Background Info

 The History of the Starman Series

HOW DID THE SERIES COME ABOUT?

In 1959, Golden Press published a book called The Forgotten Star. The author was Joseph Greene, who introduced Space Explorer Digby Allen in the first of what would become six books known as the Dig Allen series. This short-lived and little-known series set in the 22^nd century chronicled the adventures of a three-man team of teenage space explorers. 

The titles of the books and their dates of publication are:

1. The Forgotten Star    (1959)

2. Captives in Space      (1960)

3. Journey to Jupiter    (1961)

4. Trappers of Venus    (1961)

5. Robots of Saturn      (1962)

6. Lost City of Uranus (1962)

[A seventh, entitled Children of Neptune, was planned but never released.]  

More than thirty-five years later, Jonathan Cooper (born nearly two decades after the last Dig Allen book appeared) launched a web site dedicated to Tom Swift with a subsection on the Dig Allen series. Jon’s Dig Allen page may be found here. 

Jon had discovered series books in his early teens and developed an interest in Dig Allen. He began recording the names of people who contacted him after they had run across his web site and shared an interest in this obscure series. Eventually Paul Greene, the son of the author of the Dig Allen series, made contact with Jon through his web site. Jon learned from Paul that Joseph Greene, Dig Allen’s creator, had died in 1990. The character of Jogren in Mutiny On Mars is a tribute to him.

In the summer of 1998, a team of three Dig Allen fans began work which eventually led to the creation of a new series that was similar to but quite independent and distinct from the Dig Allen series. After a year of collaboration, thought, and research, the team had produced well over a hundred pages of email correspondence and had created a couple of dozen files filled with plots, background material, and scientific information. Several years later--with six books completed, as well as five Inter*Stellars and five short stories--this material had grown to more than two thousand pages of correspondence and many dozen files.

[For a much fuller explanation of the origin of the Starman series, its content, authors’ commentary, readers’ reviews, and more, click on this link. It will take you to a lengthy interview of the Starman Team prepared in 2005 for an online magazine.]