Ah Firefly, I still mourn your prematurely-ended run, your brief 13-episode run of intra-galactic adventure and derringdo flickering out and foundering far before any of us were ready for it.
Thankfully while TV may be done, with you, the rest of the pop culture-o-sphere is not, with a movie (Serenity), countless comic books, and an online game with the original cast reprising their roles, ensuring that they won’t take the sky from you, or the sense of this wonderful show being alive and very much with us.
Adding to this list of ghosts of Firefly past and present, there are now plans afoot for series of books, which as Bleeding Cool points out, may underwhelm some fans who want a TV show revival and nothing else …
“Okay, look, yes, a series of books isn’t as good as good as purchasing the TV rights with a crowdfunding campaign, gifting them to Nathan Fillion, and getting the cast back together for a long-awaited second season …”
But, and yes Bleeding Cool also threw in a helpful “but” before sentence end, it’s much better than nothing and gives us a chance, particularly those of us for whom books are living, breathing entities unto themselves, to subsume ourselves in imaginative adventures of the mind, full of narrative splendour and possibility.
It’s an especially enticing prospect when Firefly creator, Joss Whedon, is overseeing the books which will all be part of official franchise canon.
And indeed, the book synopses, published on Entertainment Weekly show we’re in for some great adventuring …
Firefly: Big Damn Hero by Nancy Holder (Oct. 2018)
Captain Malcolm Reynolds finds himself in a dangerous situation after being kidnapped by a bunch of embittered veteran Browncoats.Firefly: The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove (March 2019)
Jayne receives a distress call from his ex Temperance McCloud that leads the Serenity crew to danger on a desert moon.Firefly: Generations by Tim Lebbon (Oct. 2019)
The discovery of the location of one of the legendary Ark ships that brought humans from Earth to the ’Verse promises staggering salvage potential, but at what cost? River Tam thinks she might know …
Now all we have to do is be patient and wait … hmmm, are they published yet? … *waiting* … now? Sigh …