The Merchandise Guide
Novelisations: Anderson Entertainment
Compiled by Martin Willey

• Maybe There
• Armageddon Engine

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The Armageddon Engine by James Swallow

Hardcover, 136 pages, 13 September 2024, widely available from 1 October 2024
Amazon Kindle edition October 2024
Audiobook (Big Finish) narrated by Mark Elstob, 222 minutes, September 2024

Anderson Entertainment previously published the Maybe There - The Lost Stories from Space: 1999 (2022), their first 1999 fiction title.

James Swallow is a British author who writes both original fiction and franchise tie-ins, mostly in science fiction and thriller genres. This is his first Space: 1999 title, written at the same time as another title for UFO. According to his blog, the signed "limited edition" hardback and paperback may be followed by ebook and audio editions (only the hardback was released- no paperback, but the Kindle and audiobook followed within weeks). Swallow describes them as "novellas" (a short novel, less than 40,000 words). The hardcover was initially sold exclusively online via gerryanderson.com, and later via amazon and other online bookstores. See the author's notes.

The book was announced on 20 June 2024. The mock-up covers look a little rushed, notably the back cover. The front cover Eagle has very thin red stripes; the Moonbuggy and Maya creature below are from Space Warp; on the back cover is Satazius from The Last Enemy. The cover art is by Marcus Stamps.

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.

SFX magazine issue 383 (October 2024) mentioned Space: 1999 on the cover while running a short interview with author James Swallow on p14, titled "Those '70s shows". "I deliberately set it in the gap between the first and second seasons of Space: 1999, where there's a tonal shift. The first series has more of an intellectual story going on whereas the second season is more action paced, so I've tried to combine the two."