In the middle of 1996, a Great Darkness cast its Shadow upon the Known Universe, as Season 2of Babylon 5 drew to a close. Fear and Anxiety ruled the hearts and minds of people across the land,for no one knew when, nor indeed if, JMS the Glorious would return to smile upon them once again.The Long Dark Winter had begun.

A poor lost soul lamented, "What are we to do?", whereupon one of the brethren offered, gamely butsomewhat disconsolately, "We could try reading a good book". And thus was the Novels During the Wait thread born.

Here are the suggestions from that thread, with somepossible omissions from early contributions. I have tried to put them intosome sort of order, based on the comments made. Obviously, most books/seriesonly elicited one or two opinions, and these were sometimes contradictory. Ihave tried to take all opinions into account in ranking the books/series. Itgoes without saying the rankings are pretty rough. Originally, I was goingto include synopses and opinions, but it all got too messy, and not everysuggestion had a synopsis or opinion, anyway.

What's new in '97?

Just about everything:

• added entries from "recent" posts to asb5. I haven't read these new ones, so if I've categorised them incorrectly, please let me know
• moved the titles of books within series to a separate page, in the hope of making this original page a little less unwieldy
• added a new page which contains some hopefully useful comments on some ofthe works mentioned below.
• completed the Award Winners' list. It's authoritative, now
• added a link to a comprehensive listing of literary award winners (mostly SF, but including horror and others)
• moved the multitudinous thank you's to their own page
• added a cute little icon to help you move around. It's my creation, but not my design. Do you recognise it? Mystery prize to the first one who does
• added indicators for award winners: Hugo Nebula
• added lots more links
• generally had a bit of a fiddle, particularly with this first part

I hope these additions and changes have made the B5LRL more Fun, Easy and Useful (tm)

Go back to the main aus.sf.babylon5 web page.

There are four sections:

SF

Fantasy

Other

Hugo and Nebula Award winners

The first three sections comprise the suggestions of B5ers, and include both novels and series.The fourth section is simply a list of novels which have won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for "Best SF Novel of the Year". I can assure you any book which wins both awards is a good read.

The SF and Fantasy sections share two pages:

Notes on some of the books/series

Series members

My thanks go to all concerned who helped make this possible.

Of course, all omissions and errors are mine and everybody else's. :)

Go back to the main aus.sf.babylon5 web page.

This page was created by Philip Prohm.
It is maintained by Alys and was last updated on 5 March, 1996.