Babylon 5 Novels and Graphic Novels - at Mongoose

[Jan]

Apologies, I didn't expand enough. When we were asking specifically about Marines, he said EF didn't have them. We countered with some of those quotes. He was unimpressed (actually, a lot of that was Fionna at the time). End result, no EF Marines in the AoG products and, since that was the last dictate, no Marines in the Mongoose EarthForce one.

Thanks for the added detail. IIRC, he mentioned in one of his commentaries that he depended on...John Copeland (I think) for much of the military lore.

Trust me, it drove us crazy. One of the nice things about him backing off from the whole review process is you don't get these types of situations much anymore. When I wrote the history of the Technomages for Bruce's Technomage sourcebook, I figured there'd be some requested changes. Not a one.

I'm sure it would be crazy-making when you're trying to be concientious. I'm not familiar with it at all so forgive me if this is a silly question but did any of you find discrepancies when the Techno-Mage trilogy came out?

Jan

[David Panzer]

Ninjrk, thanks for mentioning the "secondary canon". That's specifically what I had in mind when I mentioned the Star Wars novels that Lucas gave the go-ahead for, such as the Dark Empire series of comics, Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" trilogy, and others.

[Dr Maturin]

The Thrawn Trilogy and (the awful, awful) Dark Empire are no more canon than the New Jedi Order series is.

Under the old system that is.

In the new system SW is using, EVERYTHING is "canon" unless it contradicts something else. I have canon in quotation marks because while technically only the DVD special edition classic and prequel movies are canon, everything else is considered part of the story. Confused yet?

There is a word that perfectly described SW continuity: clusterfuck.

[David Panzer]

Oh. I was going by what I read several years ago, where Lucas allowed the "expanded universe" novels to happen, but that if he decided to continue the story he wouldn't have to stick with what was said in the novels- as Ninjrk/Matt said "secondary canon".

Now...it looks like it's gotten worse than DC did with continuity before Crisis on Infinite Earths.

[ninjrk]

Thanks for the added detail. IIRC, he mentioned in one of his commentaries that he depended on...John Copeland (I think) for much of the military lore.



I'm sure it would be crazy-making when you're trying to be concientious. I'm not familiar with it at all so forgive me if this is a silly question but did any of you find discrepancies when the Techno-Mage trilogy came out?

Jan

I'll look through the notes I made to write it. One that does leap out was that JMS had earlier discounted the Streib as being Shadow minions and then one of the Technomage books specifically mentions them with the Drakh and Wurt being present in numbers on Z'Ha'Dum.

Matt

[Dr Maturin]

Oh. I was going by what I read several years ago, where Lucas allowed the "expanded universe" novels to happen, but that if he decided to continue the story he wouldn't have to stick with what was said in the novels- as Ninjrk/Matt said "secondary canon".

Well, that goes without saying.

For what it's worth, this is how the old system worked:

Canon:

Level 1 - Special Editions and prequels
Level 2 - Original films
Level 3 - Radio dramatizations
Level 4 - Novelizations

Offical Continuity:

Novels, comics, games, Ewok made-for-TV movies

Apocrypha:

Stuff like the children's Trioculous Saga, Droids cartoon, etc.

Originally, Dark Empire was considered apocrypha, until the decision was made to make it official. The first novel to mention the events that took place in Dark Empire was Jedi Search.

Now...it looks like it's gotten worse than DC did with continuity before Crisis on Infinite Earths.

No, nothing gets worse than comics.

And a post from myself on EA Marines:

http://jmsnews.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13664&postcount=119

[ninjrk]

http://jmsnews.com/forums/showpost.p...&postcount=119

Yup, and I probably shouldn't have slipped the Marines reference in the special forces section (that's the part that I wrote, rest was Bruce) because the Marines part was nixed (remember, JMS says no EF Marines and thus you can't include them). However, I was hoping to launch it as a test balloon to see if anyone at Babylonian Productions picked it up. Since they didn't, I've been hoping to ooze them in. They already touched on them in the EarthForce Campaign Guide, although they specified them as being Army GROPOS troops that are assigned to warships.

Matt

[Dr Maturin]

Maybe JMS forgot about the Marines in GROPOS, or maybe he just wasn't thinking when you asked him.

Or, maybe the space troops call themselves Marines in pride.

[David Panzer]

I guess we're supposed to interpret what was said during the GROPOS' cadence (Earth Force Marince Corps) as referring to the Army.

G.I.s aren't Marines, even though they try to pretend to be at times.

[Jan]

JMS has been known to misspeak. Why not just chalk it up as an error?

Jan

[grumbler]

Yeah, I think maybe we are misunderstanding what JMS said about "no Marines." Clearly there ARE "Marines" - the breaching pod in Severed Dreams has "Marines" written on it in big letters!

What I think JMS was sayiong is that there is no seperate service that is called "Marines" - they are just "Army" troops detailed for space action.

AFAICT, there is no "Army" or "Navy" per se at all (let alone Marines), just Earthforce. The "Earthforce Space Navy" kinds of bilge you see on the internet is just from people who don't pay attention.

[David Panzer]

Earthforce is one entire entity, but has something similar to the Air Force (the Starfury Pilots), the Navy (the large space vessels) and Marines (the GROPOS). They're just not independent groups.

I get it now.

I'll just tell my old man (who was a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps) that Earthforce has no Army. He'll like that.

[ninjrk]

Yeah, I think maybe we are misunderstanding what JMS said about "no Marines." Clearly there ARE "Marines" - the breaching pod in Severed Dreams has "Marines" written on it in big letters!

What I think JMS was sayiong is that there is no seperate service that is called "Marines" - they are just "Army" troops detailed for space action.

AFAICT, there is no "Army" or "Navy" per se at all (let alone Marines), just Earthforce. The "Earthforce Space Navy" kinds of bilge you see on the internet is just from people who don't pay attention.

To the first part, that's exactly how the game properties have chosen to go; there are Marines, they are just not a separate branch of the Army.

As to the other, JMS has stated both via Usenet and internally to the game groups back in the AoG and CE days that there is indeed an EarthForce Army and Navy. That's partly why you see general Franklin and the officer from "Eyes" wearing a differently colored uniform. He also specifically instructed CE to include an Army and Navy rep in the Earth Alliance Joint Chiefs according to one of the peoiple who worked at CE when their EarthForce book was written. To be fair, he also stated that there were Marines but I've not heard of him contradicting the division in EarthForce.

Matt

[ninjrk]

Earthforce is one entire entity, but has something similar to the Air Force (the Starfury Pilots), the Navy (the large space vessels) and Marines (the GROPOS). They're just not independent groups.

I get it now.

I'll just tell my old man (who was a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps) that Earthforce has no Army. He'll like that.

From notes that we were given by JMS back in the AoG/CE days that's not quite accurate. The term Earthforce is equivalent to using the term "US military". The original line was that there was an Army and Navy branch of the EA military, with the Marines possibly (it was left vague) being a sub-branch of the Army similar to how the Marine Corps relates to the US Navy. More recently, Babylonian Productions have altered that to remove the concept of the Marines as a separate line, although the most recent aborted movie threw that into question.

Officially, there is an Army, just no Marines.

Matt

[David Panzer]

So the Army want to be Marines. Typical