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Space 1999: The Armageddon Engine
Adrift in deep space, Commander John Koenig and the people of Moonbase Alpha face an uncertain fate when a planet-killing alien weapon at the heart of a sinister cloud diverts their lost Moon on to a fatal trajectory.
As each moment brings the Moon closer to total obliteration, Koenig leads a desperate mission into the unknown to save all life on Alpha. Does hope lie among a rag-tag colony of refugees hiding in the shadow of devastation? Or can the Alphans find a path into the heart of the war machine and end its destructive rampage? With time running out, the answer will mean the difference between survival... or annihilation.
As each moment brings the Moon closer to total obliteration, Koenig leads a desperate mission into the unknown to save all life on Alpha. Does hope lie among a rag-tag colony of refugees hiding in the shadow of devastation? Or can the Alphans find a path into the heart of the war machine and end its destructive rampage? With time running out, the answer will mean the difference between survival... or annihilation.
Audiobook
Published September 1, 2024
3 people want to read
About the author
James Swallow
309 books1,091 followersJames Swallow is a New York Times, Sunday Times and Amazon #1 bestselling author and scriptwriter, a BAFTA nominee, a former journalist and the award-winning writer of over sixty-five books, along with scripts for video games, comics, radio and television.
DARK HORIZON, his latest stand-alone thriller, is out now from Mountain Leopard Press, and OUTLAW, the 6th action-packed Marc Dane novel, is published by Bonnier.
Along with the Marc Dane thrillers, his writing includes, the Sundowners steampunk Westerns and fiction from the worlds of Star Trek, Tom Clancy, 24, Warhammer 40000, Doctor Who, Deus Ex, Stargate, 2000AD and many more.
For information on new releases & more, sign up to the Readers’ Club here: www.bit.ly/JamesSwallow
Visit James's website at http://www.jswallow.com/ for more, including ROUGH AIR, a free eBook novella in the Marc Dane series.
You can also follow James on Bluesky at @jmswallow.bsky.social, Twitter at @jmswallow, Mastodon at @jmswallow@mstdn.social and jmswallow.tumblr.com at Tumblr.
DARK HORIZON, his latest stand-alone thriller, is out now from Mountain Leopard Press, and OUTLAW, the 6th action-packed Marc Dane novel, is published by Bonnier.
Along with the Marc Dane thrillers, his writing includes, the Sundowners steampunk Westerns and fiction from the worlds of Star Trek, Tom Clancy, 24, Warhammer 40000, Doctor Who, Deus Ex, Stargate, 2000AD and many more.
For information on new releases & more, sign up to the Readers’ Club here: www.bit.ly/JamesSwallow
Visit James's website at http://www.jswallow.com/ for more, including ROUGH AIR, a free eBook novella in the Marc Dane series.
You can also follow James on Bluesky at @jmswallow.bsky.social, Twitter at @jmswallow, Mastodon at @jmswallow@mstdn.social and jmswallow.tumblr.com at Tumblr.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 14, 2024
This really did have the overall atmosphere of Space: 1999.
September 13, 2024
It’s a well-known fact in my household that, like many of my age, the programmes of Gerry Anderson in the 1960s were my first experience of science fiction. In fact, one of my first and earliest memories is of sitting in a chair aged about 3, watching an episode of Thunderbirds. Along with Stingray and later Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, they were with Doctor Who and Star Trek an important part of my early life as I’m sure they were to many.
So, it was with this in mind that I was pleased to receive for review two novellas based on two later Gerry Anderson television series being published by Anderson Entertainment, the company founded by Gerry Anderson, and continuing today, even though Gerry passed away in 2012.
Both novellas are published on 13 September 2024 for ‘Breakaway Day’, which is a significant day in the Space: 1999 universe and a milestone for fans - the date that Earth's moon was blown out of orbit by a massive nuclear explosion in the first episode of the series. The books will be published in a limited-edition hardback and paperback, with eBooks to follow at a later date.
With that in mind it seems appropriate to review the Space:1999 novella first. (The UFO review will appear in the next few days.)
