SCRIPTS (SEASON 3)
• Ship of Tears
• Interludes and Examinations
• War Without End, Part 1
• War Without End, Part 2
• Walkabout
• Grey 17 Is Missing
• And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place

You'd better sit down for this one. There's some very cool stuff coming your way, and we don't want anybody passing out and suing us when they fall down...especially when you get to the little surprises down the road and...no, of course we're not going to tell you about it here. Wouldn't be a surprise then, would it? If you really have to scroll down to find out what else is coming, fine, go ahead, break a mother's heart.

Okay, while they're gone, the rest of you...listen up. You've come on an auspicious occasion: the mid-point on what we have only recently learned is the most ambitious publishing endeavor in the history of print-on-demand. (No, we didn't know either, and don't tell jms, he'd probably burst into flames or something, and we hate it when that happens, just ruins the drapes.)

Seriously, it turns out that nobody in this publishing venue has ever tried something as massive as publishing one volume per month (more or less) with the goal of publishing nearly 6,300 words in 15 months. Never been done. And those 6,300 pages include a planned 800+ pages of original commentary and introduction, two books worth of material all by themselves, painting the most intimate picture to date of the making of a TV series from start to finish.

Good thing we didn't know that it was impossible when we started this, because if we'd known it was impossible, we...well, we probably would've done it anyway, but we wouldn't have gotten nearly as much sleep. (jms being again the exception, having not slept since 1968, when he dozed off momentarily during a presidential debate, which is, of course, what they're for, and what the heck were we talking about? Oh, right. Setting records.)

Volume 7 is the midway point in the (apparently historic) Babylon 5 scripts program, which includes 14 regular volumes. (The full purchase of which entitles you to the 15th volume free, which is chock full of stuff from JMS's vault and can not be bought separately) That we've gotten this far is a tribute to the many fans who --

-- oh, we see that the folks who jumped ahead to the description have rejoined us. (Yes, we're monitoring your computer, including everything that's on your hard drive, and you should be ashamed of yourself.) Okay, now that everyone's on board...let's get down to the details of Volume 7.

Let's start with the 63-page introduction and commentary, written exclusively for this volume. What will you find waiting for you this month?

• How about an intimate -- in more ways than one -- description of the year that the Babylon 5 cast and crew began to descend into a near-mad level of eccentricity? Learn all about the previously-classified Breast Bowl...and its shortly-thereafter-hatched companion contest, the Butt Bowl...the practical jokes that began to take place more and more frequently on-set, including the "What's In Lyta's Box?" lingerie story, the day everyone in the cast decided to convince Jason Carter that his character was going to die in "Grey 17 is Missing," and --

• -- AND...the story of the day Andreas and Peter decided to pull one of the worst practical jokes in the history of the form on none other than jms...a practical joke which, down the road, would lead to a retaliation of near-mythic proportions.

• The Draal Complication Explained. Fan-favorite two-parter "War Without End" was originally written to heavily feature Draal, but had to be extensively revised when the actor was not available. The commentary examines each of the changes to the script that came about as a result, and how the two-parter was completely restructured in editing. Step by step, readers are taken through the editing process as the episodes are thrown up in the air to come down in vastly different form: the teaser and parts of part two becoming the end of part one, big changes to Sinclair's character, Delenn...possibly the most detailed look yet at the complete restructuring of an episode, invaluable for budding film-makers and people eager to win arguments in bars.

• Secrets of the Starfury design, and the day that NASA called, asking if they could borrow it, and a rather embarrassing secret of the Book of G'Quan.

• How to Create Alien Designs for Fun and Profit Using Color and Little Bits of Cloth.

• Buckets of behind-the-scenes information on the production of some of the most pivotal, fan-favorite episodes, including what happened to the Kosh encounter suit the day that character was no longer needed. (Viewer discretion advised.)

• The secret methods by which "War" was linked with "Babylon Squared," paying off threads from two years earlier whose meanings had quietly changed behind the scenes.

• A deeply personal story from jms about how he came up with the story for "Walkabout" based on his time in a religious cult and a tragic experience he endured shortly after.

• It had to happen...and about time...jms apologizes for "Grey 17" and explains exactly why it all ended up going into the toilet in quite the way it did.

All of THAT...in addition to the scripts, many of which contain material deleted from the final episodes.

In fact, as a SPECIAL BONUS for B5 fans, this volume incorporates the ORIGINAL DRAFT of the script for the two-part episode, "War Without End," which includes over a half-dozen wholly different scenes omitted from later drafts or radically changed when Draal was not available.

PLUS...10 pages of JMS's personal behind-the-scenes photos...and something else.

We asked JMS if he could sum up the philosophy of Babylon 5, and his own personal philosophy, in one sentence. He struggled with this for weeks. At first, he woke up with something in the middle of the night and scribbled it down. But in the light of day, it just said "the room smells funny," which we didn't think qualified. So he went back to work.

With hard work, effort and an aneurysm or two, he finally managed to get that core idea down to just THREE WORDS...three words that include a universe of passion and purpose. The three words he lives by, and which inform every character of Babylon 5.

He wrote down those three words in his own handwriting, and we have converted that into a postcard, a printed, hand-written message directly from JMS to the fans, and included this postcard in the package with volume 7.

And what is that one sentence, what are those three words, that so encapsulate everything that Babylon 5 stands for, everything that JMS believes? It comes down to this: "Never Surrender Dreams."

He thought it was important enough to sign his name to it, and we thought it was important enough to put it into the quotes merchandise section...but you won't find the signed, printed postcard there. That one's free with volume seven, and won't ever be sold in the Babylon 5 quote store.

THIS PRINTED POSTCARD WILL NEVER BE FOR SALE, IT WILL ONLY BE GIVEN FREE TO B5 FANS WHO PICK UP VOLUME 7 through August 31, 2006. You can keep the postcard, or send it to someone who could benefit from those three words.

Just a little thank-you from JMS and CafePress, from our position halfway up the mountain of the biggest print-on-demand event in publishing history.

Cool, huh?

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