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Enjoying a good story.

As a child I was what some would call a bookworm. My mom insisted from a very early time that you had to wash your hands before handling any of the books in the house. Well, anything that required that much effort by a kid just had to be good, so wash up and read I did in earnest.

There were coffee table books, books on travel, old history books, music books, medical texts and technical books. I got caught smuggling books to school because the selection in the school library had been exhausted. Countless hours were spent at our city library. Soon the children's section had been picked over too. The library staff decided that I was mature enough, so they gave me access to the rest of the stacks at the tender age of eleven.

Mom thought I was reading too many technical books and effectively ordered that I try something else, hoping I'd bring home some fiction. That week I came home with my usual armload of books, some of the works were fiction. Science fiction. Of course she was a bit put-out, sci-fi was not what she'd intended. But the selection was excellent - classic works by Clark, Bradbury, and Asimov. Anthologies became a favorite selection. The short stories inside could be read during snack time and if one entry was not that good another was just a few pages away.

There was sci-fi on television as well, though the quality of many shows were poor. A few like the original Star Trek held promise, after all who would diss episodes written by Harlan Ellison or Robert Bloch? However, if you wanted to enjoy the good stuff it was still found in print and the occasional superlative movie like Forbidden Planet or 2001.

That changed in the late 80s. Surfing the channels I encountered the pilot episode for a new series called Babylon 5. The creation of J.M. Straczynski, B5 broke new ground for television sci-fi in countless areas. What mattered most to me was that it was effectively a 5-year novel, all the episodes buttressed off each other. I was and still am a huge fan of that series, even owning a number of collectables that came out.


  
There were a number of times that I spoke via email with Joe. One of our conversation was later mentioned in one of the script books he published after the conclusion of the series.

Other good shows started to appear on cable. Worthy fiction, but somehow never holding the appeal of Babylon 5. Would there ever be another series that had the wow factor that the writing of JMS had? Yes, recently I stumbled onto a series with all the attention to detail and wonderful storytelling that I'd enjoyed years ago. The series is called The Expanse. It has just been picked up by Amazon's Prime network - Jeff Bezos happens to be a fan.

I'm looking forward to season 4. If you enjoy sci-fi you should take a look at this series.

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