Context, then, for those who don’t know. Space: 1999 entered production in 1973 and would run for 48 episodes over the next two years, in two seasons.
If I remember right at the time, it was one of the most expensive television series made in the UK up to that point. And it showed it. Lavish sets and models made the programme look expensive, even if the scripts were not always scientifically accurate. Even the initial premise was a tad dodgy, as the series followed the adventures of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, a human colony stranded on the Moon after it gets blown out of Earth’s orbit by a massive nuclear explosion.
Despite this dodgy science, the series was initially popular. Even when it became a series that seemed to be little more than ‘alien of the week’, as a young boy I loved it.
In The Armageddon Engine, Commander John Koenig and the people of Moonbase Alpha face an uncertain fate when a planet-killing alien weapon at the heart of a sinister cloud diverts their lost Moon on to a fatal trajectory.
As each moment brings the Moon closer to total obliteration, Koenig leads a desperate mission into the unknown to save all life on Alpha. Does hope lie within a rag-tag colony of refugees hiding in the shadow of devastation? Or can the Alphans find a path into the heart of the war machine and end its destructive rampage? With time running out, the answer will mean the difference between survival… or annihilation.
So: big stakes here, as was normal for the series. The story is not particularly new – see Star Trek’s The Doomsday Machine for a similar theme – but the good news here is that James Swallow, author of many books in other franchises such as Warhammer 40000 and Doctor Who, has captured that feel that the series had.
James manages also to do that tricky thing of reminding readers of things and people they may not have read about or seen in about 50 years, whilst keeping the plot (such as it is) going. New readers should be able to pick up the plot without difficulty, whilst fans, who this book is really aimed at, will pick up the details quickly and easily.
As you might expect, there’s not a lot of space for detail in less than 150 pages, but even so the main personnel feel like they did in the TV series – Koenig grappling with moral and ethical issues whilst trying to stoically look after his crew, doctor Helena Russell his quiet support. There is no drastic reimagining of the characters here.
I particularly liked the fact that because this story appears to be set some time in Season One, we also have the calm and meditative manner of chief scientist Victor Bergman (played by Barry Morse in the original series) and not any of the characters introduced in the rather different Season Two. This is to me an advantage. Bergman is Space: 1999’s Spock to Koenig’s Kirk, providing the objective voice of logic and reason here, as he did in the series, and this provides a counterpoint to all of the action elements in the story.
The aliens by comparison are rather simple but do the job intended – even if their outcome is not given in detail!
However, fans of the original, like me, I suspect will enjoy this a great deal. For them the important thing is that this feels like an episode that was never filmed. Anyone wanting to read further the adventures of Moonbase Alpha will enjoy this one.
So, it was with this in mind that I was pleased to receive for review two novellas based on two later Gerry Anderson television series being published by Anderson Entertainment, the company founded by Gerry Anderson, and continuing today, even though Gerry passed away in 2012.
Both novellas are published on 13 September 2024 for ‘Breakaway Day’, which is a significant day in the Space: 1999 universe and a milestone for fans - the date that Earth's moon was blown out of orbit by a massive nuclear explosion in the first episode of the series. The books will be published in a limited-edition hardback and paperback, with eBooks to follow at a later date.
With that in mind it seems appropriate to review the Space:1999 novella first. (The UFO review will appear in the next few days.)
Context, then, for those who don’t know. Space: 1999 entered production in 1973 and would run for 48 episodes over the next two years, in two seasons.
If I remember right at the time, it was one of the most expensive television series made in the UK up to that point. And it showed it. Lavish sets and models made the programme look expensive, even if the scripts were not always scientifically accurate. Even the initial premise was a tad dodgy, as the series followed the adventures of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, a human colony stranded on the Moon after it gets blown out of Earth’s orbit by a massive nuclear explosion.
Despite this dodgy science, the series was initially popular. Even when it became a series that seemed to be little more than ‘alien of the week’, as a young boy I loved it.
In The Armageddon Engine, Commander John Koenig and the people of Moonbase Alpha face an uncertain fate when a planet-killing alien weapon at the heart of a sinister cloud diverts their lost Moon on to a fatal trajectory.
