The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 16 July 2005
by E. C. Tubb
This short novel is based upon the scripts of at least four episodes of the popular 1970s television series, Space: 1999. The opening chapters refer to the opening episode of the series, in which nuclear waste, stored on the Moon, detonates in a catastrophic explosion that hurls the Moon out of Earth orbit, out of the Solar System, and into interstellar space. It is a preposterous premise, but it was entertaining as a television show. The remaining two thirds of the book re-tell three interstellar encounters the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha have with threats of bizarre and dangerous sorts. Not terribly unlike Star Trek in its style, really. We follow the adventures of Commander Koenig and doctor Helena Russel, along with several characters from the first season of the TV show. Though, there is an almost fatalistic tone to their grim adventures. Anyway, as a novel, the whole thing reads as, well, a television script. Thin, shallow, sensationalistic. There is, actually, some fodder here for interesting science-fiction, but the book was no doubt rushed into publication in 1975, when the series became so popular. Watch some DVDs of the old show, as it has much of its era captured in its style. The book serves more as a curiosity.