FuschiaReads.

Terry Nation
1977 Sphere SC 204pp

I read this in one sitting last night – aahh Saturday nights in the country. Please don’t ask me to tell you if this is a good book or if I read it through the rose coloured glasses of a Complete Fan – I can’t do it. I should warn you that I was a major Fan – started an official fan club – and in the days of the dinosaurs – before VCR - used to sit with my tape deck next to the television and audio-record the story, then the next day TYPE out the script! My original copy of this is in a box somewhere – complete with all lines by Avon underlined in red.

What a hoot! – Poor Blake, once a political activist now mind wiped by the evil Earth Administration- is just one of billions kept docile by suppressants in the food and water – and lots of reality TV and football I suppose. He witnesses a terrible massacre and is immediately set up on false charges and sent to Cynus Alpha – Prison Planet. Whilst on board the transport ship he meets our heroes:

Jenna – smuggler “quite tall, slim, with dark hair, and even in the dim light Blake could see that she was extraordinarily beautiful”
Vila Restal – thief “small agile man, doing a little dance, and spreading his arms wide like a conjuror”
Kerr Avon – big spunk “seemed to regard himself as a cut above the others, no doubt thinking them all small fry in the criminal stakes”
Olag Gan – gentle giant “a tall powerfully built young man”

Through a series of wonderfully amazing (and to the best of my memory never quite explained) coincidences they find themselves in control of the Liberator – alien technology far in advance of the Federation. Yeah Blake’s Seven is born.
Well not quite, they have to go and knock out a communication centre on Saurian Major where they meet:
Cally – telepath “tall, slim, athletically supple and ..incredibly beautiful into the bargain”

(Well, girls we know now that it wasn’t only daleks that got Mr Nation going.)

Its not the greatest story, but that is like saying that teleporting bracelets that always seemed to fall off at the vital moment is a foolish invention. I will suspend all disbelief for my heroes.

To my great joy, my local library also had to novel set after the end of the tv series - ooh who knows what mysteries will be revealed?