More on “Conferring on Babylon 5”

So our discussion about the collection “The Parliament of Dreams: Conferring on Babylon 5” was pushed back a week because of Tim’s work commitments. Without Tim’s input, I don’t think the discussion would have been as lively as it could have been, so I made the executive decision to push for one more week.

But the SF Foundation has given us permission to give you all a gift.

Since The Parliament of Dreams: Conferring on Babylon 5 has long been out of print, and very few of our listeners have ever seen this book much less had a chance to read it, I asked if we could get permission to make the introduction to the collection available, and they said yes (thank you Andy and Farah!)

The introduction, “Rewriting the Past in the Future in Straczynski’s Babylon 5” by editors Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, gives an extensive background on what led up the call for papers and the conference where those papers were presented, as well as an overview of the papers included in the collection, plus a huge TEASE about papers that were presented but not included in the book.

You know how obsessive Summer can get about wanting to read as much as she can about Babylon 5, so if anyone has any information about the academics who wrote and presented those papers, let her know. There has to be a way to get some of those papers republished online or linked to where they were published, or in some other fashion made more accessible to us B5 geeks.

Here are the other links mentioned in last week’s unofficial discussion:
SF Foundation Publications: Critical Works: Parliament of Dreams (2019 update: The SF Foundation has made the full PDF of the book available online)
SF Foundation Publications: Essays: I, Cartagia: a mad emperor in Babylon 5 and his historical antecedents by Tony Keen
and a response at jmsnews.com to “I, Cartagia”: Dreadful “essay” about Cartagia, and a response, (Oct 2008)

“Parliament of Dreams” – Introduction [PDF, 700kb]

So while there was no official show last week, Jeremy, Gary and myself had a diverting discussion on just about everything, from some of the news coming out of San Diego Comic-Con about the new JMS Studios and the projects on the boards there, to the attraction of the “Echoes” books coming out now, discussions about books and library porn, and much more… it was about an hour and a half long, if you’re curious.

as an aside, would folks who didn’t listen in on the live stream on July 11 want to hear that long, wandering discussion anyway? would you want it in the feed, or just available for download? Summer does indulge in some profanity now and again.