The Babylon Podcast

Our Last, Best Hope for Babylon 5 Fans

novels

Babylon Podcast #275: The Psi Corps Trilogy

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Deep Geeking: This week, Tim, Jeremy and Agent 6 go in-depth discussing The Psi Corps trilogy, written by J. Gregory Keyes. The books in the series are “Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps”, “Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant” and “Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester”.

This trilogy tells the story of the sudden appearance of human telepaths on Earth, and political and societal events leading up to the creation of Psi Corps, then the story arc telling the rise of Alfred Bester through the Corps, and what happened to both in the aftermath of the Telepath War.

Babylon Podcast #274: The Technomage Trilogy

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Deep Geeking: The Technomage trilogy, written by Jeanne Cavelos, is subtitled The Passing of the Technomages. The books in the series are “Casting Shadows”, “Summoning Light” and “Invoking Darkness”.

This trilogy tells the story arc of the Technomages from Galen’s time as an initiate, during the slow rise of the Shadows new influence throughout the galaxy, the discovery of the truth behind the links between the Shadows and the technology that gives the technomages their powers, the division amongst the mages on whether they should stay and fight the Shadows or if they should flee, and their involvement in Sheridan’s mission to destroy Z’ha’dum.

Babylon Podcast #273: The Centauri Prime Trilogy

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Deep Geeking: Legions of Fire, The Centauri Prime trilogy written by Peter David, is the topic for this episode, and the crew on hand really digs in.

The books in order are “The Long Night of Centauri Prime”, “Armies of Light and Dark”, and “Out of the Darkness” (the third book is out of print, but not quite as hard to find as it had been in previous years). This was the second of the Babylon 5 trilogies that are considered canon.

Tim feels this is the weakest of the trilogies, while Joe feels it’s stronger than most people give it credit for, and one of the strongest franchise series he’s ever read. Discuss amongst yourselves!

Babylon Podcast #271: The Shadow Within

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Deep Geeking: The Shadow Within is Book #7 in the original series of novels, and the other of the two from that series that have been acknowledged as canon.

Talk about this book delves deeply into Anna’s story, and into the character and motivations of Morden, of the Psi Corps mission to eliminate a threat to the telepaths, and how these events mesh into the main Babylon 5 storyline as a whole.

Babylon Podcast #270: To Dream in the City of Sorrows

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Deep Geeking: To Dream in the City of Sorrows is Book #9 in the original series of novels, and one of the two from that series that have been acknowledged as canon.

Talk about the book ranges from the cover art, the story arcs for Sinclair, Marcus, Catherine and Neroon, the accuracy of the character “voices”, the nagging feeling that this book’s pacing was too fast, and very likely could have been a much better book if it had been allowed to be longer, and more.

And go watch H+ the Digital Series; Summer is impressed and doesn’t think you’ll be disappointed. It’s the first web series she’s seen since Dr Horrible that she’s planning on buying on DVD even before knowing if one will ever be available.

Babylon Podcast #269: Chatting about Babylon 5 Novels, #1-6, 8

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Deep Geeking: Discussions begin with the Babylon 5 novels… the books, the books, the books! Where to begin with the commentary and the criticism?

Much of the dissatisfaction that we feel with these books likely comes from a combination of the main characters authentic voices being slightly off, plus the impression that the events of the books didn’t matter, that they fell into the trap of hitting the “reset” button after the end of the “episode”, which is one of the things that we loved about Babylon 5 that the various Star Trek series couldn’t adhere to most of the time.

editor’s note: And yes, Summer made an error, the novelization that JMS rejected way back when was the one for “River of Souls”, not for “Thirdspace”

Babylon Podcast #264: Babylon 5 Comics Review

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Deep Geeking: This week, both Gary from Jacksonville and Neil from Bowie join Summer and Jeremy to discuss the initial 11-issue run of Babylon 5 comics, published originally by DC Comics, and later collected into graphic novel collections by Titan Books and by DC.

Babylon Podcast #263: Overview of Babylon 5 Comics and other Collectibles

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:17 — 50.7MB)

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Discussion: Tim, Summer, Jeremy and guest Gary from Jacksonville discuss the plan for talking about the Babylon 5 comics published by DC Comics and by Titan Books. Many issues surrounded the actual creation, writing and publication of the series, and Gary gives us a little bit of that wacky history.