A year ago here at borg we reviewed the intriguing Star Wars tie-in book The Art of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. For fans who have been lucky enough to experience firsthand Disney’s Black Spire Outpost, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge: Treasures from Batuu will take readers back to Oga’s Cantina and Savi’s Workshop, and take home some souvenirs, too. The new “vault” type book is coming in July from Titan Books in the UK and Insight Editions in the U.S. and available for pre-order now here at Amazon.
A little more than twenty-five years ago, Star Trek: First Contact arrived as an iffy proposition: A Star Trek movie directed by Number One aka Commander Will Riker aka Jonathan Frakes? And then it proved what fans had been begging for for years. If you put Star Trek’s reins in the hands of someone who knows the universe, who has lived it week after week for years–who really gets it–you might produce a movie that gets it all exactly right. Star Trek: First Contact has long been recognized as the best of the Next Generation cast films, and for many, the best trek of them all. All these years later fans can see how it was done in Joe Fordham’s long overdue examination of the film in Star Trek: First Contact–The Making of the Classic Film. It’s available for pre-order now here at Amazon, arriving in July.
Take a look inside this long-awaited, behind-the scenes view of the making of the action-filled First Contact:
Just because Netflix canceled after only one season 2021’s best sci-fi TV series, best western TV series, best space fantasy series, best retro fix, with the best TV soundtrack, best costumes, best actors and guest stars, and best borg on TV, doesn’t mean we can’t keep reliving the fantastic live-action reboot/homage series Cowboy Bebop. One more way we’re going to do that is with Cowboy Bebop: Making the Netflix Series, coming next month from Titan Books. It’s the official companion book to the Netflix TV series featuring concept art, sketches, behind-the-scenes photography and interviews with the cast and production crew. Check out a preview below, courtesy of the publisher.
Review by C.J. Bunce
It’s been 16 years since we last saw the Serenity crew on the big screen. If you’re like me, you’ve been enjoying every new Firefly tie-in novel since the first debuted in 2018, including Big Damn Hero (reviewed here), The Magnificent Nine (reviewed here), The Ghost Machine, reviewed here–all by James Lovegrove–and earlier this year Tim Lebbon’s Generations (reviewed here). Lovegrove is back again with the fifth novel in the series, Firefly: Life Signs, now available here at Amazon. Each novel in essence is a new hour-long episode of sorts that continues the story of Mal Reynolds and his crew after that first–and only–season of the TV series. Just like a TV series, Firefly: Life Signs is a play on tropes from decades sci-fi history.
Review by C.J. Bunce
Guardians of the Galaxy–the game–is space fantasy action with comedy notes, available now at Amazon for PS4, PS5, XBox, and more. A new tie-novel is a prequel to the game, and it’s not a book to be overlooked. After more than a decade of reviewing nearly every tie-in novel produced by Marvel and DC, I’m going to say M.K. England’s Guardians of the Galaxy: No Guts, No Glory is a contender for the top spot. You need to get a lot right when you’re crafting a tie-in for familiar characters–one wrong bit of dialogue and you’re sunk. It’s going to be more of a challenge if the team you’re writing about is as diverse and different as the members of the crew of the spaceship Milano. You don’t need to know anything about the game to jump right in, and readers will find the characters and their backstories are 99% consistent with the characters as seen on the big screen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And fans of the comics can look forward to 300 pages of humorous banter among these beloved space adventurers.
Review by C.J. Bunce
The fourth and latest novel in the expanded Firefly universe is the closest story fans will have encountered since the short-lived series’ first season. Tim Lebbon’s Firefly: Generations leans into its science fiction roots as Mal Reynolds and his crew find themselves balancing the life of a crew member and her desire to fulfill a destiny promised from the first episode. Two keys put them on their next adventure across the ‘verse: one key they’ve had all along, and the other is a bit of a treasure map that goes to the very heart of understanding the old Earth-That-Was. Only they may find it’s not treasure waiting, but a ship. And not just any ship, but a seemingly haunted ghost ship.
Review by C.J. Bunce
Along with a comic book limited series, a new novel is the best bet for an additional space Western fix for anyone saddened by the cancellation of Netflix’s fantastic sci-fi series, Cowboy Bebop. Cowboy Bebop: A Syndicate Story–Red Planet Requiem provides the full space mobster origin story for both lead hero Spike Spiegel aka Fearless and his one-time friend and partner, Vicious. As a bonus, this novel, now available in paperback here at Amazon, is written by a member of the writing staff for the series.
Review by C.J. Bunce
We’ve taken a look at multi-artist tribute concept books before at borg, including the excellent Alien: 40 Years/40 Artists, the Firefly Artbook, The Thing Artbook, Star Trek: 50 Artists/50 Years, and The Mike Wieringo Tellos Tribute. Any time we showcase a major benchmark in comic book titles, like Detective Comics 1000th issue, Wonder Woman’s 750th issue, and The Amazing Spider-Man Issue #800, or charity projects like the Wonder Woman 100 showcase, we see a great new spin on favorite characters from a new vantage: a variety of artists interpreting an icon of popular culture. Original art compiler Printed in Blood has partnered again with Titan Books to return to the Alien franchise with their new Aliens Artbook, featuring dozens of artists–most you haven’t seen before–interpreting the movie for its 35th anniversary. It’s available this month here at Amazon and at brick and mortar book stores everywhere. Other than in Alien: Covenant: David’s Drawings, you’ve probably never seen so many Xenomorphs in one place.
Review by C.J. Bunce
You are Star-Lord in the new Eidos-Montreal video game based on the infamous Marvel Comics band of misfits, the Guardians of the Galaxy. The third person, action-adventure has players calling the shots as the team tries to save the universe again, but not before you cause a chain of events to make it all unravel. Guardians of the Galaxy–the game–is space fantasy action with comedy notes, available now at Amazon for PS4, PS5, XBox, and more. There’s even a purple llama. And if you like the game, or you want to know what it’s like to be a voice actor for video games, don’t miss the behind-the-scenes guidebook, Guardians of the Galaxy: The Art of the Game, just out from Titan Books.
Review by C.J. Bunce
In the new mystery-horror mash-up, Sherlock Holmes & Count Dracula: The Classified Dossier, Volume 1, writer Christian Klaver jumps right in, serving up Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective and Bram Stoker’s Count not in a face-off, but as a team-up. As more rights to Doyle’s works enter the public domain, publishers continue to release dozens of new Holmes books each year, each supplying more files for the seemingly endless drawer of his own “expanded universe” cases (come 2023 anyone will be free to write a Holmes story about anything). This story, another told via the perspective of the reliable confidante Dr. John Watson, is made more fun, because “the more genres, the merrier.”
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