As each moment brings the Moon closer to total obliteration, Koenig leads a desperate mission into the unknown to save all life on Alpha. Does hope lie within a rag-tag colony of refugees hiding in the shadow of devastation? Or can the Alphans find a path into the heart of the war machine and end its destructive rampage? With time running out, the answer will mean the difference between survival… or annihilation.
So: big stakes here, as was normal for the series. The story is not particularly new – see Star Trek’s The Doomsday Machine for a similar theme – but the good news here is that James Swallow, author of many books in other franchises such as Warhammer 40000 and Doctor Who, has captured that feel that the series had.
James manages also to do that tricky thing of reminding readers of things and people they may not have read about or seen in about 50 years, whilst keeping the plot (such as it is) going. New readers should be able to pick up the plot without difficulty, whilst fans, who this book is really aimed at, will pick up the details quickly and easily.
As you might expect, there’s not a lot of space for detail in less than 150 pages, but even so the main personnel feel like they did in the TV series – Koenig grappling with moral and ethical issues whilst trying to stoically look after his crew, doctor Helena Russell his quiet support. There is no drastic reimagining of the characters here.
I particularly liked the fact that because this story appears to be set some time in Season One, we also have the calm and meditative manner of chief scientist Victor Bergman (played by Barry Morse in the original series) and not any of the characters introduced in the rather different Season Two. This is to me an advantage. Bergman is Space: 1999’s Spock to Koenig’s Kirk, providing the objective voice of logic and reason here, as he did in the series, and this provides a counterpoint to all of the action elements in the story.
The aliens by comparison are rather simple but do the job intended – even if their outcome is not given in detail!
However, fans of the original, like me, I suspect will enjoy this a great deal. For them the important thing is that this feels like an episode that was never filmed. Anyone wanting to read further the adventures of Moonbase Alpha will enjoy this one.
October 15, 2024
I guess I was hoping for something … a little more. I’ve gotten spoiled with the audio-dramas (like: Space 1999: Breakaway, Space 1999 Volume 1, Space 1999 Volume 02 Earthbound, and Space 1999 Volume 03: Dragon's Domain), so a mere audiobook doesn’t quite feel as authentic I suppose.
October 5, 2025
Set during 'season 1'.
A massive cloud of particles is detected. Passive scans can't tell the Alphans much about it. Professor Bergman has created a new scanning system that will be put on an eagle for testing. During the test gravitational beams lance out of the cloud and latch onto the eagle. When it tries to break free it is destroyed. But a great deal of information was transmitted back to Moon Base before the eagle broke up. Then the same gravitational beams hit the moon and drag it from its path to an interception course with the dust cloud.
Bergman theorizes that something is inside that cloud and Commander Koenig commands the eagle that it going to get there before the moon is engulfed. Inside the cloud the crew of the eagle learns there is a massive debris field. Furthermore, there are survivors of other ships that have encountered the death machine hidden in the center of the cloud. Can Koenig and Bergman find a way to stop the doomsday machine?
A massive cloud of particles is detected. Passive scans can't tell the Alphans much about it. Professor Bergman has created a new scanning system that will be put on an eagle for testing. During the test gravitational beams lance out of the cloud and latch onto the eagle. When it tries to break free it is destroyed. But a great deal of information was transmitted back to Moon Base before the eagle broke up. Then the same gravitational beams hit the moon and drag it from its path to an interception course with the dust cloud.
Bergman theorizes that something is inside that cloud and Commander Koenig commands the eagle that it going to get there before the moon is engulfed. Inside the cloud the crew of the eagle learns there is a massive debris field. Furthermore, there are survivors of other ships that have encountered the death machine hidden in the center of the cloud. Can Koenig and Bergman find a way to stop the doomsday machine?
October 13, 2024
I am reviewing the recently released book version of this story. I really enjoyed this story, it really did capture the style and essence of the TV show. The characters felt real, they reacted in a way that made it feel like this could have been an episode in season one. I will not give too much of the story away but I really enjoyed it. Well worth reading for any fan of the series or a fan of a good sci-fi story.
November 19, 2024
It really feltlike an episode of the tv show
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews