Rating: Summary: A required tie-in book, unfortunately not a novelty Review: Andy Lane's book is the ultimate in Babylon 5 guides and the "A-Z" index is also a required reading to backup the former. What this book stands for ? It is a non original book (using the above two ones as reference) but provides the reader with enough backstory and technicalities to tie-up all the above into the Babylon 5 station itself. It can fascinate the reader with tech specs and photos of all known ships, guns, etc. plus all other procedures of living in Babylon 5 station. Also a nice insert are the VIP criminal records, the known space grid, a.o. As a publication is perfect making it the last required book for those dedicated Babylon 5 fans. If only it was a novel idea...
Rating: Summary: A good book to have Review: Andy Lane's book is the ultimate in Babylon 5 guides and the "A-Z" index is also a required reading to backup the former. What this book stands for ? It is a non original book (using the above two ones as reference) but provides the reader with enough backstory and technicalities to tie-up all the above into the Babylon 5 station itself. It can fascinate the reader with tech specs and photos of all known ships, guns, etc. plus all other procedures of living in Babylon 5 station. Also a nice insert are the VIP criminal records, the known space grid, a.o. As a publication is perfect making it the last required book for those dedicated Babylon 5 fans. If only it was a novel idea...
Rating: Summary: A required tie-in book, unfortunately not a novelty Review: Andy Lane's book is the ultimate in Babylon 5 guides and the "A-Z" index is also a required reading to backup the former. What this book stands for ? It is a non original book (using the above two ones as reference) but provides the reader with enough backstory and technicalities to tie-up all the above into the Babylon 5 station itself. It can fascinate the reader with tech specs and photos of all known ships, guns, etc. plus all other procedures of living in Babylon 5 station. Also a nice insert are the VIP criminal records, the known space grid, a.o. As a publication is perfect making it the last required book for those dedicated Babylon 5 fans. If only it was a novel idea...
Rating: Summary: A good book to have Review: I liked how they had the intro from Michael Garibaldi. I was laughing myself silly at his one liners throughout the book. Mainly I liked the focus on the things you don't get to see up close(eg the bathrooms) The crimes section is great too. The transcripts of the different cases in the show was good too. This would be a good book to have in conjunction with the A-Z guide and Andy Lane's books.
Rating: Summary: Good book for the non-serious Babylon 5 fan Review: I would have to agree with the previous reviewers in the sense that this does not give an in-depth view of the entire Babylon 5 series. Granted, this book is a great overview of the series (up to the end of Babylon 5's fourth season), but I suggest looking up other Babylon 5 materials if you need more information.
Rating: Summary: Fun for hard core fans Review: If you're very into B5, then you will probably enjoy this item. It is good fun, with some interesting detail of the station (although if you're serious enough to buy such a book you will probably already know most of it). My only real quibble would be that it isn't really that substantial, and after half an hour you feel like another one. :)
Rating: Summary: Fun for hard core fans Review: If you're very into B5, then you will probably enjoy this item. It is good fun, with some interesting detail of the station (although if you're serious enough to buy such a book you will probably already know most of it). My only real quibble would be that it isn't really that substantial, and after half an hour you feel like another one. :)
Rating: Summary: Good pictures, bad text. Review: Nice blueprints and pictures, but a lot of discrepancies in the captions and descriptions...most of which have been mentioned in other reviews.
Rating: Summary: Mortimore wrote this book for his writer's fee only Review: Review of Jim Mortimore's "Babylon 5 Security Manual" : I can honestly say that this is the absolute worst attempt at writing about Babylon 5 that I have EVER seen. Jim Mortimore brings practically NOTHING new to the B5 universe, instead choosing to simply bring back old news and never going any deeper than a surface analysis. And even then, most of his "conclusions" (if I'd dare call them that) are wrong (THE ALLIANCE OF FREE WORLDS???). This book clearly demonstrates that he had no interest in writing this book other than his writer's fee. Even info that has been firmly established during epsidoes is contradicted in Mortimore's book (according to him, telepaths rated P4 and under are not part of the Psi Corps...) He also manages to mispell critical words like Z'ha'dum (or Za'ha'dum two pages later) and Trigati (or Tragati). Comes in handy when you're too ignorant to bother looking things up or actually correcting the book you're selling. I must sa! y that I feel insulted that such trash has managed to be published bearing the name Babylon 5, which, since it first aired, has been a product of unquestionable quality-until now.
Rating: Summary: OK Review: The book is...umm...let's just say...interesting :) in that it contains *authorized* scale diagrams of the station, identicards, PPGs, Shadow ships, scouts, fighters, starfuries, thunderbolts, atmospheric shuttles, maintbots, jumpgates, MinFighters, and White Stars (I think that's about it) drawn by Timothy Earls, the B5 CGI director himself as well as tons of wonderful original CGI photos; however, the text itself seems to have been written without any official input at all - part of it is based on JMS' comments on the nets (VERY irregular especially when it comes to the technical side), while the rest is author's own creation and while logical in general, most of the specifics and fill-in-the-blanks will probably never be used on the show (especially the tons of in-jokes and mistakes). For instance, the dimensions given in the text accompanying the B5 scale diagrams originate from the fan-written station.txt file at ftp.midwinter.com, and these were calculated using direct on-screen measurements of the "Points of Departure" diagram! You'd have thought the writer could have taken the time to measure the official diagram (which BTW is the same as the one in the CD-ROM Guide)
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