Between 2008 and 2016, I edited twenty-seven books and produced two video releases on Babylon 5 and its spinoffs for creator J. Michael Straczynski and his colleagues at B5 Books. For much of that time, I’d been researching and writing the Babylon 5 Encyclopedia, which was published as a full-color, two-volume hardback set in 2017.
In early 2018, while meeting with Straczynski on other business, we began discussing The Prisoner and the merits of the various books chronicling its creation. (I have as many books on The Prisoner as there were episodes of the series.) I lamented the lack of an authoritative book on Babylon 5. Straczynski said I was the best person to do the job, having been given access to the surviving production files and having befriended many members of the cast and crew.
At the time, I was otherwise engaged in work with Harlan Ellison, himself the conceptual consultant on the series, but the idea of a book on Babylon 5 that rivaled the best books on Doctor Who, The Prisoner, and Star Trek stayed with me.
Later that year, a colleague pursuing an adjacent project arranged for me to interview several members of the Babylon 5 art department and I suddenly found myself researching the book Straczynski and I had discussed months earlier.
I planned to work on the project quietly, launching a Kickstarter to fund the publication when the text was written. It would provide a break from my ongoing Ellison work.
In early 2019, circumstances in my professional life necessitated that I either abandon the Babylon 5 book or find a way to finance it. I initially planned to launch the project at one of the two Babylon 5 panels celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary at the Gallifrey One convention in February, but a fatal car accident the week before put my personal life in as precarious a position as my professional existence.
When things stabilized somewhat, I launched the Babylon 5 Preservation Project on 10 May 2019. One month later, the project was financed by 933 backers. I remain humbled by their support and patience over the succeeding years.
(You can read the original prospectus here.)
I imagined it would take one year to research and write a definitive 400- to 500-page 6″ by 9″ book on Babylon 5.
I did not imagine:
- the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down the world,
- the death of my business partner Susan Ellison and the resulting collapse of a sixty-book publishing project I’d worked on since 2013,
- how difficult it would be to locate many key Babylon 5 contributors,
- how much information about the series I didn’t have at the outset of the project,
- how much death and illness my wife and I would endure,
- how many strangers would come forward to help me with my quest,
- how many people would contribute in ways I still can’t believe,
- how many people would come from other states to help me move (as I type this) when circumstances necessitated it,
- and—most of all—how hard it would be to tell the story of the people who made Babylon 5 in a manner that honored their work to the fullest extent of my abilities as an interviewer, researcher, and writer.
It’s not the book I started to write. It’s longer than The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings combined, for one thing, and more about the people than the plywood space station they inhabited. It is, without question, a better book than I could have written in 2020.
It’s taken nearly everything I have to get this far. I have a little farther to go, roughly 500 miles and a few more months.
At the end, the book about Babylon 5 will have taken as long from Kickstarter to print as the series took from conception to premiere. It will have been written in the midst of an ongoing online conversation with the intended audience, much like the series it chronicles. The writer of the book—like the creator of the series—will have become a much better writer in the process, his hair receding and becoming gray along the way.
I feel like John Sheridan looking at his reflection in the mirror on Minbar that last Sunday, the end a few commercial breaks away.
“Look at all the work that’s going into making the book happen. It’s years of work and research and interviewing. Who else would do that? You’re capturing this historic show in its entirety in a way that nobody else would’ve.
“Seriously! We’re so honored.”
Patricia Tallman, Actor
Patricia Tallman and I recorded the following discussion about the evolution of the Babylon 5 Preservation Project in early 2025. It is the source of the quote you see above.
“The making of Babylon 5 really is a terrific story about this business. It’s a story of heroism. How the show was made is worth remembering.”
Steve Burg, Concept Artist
Featured below are 180 of the 273 cast and crew members I’ve interviewed for this project. Please note that it is much easier to find pictures of on-camera talent, so the images are necessarily biased toward actors and personnel who appeared in behind-the-scenes videos. (I have already resorted to representing some of the personnel with their work.)
Wayne Alexander and others played multiple roles, but I’ve labeled them according to the image used, often to illustrate what they looked like sans prosthetics.
(I will update this dramatis personæ as time and pictures allow.)
“Jason is a good editor, he’s worked on B5 related books for a long time, and he will do a stellar job.”
https://x.com/straczynski/status/1128533274521767936
J. Michael Straczynski, Creator
