Mirage (Blake's 7 zine)

This article is about the Blake's 7 zine. You may be looking for the Star Trek:TOS novel The Mirage.

Zine
Title:	Mirage
Publisher:	Peacock Press
Editor(s):
Date(s):	1988
Series?:
Medium:	print, zine
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Blake’s 7
Language:	English
External Links:	online at AO3
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cover by Judith Boguslawski

Mirage is a gen 191-page anthology of stories by Jean Graham. It is revised from stories originally appearing in B7 Complex with 74 pages of new material.

The cover is a silver, iridescent card stock and by Judith Boguslawski and other art is by Deb Walsh, J. Arlene Gogan and Michael Williams.

Summary

From the flyer: "Two years after Gauda Prime, Avon escapes Servalan's prison, and hunted by both Federation and Rebellion forces, sets out to recover Orac and the surviving members of Scorpio's crew. His acquisition of the prototype camouflage ship, Mirage, sets off events that could trigger a galactic war -- and the ultimate downfall of the Federation."

Contents

• No Safe Harbor (reprinted from B7 Complex #11) (12 pages)
• Mirage (reprinted from B7 Complex #13) (20 pages)
• Exiles (reprinted from B7 Complex #14) (30 pages)
• The Resurrectionist (reprinted from B7 Complex #15) (24 pages)
• Spectres (reprinted from B7 Complex #16) (28 pages)
• The Only Reality (30 pages)
• Havens (42 pages)

Sample Interior

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  flyer, click to read

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  "Illustration is by Judith Boguslawski. It’s a decent enough post-Gauda Prime novel (I’d recommend it,) but this picture is a bit awkward. At first glance, Vila looks less “injured” and more “toddler having a hissy fit.” Either way, it's a gift to shippers."

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  "Another picture from Mirage. No jokes about this one. Jenna Stannis is in charge and is going to shoot your ass if you don’t watch your step. Which is of course the only proper way to represent Jenna."

Reactions and Reviews

1989

One of the best post-GP stories I have read. Novel-length. Well-written, fast-moving, nice plot twist at the end. She has captured the characters perfectly.

I got MIRAGE a couple of weeks ago, and thought I’d drop you a LOC on it. First of all, it looks lovely. That silver cover is fantastic. And Judith’s art is truly awe-inspiring. She does illos that match the story, are good likenesses, and have emotional impact. The menace in her illos for “Exiles,” the decadence and horror of her “dead-alive” Servalan... brrr! As for the story — I loved it. Characterization and dialogue were very authentic. Too bad Dayna and Soolin get killed off, but at least Jenna survives. (That scene with the kiss was great! At last, a non-"Harlequin" heroine: a woman whom Avon can't subjugate with a single, devastating kiss...) Other especially nice developments: Tarrant finally finds a woman worthy of him; Vila (!) gets to kill Servalan; and the adventure continues, with our heroes fighting not the Federation, but Orac! I have only two minor complaints. First, the litho-crayon portraits aren’t credited. [They’re by Michael Williams: the credit omission was corrected in the last 3/4 of the print run. —Ed.] Second, there should've been an illo of Camell — he’s pretty easy to look at! (Just think, Tarrant and Camell on the same ship. It’s enough to give the Mona Lisa an inferiority complex!)

I just wanted to write and let you know how much I enjoyed your B7 novel MIRAGE. I picked it up at ORAC, and once I got home and started it, I literally couldn’t put it down. It was fast- moving, well-written and the plot was full of surprises, especially the ending, a nice twist there. You really have captured the essence of the characters, and they remain true to character, even when they step outside the bounds of their ’expected’ behaviors—when Vila does something brave, he still does it within character, when Avon is experiencing different feelings it still seems true to character within the situation. I know this is difficult to achieve, especially in such an ambitious, longer novel as you have written. I'm not a critic, and I haven’t done a lot of writing myself, but I know what I like, and MIRAGE was some of the best B7 fiction I’ve read. Any chance of a sequel? [Further stories set in MIRAGE’S universe will probably appear in future GAMBITs. —Ed.]

My copy of MIRAGE arrived a couple of weeks ago and I am enjoying it I especially like the internal dialogue that Avon carries on with Blake. And he finished where he’d started, basically, at the very beginning of Season One. A more hopeful ending than most that I have read, and he should be able to dodge any pitfalls likely to lead him back to the road of rebellion. And a chameleon spaceship — about the only kind of ship that could be regarded as any kind of improvement on Liberator a move from thoroughbred to Justin Morgan. Looking forward to the arrival of GAMBIT 4.

A quick letter to" let you iariow how much I enjoyed MIRAGE. You have an interesting plot, which you did not abandon in favor of a ’wallow* (I’ve read too many of those!) The ultimate purpose for Orac is a clever idea. Your characterizations are very plausible. I was particularly pleased to read a fifth season story that was not an ’Avon bash’ and in which Vila was not a high-IQ Alpha in disguise. Bringing back Camell is fun; I could see him speaking the words you wrote.

1990

Mirage by Jean Graham has a nice balance of characters in a PGP setting. Tarrant gets a story of his own, plus some love interest, & figures in 22% of this strongly plotted 191p. zine. Very well-written, one of the best PGP fan novels to come down the pike in a LONG while. It passed my own acid test which means that I read it more than once & enjoyed it both times! Stories originally appeared in B7 Complex, now with 70 additional pages, spiral bound, illos by Walsh, Boguslawski, & Williams.

1996

I read your novel Mirage and wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it. I liked how Blake and Cally made "appearances," were still "present" even though they weren't. I also liked, very much, the plausible way you brought Servalan back-she's not invulnerable, after all, and can't keep coming back whole and entire. Servalan undead suited me just fine. And the twist of Orac being the completion of Central Control fit so well-it gave me a hit-the-side-of-the-head "Of COURSE!" moment—what other use for Orac makes more sense? I wondered about Kendall, especially since you were careful not to give much of a physical description of him. He seemed to be as caring and humanitarian as Blake, and I wondered if he were, indeed, Blake who somehow escaped the carnage at Gauda Prime and got shipped off just like Tarrant, or Blake's clone, or something like that. The ending seemed to leave the door open-is there a sequel in the works?