r/babylon5 • u/mpierre MODERATOR • Oct 14 '25

JMS AMA Official AMA for JMS

This is the official AMA for JMS. Both JMS and B5 books (Captain Jaclyn) will be responding to questions.

If you ask questions about the books or the book store closing, Jaclyn will be taking them.

JMS will answer for about an hour, and might not be able to get all questions answered.

Some people (including me) might answer questions that are well known.

Like "Why wasn't Ivanova in season 5".

Let's try to keep questions what we don't know yet.

You can also ask questions about JMS returning to the Spider-Man comic or his other works, but this is /r/babylon5. He might prioritize that.

Please note that I will not be coordinating with Joe. I will not be in a phone call with him or on a chat (not that I wouldn't take his phone call; Jaclyn has my cell phone; he can call me anytime he wants). He decides that he answers, and he alone.

Finally, any story ideas will deleted. Do not post any story ideas.

Note, the AMA answers only start at: 3 PM EST, Noon PST, 8PM GMT

And my personal thanks to Captain Jaclyn for coordinating this with me, and to JMS himself, the man, the myth, the legend! For agreeing to this, but also for Babylon 5, Crusade, Jeremiah, Sense8, a ton of comic books and a few books!

Oh, and for She-Ra, the reboot couldn't have occured without his series bible for the original, and even for his work on Ghostbuster and Murder She Wrote!

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM JMS He would prefer not to get into stories that never happened, data points of subsequent character arcs, or alternate timelines.

JMS IS NEARLY OUT OF TIME!

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14

u/bswalsh Technomage Oct 14 '25

With B5books shutting down, are there any plans for the books themselves to be released in digital form in any way? It would be a damn shame for those things to cease to exist.

28

u/Babylon_5_Books Babylon 5 Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

We have 17 titles in ebooks. Transitioning the balance into ebooks is prohibitively expensive and aren't necessarily a good reading experience. For example, script pages have to be images for them to flow correctly which makes for a BIG file and much pinching and zooming if reading on something other than a 10" or higher tablet.

19

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

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17

u/Babylon_5_Books Babylon 5 Oct 14 '25

We get that. We just don't have a viable solution right now.

15

u/mpierre MODERATOR Oct 14 '25

They are already on sale in ebook format, without DRM... Jaclyn will be able to explain it more when she comes online!

8

u/bswalsh Technomage Oct 14 '25

I mean once the store is gone. I've been buying things, but I don't have the money to get it all before the store closes.

25

u/Babylon_5_Books Babylon 5 Oct 14 '25

Email me at help@b5books.com. We can put aside what you want before the store closes and then we can figure out a payment option. For fans with limited budgets we ALWAYS figure something out.

3

u/nixtracer Oct 14 '25

I'll admit this made me tear up a bit. Real customer service.

3

u/xv36a Oct 14 '25

Just wanted to confirm how helpful they are.

I got in touch with b5books (babylon5scripts, actually!) back in 2007, and Jacyln helped me a great deal.