Little Green Men and Other Stories
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An Instinct for Murder (The first Star Cops volume).
Star Cops was Chris's own series. It only ran to nine episodes, but it was real SF. The limitations were those of real science - no force fields, ftl travel, etc. The Star Cops are a hard-pressed police force trying to solve crimes committed on the moon and on stations in Earth orbit.
Some of you will already have read 'An Instinct for Murder' the first novel; now we have 'Little Green Men and Other Stories', the write-up of another four episodes that Chris wrote himself.
You don't have to have seen the series, the books stand on their own. Indeed, the special effects are better in the books as Chris wrote them the way he wanted things to be rather than the way budget sometimes forced them to appear on screen. I would read the books in order though - Chris uses continuity and there's a few clues to events in the later book in the first one.
Chris Boucher was script editor for the entire series of Blake's 7 and wrote scripts for both Blake's 7 and Dr Who. Many people have found points of similarity between Blake's 7 and Star Cops. These similarities show up more in later episodes of Star Cops as more characters are introduced (and Chris is willing to have his second novel also published as a fanzine if there is sufficiant interest in this one), but this first novel is worth reading as an excellent piece of detective science fiction in its own right.
The Star Cops Site has a lot about Star Cops.
The Anorak's Guide To Star Cops has a review of both Novels.
There is an interview with Chris Boucher about Star Cops (and some Blake's 7). - This is on the The Star Cops Site.
Although this is being published as a fanzine, it was originally written with the intention of being published as a professional novel. (I don't know why it wasn't. I suspect Star Cops was too small a series for a main-stream publisher to be interested. It certainly wasn't for want of good writing) This makes it virtually unique among zines as it is published with the full consent of the copyright holder. A portion of the cover price will go to Chris Boucher.
Although this is essentially a genzine, people should be aware that it contains a fair bit of bad language and a small amount of sex. It's greatly expanded from the episode as seen on screen and the special effects are better <grin>.
Word count 79,800 That's about 109 A4 pages of story.
Last updated on 18th of May 2006.