Language English Country United States of America | ||
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Books Genesis, Battle Cry, Battlehymn, Force of Arms, Doomsday | ||
Robotech novels top 12 facts
In 1987, the Robotech animated series was adapted into novel form by authors James Luceno and Brian Daley and published by Del Rey Books. Having previously collaborated on the animated series Galaxy Rangers, the pair's Robotech novels were released under the unified pseudonym of "Jack McKinney". Using fictitious epigraphs in the style of Dune, McKinney's novels escaped the limitations inherent in the dubbed cartoon and fleshed out its chronology in greater detail; most significantly, by adapting the storyline of the aborted sequel project, "The Sentinels". The entire series lasted for twenty-one books, the first fifteen of which were later collected into five three-book omnibus compilations in the early 1990s.
Contents
The original twelve novels were written to a tight twelve-month deadline, so that the books could be released one per month. Under this deadline, Daley and Luceno divided the Robotech timeline into twelve segments and worked on different segments simultaneously (i.e. Daley wrote Book 1 while Luceno wrote Book 2), then traded completed manuscripts for revision and style adjustments. As part of the research project, they watched the TV series many times, and consulted heavily with Carl Macek.
The first two omnibus collections, comprising the entirety of the "Macross Saga", were reissued in 2003 to tie in with the release of the Robotech: Battlecry video game. Then, in 2007, the next two omnibus collections, covering the remainder of the television series, were re-released as tie-ins to the animated movie, Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. However, a revision of the Robotech timeline made by Harmony Gold alongside the release of the movie caused some continuity clashes with the McKinney novels, which were relegated to a "secondary" position in Robotech canon. To work around this, the Southern Cross and Invid Invasion collections contain new appendices written by Robotech fan Jonathan L. Switzer correcting any newborn mistakes.
Divergences
The major divergences from the Robotech television series include:
The divergences can be explained partly by a lack of translated source material from the original shows—meaning that the writers could only go by what was seen on the screen and the materials they had been given—and partly by a desire to tie the series together even more completely than the television show, sometimes by including material that never ended up being animated. In particular, the "Shapings of the Protoculture" enabled this unification, serving as the deus ex machina to Robotech's Greek tragedy. It should also be noted that at least some of the elements for which the novels have been criticized were directly suggested by Carl Macek during Daley and Luceno's consultations with him.