperbacks. That was pre-internet days really. Prior to that, I’d even written to Douglas Mason himself trying to get a copy and he wrote a lovely letter back, saying that – having had his attention drawn to it – he had been re-reading it and thought it was a good tale: [i]”…full of ancient wisdom like ‘Living is struggling; you have to learn to like it’.”
[/i]
I’ve still got the letter somewhere. Anyway, the upshot was that he only had his own file copy, which understandably he couldn’t part with.A few years ago, I participated quite heavily in the book discussion (ExE) started by Mateo on the [i]Online Alpha[/i] list (in the days when that list was very good…). As a result John Mason contacted me and offered to send me a copy of [b]Forgotten Rocket[/b], which was a sort of precursor to [b]PoM[/b] (as he says in the intro to the new edition) and which likewise I still have on my shelves.
As we were talking earlier about Tubb’s original novels, I thought I’d give them a new look. With that in mind, I started [b]Alien Seed[/b] at 10.00pm sharp last night and finished at 10.20pm dull…..barely got past the third chapter, just can’t seem to get into Tubb these days, alas.
But John Rankine….totally different. I’ll be looking forward to reading this! Thanks Mateo!
– Simon
I have read the introduction and first chapter and it is good to be wandering the halls of Moonbase Alpha once again. 🙂
It might be nice to include the original story in one of the Shepherd collections of 1999 stories. Simply as a matter of historical interest.
Which original story? The 70s version of PoM or Forgotten Rocket? I don’t have the rights to publish Forgotten Rocket (which IS available–check out the links at the end of the Phoenix).
Mateo
[i]Forgotten Rocket[/i] has no place in a [b]Space: 1999 [/b]anthology really, IMO. It has nothing to do with the series; it’s simply a story that Rankine adapted because he was up a against a tight schedule for a new [b]1999[/b] novel.
It’s not, strictly speaking, a bad story I suppose, but [b]PoM[/b] is much better.
Some interesting changes to the book, mainly the ending, as far as I could tell. Shame about the “spactacular” typo on the cover, though, as well as a few others inside. And I still think using a sans serif typeface makes the Powys novels look less like professionally published novels, but I’ve been saying that for ten years or so now.
The copies sold at the con and directly from Powys afterwards (a total of 50) were proof-copies–the ones we check for just such errors before releasing the book. I ordered 53 proof copies of Phoenix (which arrived three days before the convention) because if I’d ordered one (to check for errors) then fixed the errors and resubmitted the book to Lulu.com, we’d never have had copies of the corrected book in time for the con.
THANK YOU for pointing out the spelling error. We’ll make sure it’s corrected on the final version (and we’ve already corrected a couple of typos too!).
I just completed a side-by-side reading of Phoenix Pocket and Phoenix Powys.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read this one and I was amazed at how much I had forgotten – which was pretty much everything other than the first chapter or so and the ending!
Overall an enjoyable read with surprisingly little that had to be changed. My memory was faulty and I thought a significant bit would need work, but it was really just a few pages at the end.
The Powys version has some nice tweaks here and there to smooth things out, explain a few things better, makes some direct ties to Android Planet, and soften some descriptions (e.g. Bergman no longer has an ‘ape face’).
Typos are few and far between, and I’ll forward on my list to Mateo for correction in later prints.
The new ending I thought fit very organically with the story and I could easily see it as being the original. My only ‘con’ to the new ending is it plays fast and loose with the amount of time and the number of orbits that pass in the last few pages (they make no sense at all, actually). But I’ll take it as artistic license, let it slide and give the whole endeavor a thumbs up!
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.