Musings of a Babylon Lurker

Fireball meteors the coming nights ?

Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | astronomy, meteors, science | No Comments

According to Spaceweather.com we should have the possibilities of seeing some fireballs in the sky the coming nights.
I might have to check for clear skies (not often in The Netherlands) for a while

more information

Tags: heavenly fireworks

How I entered into the world of “Babylon 5″

Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | Babylon 5, film and tv, scifi | No Comments

By Internet standards I will probably be regarded as old. I remember seeing Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001, a Space Odyssey” when it came in the cinemas in the late 1960′s, and, of course the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. I was allowed to stay up the night to see the first footsteps on the moon (some time around 2 AM local time). No internet, no NASA TV, just some blurred live black-and-white pictures on the telly.

My interest in scifi and space exploration had obviously started some time before, along with an interest in UFO’s and “X-Files” like stuff.

Fast forward to 1989 (yes – the year the Berlin Wall came tumbling down) I moved from Denmark to The Netherlands to work there.

At work, in the early 90′s we formed a group of “Star Trek” fans coming together watching a few episodes in an evening. We had come one evening to watch some “Deep Space 9″, and after that it turned out that one from the group had brought the “Babylon 5″ pilot episode “The Gathering”.

I have to say that I did not like the pilot, thinking that it would not lead anywhere. How wrong I was … but I still consider the pilot under par, compared to what followed.

When the local TV started showing B5 I took another look, and lo and behold – that I found *much* better than the pilot.some season one episodes had the quality I was expecting from Trek, but soon the thing changed … this was not single episode stories – well. some of them were – but a longer story.

I was hooked.

I followed the 5 year arc to its end – sometimes at odd times of the day (or night), and soon found myself seeking out the VHS tapes.

After having watched the story several times I still get a thrill seeing it again. It has grown to be my all time favourite scifi story on TV – and there are many good ones out there.

I soon looked into more information about B5, on the net, books etc. – and got myself a few B5 goodies. But more about this later. Yes – I have all 15 volumes of J. Michael Straczynski’s (JMS) script books for all the B5 episodes he wrote. I still need to work myself though the about 7000 pages, but in time I will come though them, and as the completist in me told me, I got the “Other Voices” 3 volumes with episodes written by other writers, as well as the “Chronology” book and the quote’s book. There is enough reading for a while.

Tags: Babylon 5