Wing commander novels?

Mindcrime

Commodore
Hey all. Me again. I was thinking back and i remember reading a wing commander book back in the day. I know there are quite a few of them. Can you guys suggest a good starting point? Also i bought the wc3 and wc4 novels for a few bucks each. Anyone know if they are any good? I honestly didnt know those two existed until i saw them.
 
IMHO all the novels are worth a read. Freedom Flight's good if you want a trip down memory lane with the crew of Tiger's Claw, but I think most folks here would suggest End Run followed up by Fleet Action as crucial reads - they contain the events that happened between WC2 and WC3 and set up most of WC3's backstory. The WC3 novel is pretty true to the game, the WC4 novel much less so (though the crucial events are still in it). False Colors gets a little technical in the early going but it's still a decent read; it had to grow on me a bit.
 
Last edited:
The Baen books were great. Since you seem to be picking up a lot of WC material, and enjoying it, I strongly encourage you to get them. Like you said, they are cheap, and good reads if you are a Wingnut.

Go with publication order for the Baen books when deciding how to read them:

Freedom Flight
End Run
Fleet Action
Heart of the Tiger
The Price of Freedom
Action Stations
False Colors
 
Nice. Now i remember i read end run back in the day. But i dont remember it. I think im gonna get em all. Probably cost me like 15 bucks altogether anyways lol. I forgot how much I enjoyed collecting wing commander stuff until i saw that WC1 25th anniversary lets play and i saw all these cool things i used to have that other people have. Then i saw how cheap most of these things go for now so I have been collecting back my old stuff. : )
 
If you're not adverse to e-books, I might suggest you Google a site called "Pix's Origin Adventures" and check out the Downloads section. I would still say GO AND BUY THE HARDCOPIES, but in the meantime...
 
If you're not adverse to e-books, I might suggest you Google a site called "Pix's Origin Adventures" and check out the Downloads section. I would still say GO AND BUY THE HARDCOPIES, but in the meantime...
I second this, Pix's site is a fantastic resource for Origin docs and related
 
I have recently read them in publication order, however I think that I would have preferred to read them in time line order.

I think it would be nicer to read how characters grow, and you dont really know what is going to happen, rather than jumping back and forth through time a little.

The time line order (I think) would be :

Action Stations
Freedom Flight
End Run
Fleet Action
Heart of the Tiger
False Colors
The Price of Freedom
 
If you're not adverse to e-books, I might suggest you Google a site called "Pix's Origin Adventures" and check out the Downloads section. I would still say GO AND BUY THE HARDCOPIES, but in the meantime...
Thanks you guys. I actually prefer to read on my iphone these days anyways.
 
I have recently read them in publication order, however I think that I would have preferred to read them in time line order.

I think it would be nicer to read how characters grow, and you dont really know what is going to happen, rather than jumping back and forth through time a little.

The time line order (I think) would be :

Action Stations
Freedom Flight
End Run
Fleet Action
Heart of the Tiger
False Colors
The Price of Freedom

Mostly. Action Station is basically a giant flashback. The flashback itself occurs after The Price of Freedom but the events being flash-backed too occurred at during the buildup to and first major battle of the Kilrathi War.
 
Action Stations is interesting in terms of the narrative shape! You should absolutely read it either in publication order (between TPoF and False Colors) or as the very last book.

The framing story is set after FC, and though 99% of the novel is in 2634, the whole thing relies on you knowing both the events of WC4 and the various characters introduced in the earlier novels (Fleet Action in particular.)

It's also worth remembering that it's not absolutely a 'true' story... it's a historical novel written IN the Wing Commander world. So it's sort of the WC equivalent of Jeff Shaara's Gettysburg. The events are true, but specific details may have been created to better tell this story....
 
I think that I have got some of those books mixed up.

I had forgotten about how action stations was written, and hadnt thought about the knowledge of the characters.

Perhaps it would be best to read in publishing order first time around, then a subsequent time reading them in time line order.
 
I have read both fleet action and false colors and I slightly like false colors better, it is a lot slower paced and the author sometimes stays on one scene for too long, but I got to really know all the characters. I love "Bear" if only he could have showed back up in a game lol. his missions in the expanded games were some of my favorite missions in any wc game.
 
Back
Top