40 years of Rebel Planet

2025 marks 40 years since the publication of the fifth Fighting Fantasy sci-fi title, Rebel Planet (FF18), by Robin Waterfield.

“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.

Robot, by Gary Mayes.

(© Gary Mayes, 1985 and 2025)

“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.”

Alan Craddock’s cover rough for Rebel Planet, which at the time went by the title Emperor of Arcadion.(© Alan Craddock, 1985 and 2025)

But what of Craddock? Did he have a background in RPGs? “I had played Waddington’s Risk board game for many hours with my friends,” says Craddock. “During the Sixth Form school holidays we would play games which would last days at a time. So I knew the pleasure a good board game could provide. And when I had finished reading Tolkien I wanted more, and obviously a role-playing game could be a way of achieving that. But painting was my particular outlet. Once I became a professional artist in 1979 and got married soon after, those long balmy summer days of playing Risk for days on end were gone. I wanted to be the best artist I could be; no time for playing games. I also had to decorate and wash dishes!” 

Gamebook author Mark Lain is currently working with Gary Mayes on Rebel Planet: The Graphic Novel. To read an interview withM Mark about the graphic novel, follow this link.

To read more about the history of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, follow this link.