I know that these novelizations of first season
Space: 1999 episodes by
E.C. Tubb & Year Two by
Michael Butterworth have been reprinted and re-issued in recent years with some new cover art and some additional, original adventures, but these are the
Space: 1999 paperbacks that I had as a kid (and
still have, obviously - note how beat-up and scuffed those covers are!).
Each of these books took three or four episodes and linked them together as a single story (much like
Alan Dean Foster's early
Star Trek animated "Logs" novelizations) and for many years - since we only got Year 1 here in Maine and it was never re-run - they were my only way of re-experiencing the stories and enjoying the ones that I missed on TV. In fact, I still scour used bookstores for the volumes I'm missing....
Hi Chris -
ReplyDeleteJUST discovered your blog. This is FANTASTIC!
Thank you so much for your dedication to the great 70's sci-fi era.
Cheers!
The shows logic was sometimes spotty at best...do the novelizations make any headway into focusing the stories any better? I'd actually think i would enjoy these............ Please give your opinion of the different authors or if certain books are better than others in your opinion, i'd enjoy hearing your take on them a bit more. Might pick one up on Ebay and give it a shot!
ReplyDelete"I know that these novelizations of first season Space: 1999 episodes by E.C. Tubb & Michael Butterworth..."
ReplyDeleteUm, boss? Butterworth did the Year 2 novelizations.
Tex
(probably one of hundreds who already told you this)
PS--The future is STILL fantastic...
http://www.captphilonline.com/powys/
Just a brain fart, Tex. I've fixed it.
ReplyDeleteI watched this as a kid and fully expected the future to arrive in 1999, but so far just one eagle spacecraft...still waiting. But seriously, if you were going to buy this for the first time would you get the $40 complete dvd set, or the $40 season 1 blu-ray? Also, any word when the season 2 blu-ray will be released?
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, I had tossed out my paperbacks when I was around 17-20 years old. Little did I know I'd still love the show years later. Like you are trying to do, I went to local used bookstores and bought back all the Year 1 books. I'm not much into Year 2 so never really looked for those but never saw any when I went looking for Year 1.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work!
My Year One books look just as scratched if not more so. What was it about those Pocket Books that made them so scuffable?
ReplyDeleteI had to track down one of the Year Two books decades later, but I finally completed my collection!
Re: reissues: all of Year Two can be purchased as one large hardcover now from Powys Media, with all the stories re-edited by Butterworth. Powys is expected to put out a similar volume for Year One at some future date.
Speaking of Anderson production tie-ins, does anyone have copies of the books based on U.F.O.? I saw them at a friends house back in the '70s, but never since.
I have at least one of the UFO paperback novelizations. I thought for sure that I had two, but when I looked, I could only find the first one, "Flesh Hunters" by Robert Miall....
ReplyDeleteThe American Year 2 books had fantastic covers, utilizing the series' logo, and crediting the writers of the original teleplays. Here in Britain we got perfectly awful covers on ours, which probably explains why sales were poor ( 'The Edge Of The Infinite' was not published in the U.K. ). Best wishes, Zokko
ReplyDeleteI received the third Season 1 book as a birthday gift from a friend who knew I loved the show, back when the show was still on the air! I also remember looking at the first book every time I'd go to the local bookstore, marveling at the (black and white!) photos it contained, but I never got around to purchasing it before it sold out. (I was only about eight years old or so at the time.) I also saw one of the Season 2 books at the store once, but never again afterward.
ReplyDeleteYears later when I was close to finishing high school, I managed to find all of the volumes of S1 that I was missing at a local comic & card shop, and snatched them up right away. Some were scuffed, others not quite so bad, though in a couple of them, the binding glue has aged to the point that the pages started coming loose. Nevertheless, I had a great time getting re-acquainted with my favorite series... I hadn't seen some episodes since they were first run, and reruns were no longer being shown. Plus, no epsiodes had been released on home video yet, so THIS WAS IT!
The novelizations did add a little bit of detail in order to tie unrelated episodes into a sort of continuity, and in some cases they differed slightly from the final filmed episodes... I suspect that they were written based upon the original shooting scripts, rahter than the final aired episodes. (One major change involved the death of a guest character, which resulted in a later episode--"Earthbound"--featuring said character never being novelized until decades later!) The newer re-releases, if I recall correctly, have been tweaked slightly to better resemble the aired episodes, though I don't know for sure if they retain some of their alternate (shooting script?) details.
In addition to the episode novelizations, by the way, there were a few 'extra' novels set in the Season 1 format (even though they featured S2 photos on their covers) that expanded upon the series... these were not 'lost episodes,' but rather sci-fi novels set in the S99 universe. Some were OK, some not as much so, but they were a neat 'what if' expansion that as a kid I had not known about. (The last one of those, "Earthfall," was actually an alternate take on the series as a whole and was the hardest to find on the secondary market. It was reprinted a few years ago as an exclusive Fanderson fan club purchase.)
CR
I mentioned in my last comment that "THIS WAS IT!" regarding the novelizations. I should clarify that I meant this was the only way to enjoy the episodes if you hadn't taped them on primitive VCRs of the day. There were a couple other S99 related things out there, like various Starlog articles (with pics) and the old 66-card trading card set, and the Power Records LPs and 45s (the 45s came with the comic books Power published... Chris has reviewed them previously.) And of course the Charlton comics, too (and Look-in and Zack for European fans, though I didn't find out about those til decades later).
ReplyDeleteBut here in the US, the novelizations were all we fans had to relive the actual episodes. It's funny, but when I finally saw the real episodes as an adult so many years after having read and re-read the novelizations, I was surpried to see differences in the dialogue and in some scenes!
CR
I was hoping to help you fill in a gap in your collection. Tonight after work, I dug out my novelizations, knowing I had one duplicate volume. Unfortunately, it turns out it's volume 2 "Moon Odyssey," which you obviously already have. Sorry!
ReplyDeleteI was able to get some Star Trek photonovels via Half Price Books online after fruitless searches at the local branch store... maybe that's an option for the S99 books? (I'm not working for them nor affiliated in any way. I'm just passing along info that may help.)
Wow, wouldn't S99 photonovels have been great? The closest thing was the ViewMaster reels for "War Games."
CR
I read one Space: 1999 novel, a couple of times, as a kid. All I remember about the plot was a planet they encountered that had nuclear missiles with which they threatened to destroy Moonbase Alpha. Maybe that was the plot. Anyway, I kept my Hawk model at hand while reading it, occasionally zooming it around over my head when I needed a break.
ReplyDeleteSpace: 1999 captured my imagination more than Star Wars. I loved the look and the design elements so much. Best spaceships ever!
Love your blog, many thanks for all of the hard work and love you put into it. I've tried keeping up various daily blogs for years. I know how time consuming it is. Appreciate it very much.
Quite a few of the "first season" novels were original stories rather than adaptations from the show. Though "original" isn't always the right word - at least one, "Android Planet" by John Rankine, is largely one of his own earlier novels rewritten with the 1999 characters plugged in.
ReplyDelete(And like many other such books, there's more swearing and sex - though mild by today's standards - than was ever seen in the show!)