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“I was working in the Penguin/Puffin
copy-editorial department when the series began," Waterfield explains. "My desk was free to edit one of
the books, and after that I became the default copy-editor for them all, having
got the hang of them. Later, after leaving Penguin, I became the series editor
from 1986-1988, when I handed over to Marc Gascoigne.
“By the time I wrote my first one, I had edited quite a few,
and was already involved in reading (and rejecting) the countless submissions
from hopeful kids. I knew how the games worked, and I’ve been a lifelong
games-player (though I was not involved at all in the RPG world). So I didn’t
find them too difficult to write. The first one I wrote was non-Titan (Rebel Planet), but that was because
Philippa specifically asked me to do an SF one.”
In Rebel Planet, the leaders of SAROS (a secret Earth
organization) are fighting to overthrow the alien Arcadian Empire. Having
gathered together their last few resources, they send the hero on one last
daring, and foolhardy, mission to strike at the heart of the Arcadian
homeworld.
Rebel Planet was adapted to become one of a select group of FF computer games, available for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. The cover was provided by artist and colourist Alan Craddock with Gary Mayes producing the internal black and white illustrations, just as he would for the next two SF FF titles.
“If I remember correctly, the opportunity arose through the
Games Workshop magazine, White Dwarf, and
I think my name was put forward to the publishers Puffin, as a likely
candidate,” says Mayes, recalling how he came to contribute to the Fighting
Fantasy series. “In many ways it was a breath of fresh air to illustrate a
whole book and particularly to work in black and white, something I had wanted
to do for quite a while. My work at that time was varied and came from a number
of different sources and this [Rebel Planet]
gave me an opportunity to work within the fantasy/science fiction genre, which
I had wanted to do since I had started drawing as a child.
“My early influences were illustrators like Frank Bellamy, Frank Kelly Freas, and numerous others that I had pored over as a teenager and inspired me to think about work of that nature. The FF books were a significant step along the way and provided an opportunity to develop my skill and method of working with a subject I loved.”
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